Six Sentence Sunday

It's been awhile since we've done one of these; we thought we'd take a short portion from an earlier chapter in the book, featuring Gabriel on his own, walking in the Lake District in England on a stormy day. Enjoy, and let us know what you think.

There was a bright flash off to his right, accompanied by a loud boom just afterwards. Across the meadow, just twenty or thirty feet away, at the tree line, a  stray bolt of lightning had hit a large tree. He could see its path down the trunk, a zigzag pattern reaching down the bulk of the tree. There was a groan, almost as if the tree itself was calling out… and then the tree started to give way. It tilted, pitching forward, away from Gabriel. He watched as it broke away from the roots, the trunk slamming into the ground, the air filled with electricity and the peculiar smell of burnt wood.