Wind Spirit

I am frowning. There was something I had wanted to say, something very important, but I can't recall what it was. Regret pierces me that I can no longer remember. It was something simple, yet a thing I had needed to say to.... someone. Who? I blink, I snap out of my trance and realize that my other memories have slipped away as well.

Around me is yellowed grass that stretches far out into the distance. I am bathed in sunlight, but dark thunder clouds roil the sky in front of me. I don't know how I got here. I can't recall who I am. What happened? No explanation surfaces in my mind. Ahead of me a sheet of rain falls from the clouds. The curtain of liquid sweeps across the ground until the the horizon before me is blurred and darkened by falling water. Streaks of lightening occasionally flash into being, drawing bright lines that connect the sky and earth. Each one is accompanied a few seconds later by deep, rumbling thunder that vibrates within me. I watch, strangely fascinated.

A tug on my jacket distracts me from this spectacle. I look down to see a small boy of about nine or ten looking up at me. One of his hands is tightly clamped around my jacket. For a second I stare at him in confusion, and then my whole world shifts and I realize that this boy is the center of it. I care for him a great deal. To me he is more important than anything. But why? I can't seem to answer any of my own questions. He speaks to me in a high, beautiful voice.

"Dad, can we leave now?"

He is trying not to show it, but he is very frightened. I can see that just by looking at him. Wait, I think, I think this is the person to whom I was supposed to speak to. I had to tell him something, something that I feared he might have missed in the confusion, and the stress, and the loss. I remember now. I remember that I had not fit in.... wherever I had been and that I had not functioned the right way. I was always being carried away by own emotions. Always losing track of what the future held, of what my plans were, of what day it was. But still, I can't recall exactly what I had wanted to say....

A rumble of thunder shakes me and my attention locks back on the horizon. The storm is approaching us, growing stronger. Apprehension makes me shiver, something about it is wrong. It is gaining strength and speed quicker then it should be. The rain is lashing the ground with unnatural violence and the wind is tearing at the air with palpable spite. Lightening is striking the ground again and again, too often and too severely to be normal. I know that this is not an ordinary storm, it has power, it has a purpose. And I think it has something to do with me. I don't know why I know these things, but I do.

"Dad come on."

The fear in his voice tugs at my heart, but his words are hard to make out. Even though the storm is still a ways off there is a deep booming resounding in my ears. Thunder, I realize, endless peals of thunder that are now coming so close together they overlap one another and roar past us in an ongoing wave of sound. The accompanying lightening creates hundreds of strings of light that dance madly across the horizon in a glorious array of bright flashes and afterimages. I feel like this should be frightening, but I can't seem to recall precisely why that should be. I feel his hand tug me at my jacket once again, and then I do feel a spike of fear. He needs to get away, it is dangerous for him here. I open my mouth to speak and, to my surprise, the words I need rush out of me as if they had been there all along.

"Go back to the car Mike. Just stay there."

Wind is whipping by us, and the shadow of the clouds passes over us. My body reacts oddly, trembling. Cold, I remeber, this is what being cold feels like. The storm is still booming and writhing in front of us, rain cascading from it and pounding against the ground. It's getting closer.

"But dad-"

I say, louder, "Just walk back Mike. Go."

He just stares at me, looking very lost. A touch of panic enters me. I yell, "now Mike!"

Finally, he turns and starts walking away from the clouds and across the field. Miserable. Frightened. I watch him for a second. Then I turn back to the storm and, impossibly, all thoughts of him slide out of my head as if they had never been. The storm becomes the center of my attention once again. A thing is supposed to happen now, an important thing. The reason for me being here, the reason for this storm.

I move towards the clouds and they reach out towards me. They are calling me, welcoming me home. I step into the rain. It batters my shape and numbs my limbs, but I hardly notice. My body is unimportant, I need to go further in. As I walk through the tempest I have to struggle to push myself through the wind and cold that is assailing me and numbing my limbs. As I move I can feel tension building up above me. It grows and grows and then it snaps. Light surrounds me and I jump free.

I spin up into the clouds to find a myriad of others like me whirling through the currents of wind and rain. Hundreds of spirits, spirits of the wild, spirits of the air and of the storm. Spirits like me. They had come to get me, I realize, they had driven this storm and called me into its presence to set me free. To correct the terrible mistake that had trapped me in a human's body and the human world. Now I am where I belong, things are as they should be.

Even now the spirits are dispersing. Though briefly united by their shared goal, they are already returning to their natural state. To being wholly absorbed in the present, unimpeded by thoughts of the future. To surfing on currents of air and wind and being driven by whims, to allowing the forces of nature to steer them and taking pleasure in unleashing their power and not caring what it did or where it hit. Such is our life.

I feel that mindset tugging me. It would be so easy to let go of my past and live as they do, in the moment and almost without conscious thought. It would be such a relief. But something inside of me stops me. For some reason I don't want to forget. I want to hold on to what I was just a little longer.

Suddenly I sense something, a bump in the otherwise flat ground below. It is moving slowly, jerkily, stumbling and shaking as wind and rain whips around it. Recognition burst into me once again. Mike, this was Mike. My son. He must have followed me. The storm is destroying him. Water is pounding against him and pulling the heat from his body. Lightening is seeking him out. Abruptly the draw to join in the other spirits' vapid existence is shunted aside by something stronger. "No," I want to shout, though of course now I can't shout. I throw myself down to where he lies and whirl around him.

I frantically bat the lightening aside and part the wind and rain around him. My brothers and sisters ignore my uncharacteristically deliberate movements, now once again entirely involved in the moment and hardly aware of the world beneath them. However I grimly fight on, determined to keep the poor, crumpled figure below me safe.

I don't know how long this goes on for, the form I have now does not have a very good sense of time. At some point most of the other spirits have scattered and the ones that remain are content to rush through the air while peacefully rebuilding their strength. But I remain. More shapes arrive on the ground below, I can sense them only as holes in the air. Mike is pulled inside one of the larger ones, a place where the air is enclosed and contained and where I cannot follow. With nothing else to do I move back into the open sky to roam the winds once more.

I return to that place every now and then, whenever thoughts of him rise up within me and interrupt my travels. I wasn't able to entirely escape that world after all. When I do return I swirl through the houses and the forests until I find him. Somehow I can always find him, even though normally people shapes look all the same to me. When I reach him I rush up to touch him and greet him. I hope he knows that sometimes, when the air stirs around him and caresses his cheek, it is a touch of love and it's just for him. However I will never be able tell, so I don't think he will ever find out.