Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Wind ❯ Part 1 ( Chapter 1 )

Just improved the story a little bit- added a few lines, descriptions etc. and I also spelt `somnambulist' wrong :S Bad Sinead! And I decided to break the story into two parts.

 

The winter was so much colder that year, the days shorter. I almost believed the mournful lullaby of the rain would never cease. The darkness is always thick in the mountains. A solid, dense cloud of black- an inky desolation in which your limbs are dyed in and your bearing lost. Every night I would sit quietly and stare into that darkness, thinking of the distant spring that seemed impossible. Thinking of trivial little things like the slap and drip of the cold, heavy rain.

 

I was seventeen at that time- an age on the brink of life. Old enough to know a few features of the world, little gems of unexpected wisdom, and still young enough to remain unaware of the brief, deep plunge of mortality. My mother named me Renael. That and my life was all she could give me. Now she glides about the house with a somnambulist's distant, surreal deliberation. Widow's black cloisters her jaded, magnificent form like the dark, heavy wings of a bat.

 

An older brother also lives with me among the detached silences of our mother and the rich otherness of the mountain. A frowning, solemn boy with dark, heavy eyebrows and a hooked nose. I always thought of him as an eagle when I was young enough to still believe in fairies. Perhaps it was the brooding intensity that filled him like a bloated vessel, or the sharp scrutiny he always gave me, as if he were about to pluck me from the cold earth and drag me across the vast hollowness of the sky.

 

I always loved the breathless little pocket of unease that would fill me when his dark gaze fell my way.

 

There is another here. I call him the Wind because he moves about the earth with the same restless eagerness. Ever since a child, I have found pleasure in seeing people connected to nature in some ways, invisible threads connecting them to the dark, churning earth below our feet. That to which we return in the end. So, to me, he is the Wind.

 

He laughed when I first shouted this at him, his face lighting up with the indomitable laughter that is always present in his features, hiding beneath the surface: watching and smiling at me.

 

Wind likes to roam. He likes the free sense of the word and the exhilarating, sage emotions it lends him. But, like the wind, I can never quite capture. He trickles elusively through my fingers every few months, disappearing off down the mountains, through the dense, quiet forests, to the cities at world's heart. When the wind once more blows my way, he returns.

 

I tried to keep him once or twice, but he seemed to shrink and grow jaded, like a little creature that lay trapped within a cage. So I let him run free. Allowed him to be the wind. But still, like the tide rolling in each day, he always returns.

 

Yet this time it is different. Before I had always kept him by amusing him. It was a game: the longer I am able to make him laugh and smile for me, the longer he shall stay. This time I see the profound, dark emotions that stir upon seeing me, a predator rousing from sleep. I see the drunken, lazy smile that adorns his features with the laughter when I snare his gaze.

 

I would not know the world without his presence. For, like the soil and the sky and the rising of the sun each morning, he has always been here- an inexorable part of nature, despite being merely a scatter of years older than myself.

 

His own mother named him Jeni and disappeared from his life like the sun on a clouded day. And he told me once that he wanders to find a small part of himself, perhaps trapped inside the unknown identity of his father or under the earth of some distant fantasy country. I replied by telling him that all he needs to know about himself is here, in the mountains- with me.

 

Perhaps soon I will soothe the restless feet of the Wind.

 

Now I sit and watch the harsh reality of the winter: see a bird's wings flounder beneath the fat drops of rain. Wind says the weather is keeping him from his travels, that the spring will herald his departure.

 

He kissed me last night.

 

It was brief and torrid and brimming with restrained emotions. His hand upon the smooth nape of my neck was more of a brand than mere skin. Within that fleeting touch I knew every joy and sorrow and nuance of his tissue, soul colliding with soul in an effortless dance of primitive abandon. Even now, as I watch the rain, I relive the damp smell of the porch and the dark, loud presence of the night and the tickle of his downy hair against my cheek.

 

Romance is not a word known to me amidst the lonely world of the mountains. But if there is such a thing as love, than I suppose he would be the only person I would ever share it with. I wonder where he is, thinking with an embarrassed, fervent desire that I want another kiss. Mother traces the curving whorls of the floorboards with a single, starved finger and brother hides within the words and ideas of his books.

 

Wind must be out on the porch, with the rise of the wind a constant reminder for departure.

 

……….

 

That night, I hear the doleful groan of the door in the silence of my room, the whisper of bare feet against the wooden boards, the passing air between Wind's lips. He momentarily traces the outline of my body under the heavy blanket, before curling his fingers in the hair at the base of my neck.

 

“You could come with me, you know.” He murmurs.

“Or I could stay here,” I return.

His breathing issues out, low and deep, for the space of a few moments.

“Why won't you come?” He whispers, emotion shivering along every word.

“I have no part in your search for identity- you're the Wind, not me.”

“We could be the Wind together.” Said with low entreaty.

 

I sigh. He moves towards me. We meet in the darkness, fingertips searching desperately in the inky blackness of the mountains. Like the eager traveller he is, his hand moves up my arm to a shoulder, then sideways to a collarbone. My heart beats out a halting, jerky staccato in the silence.

 

“Light a candle.” He murmurs, hand warm against the vulnerable expanse of bare flesh.

“Why?” I whisper, aware of the darkness that hides my blush like a friend, aware of the silent presences of my family in other rooms, terribly aware of the skin against my own. The bare possibilities branching out from the slight touch of his hand.

“I want to be able to see you.” He had always had an obsession with my eyes, delighting in the ambiguous colours that altered with my emotions.

 

I fumbled for a match.

 

It hissed upon being struck and the darkness jumped back at the sudden, flickering luminance, retreating moodily to the corners. Steadily, I touched the match to the candle.

 

“I can see your eyes now.” He smiles, tilting my head towards him. I, in turn, can see the graceful fall of his black hair, like dark silk, and the laughing expression of his brown eyes. Hidden behind them is the threat of the predator. “They're blue today.” He finishes the sentence heavily, moving towards me with the deliberate, languorous actions of a dangerous feline.

 

I lie back on the bed and search desperately for cooling thoughts to calm the burning sensations running up my skin. Wind is closer now, fingers travelling down from my collarbones- exploring new territory. I hiss in my breath sharply when the nightgown comes away, eyes shifting to turquoise when he gently lowers himself to me. The meeting of our bare skin brings the possibilities in, thickening the air.

 

I swim within the sea of desires, unable to breath under the dance of his hands and the press of his body. Then, suddenly, I breach the surface of the water, as the world spirals in a suffocating climax.

 

“Will you come with me now?” He whispers some time afterwards, voice calm and relaxed.

“Will you stay here now?” I answer back, shifting against his side.

“You know I can't.” He murmurs, playing with the pale strands of my hair.

“Well, I can't leave.” I say, voice thickening with emotion. Yet, the thought of his departure, of his leave-taking that will inevitably come about, darkens my thoughts. His figure moving away from me is painted across my vision: calling, calling, taunting.

 

I reach out slender fingers to grasp his wrist, the bones of my knuckles bleached white against the skin. “Couldn't we stay, just for a little while? Afterwards I'll go with you.” I whisper.

 

He sighs and murmurs something like an acquisition.

 

I swim within the ocean of my desires several times that night.

 

……….

 

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