It started as a scattered form - guided by a power. Something that controlled it. A command, but one which had never left the lips of another. It never knew where this first feeling came from. The first word.

  Chase.

  What commanded it to do this had no name. At least, not one it had heard of - after it had learned to do such a thing.

  But this skill came much later, thousands of years that it could not count exactly. The ability to count came after the ability to hear after all. Unlike the thousands it had taken to hear, this skill came after hundreds.

  But still, even as it learned, the powerful sensation still drove it. It loved to chase the grass, to pick up beautiful colourful leaves and follow them. It loved to chase the powerful storms in the sky, and rest in the sails of ships.

  To chase was to be for The Wind. That is what it was called by the people. They said it in strange ways, but all phrases meant the same thing.

  It loved the name, a sweet gesture. But the Wind felt no ties beyond this. It did not know how to feel indebted.

  It was wild, chaotic, free and…

  Curious.

  It knew the sounds around it, ‘languages’ of the tongue, tooth, rock and sky. But it could not speak. It could not laugh when it tousled a child’s hair into a lollipop, nor cheer with the sailors as it guided them through great storms.

  First, it tried to blow as strongly as it could to turn its howls to words. But this frightened people, they sheltered instead of trying to listen.

  So it tried to find its tongue in the tight cracks of wood and stone, bent at special angles that could pull a whine and a hum. But they were finicky and sparse. It could not find the angles all at once to make words that would be listened to.

  The wind found a new feeling in its journey.

  Frustration.

  For some time it ripped important letters from hands, blew against sailing ships, and fed fires. Moreso, than it had done without intent for the last thousand years.

  And then it learned another feeling.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Exhaustion.

  It wandered, blew. Chased with less fervor. To chase became a job. A distraction from the impossible obstacle it had encountered.

  And so it worked for years, wandering from lowland to mountaintop. Until, that fateful day guided it to a golden field.

  The wind liked to draw. It couldn’t quite manage a picture the people could understand, but it found the waves it left in long grass to be a soothing passtime. Within the grass that it drew its pictures in, it brushed past a small person.

  People were difficult to tell from one another. This one had black hair, bent over a paper bird secured by wooden bars and twine. She was winding the string back into a ball after a first failed attempt.

  The people had made pretty little objects that they flew in the air like birds, tethered by a string so it could not quite escape. The wind did not understand this practice. But the little people did it more often than not. They liked it.

  The wind used to like it too. Sometimes it would stay very still until the small people gave up, or tease their pretty little objects up into the air and gust to rip them from their hands.

  But today it was tired.

  It picked it up gently, and held it in the sky for the small girl. She cried with success, throwing a cheering fist in the air. The wind was ready to allow her to take credit as usual. Until she looked up. At it.

  “Thank you wind!”

  It stilled, nearly dropping the bird from the sky.

  A coincidence, as people called these events. It had to be.

  But the next day it saw that same girl. It lifted her bird. And she thanked it once more. She thanked it when it stopped her hair from blowing in her face as she read. She thanked it for guiding the rain clouds to her golden field.

  She spoke to it, and told it stories despite its inability to reply short of a gust and a twirl to tell her it was listening.

  And so, it found joy in its command once more. It chased her. It carried her instruments as she grew, it learned words in leaves that she had painted with letters. It learned to speak. From a single person, now a precious companion.

  The wind hoped it would have many years to spend with her.

  . . .

  But she did not pass like people normally did.

  She screamed, and she wailed. The Wind could not kill the flames that touched her, only feed them. And so, so very helpless, it could only linger until she passed.

  The Wind had felt so many, heard so many, but none ever replied. Not like her. While the Wind did not understand its actions, it no longer felt satisfied dancing through the grass and chasing storms.

  The wind was furious, it galed across her grave for seven long hours. It cried the only way it could. The others did not understand why the Wind acted the way it did, not the clouds in the sky, nor the light’s touch, or the rivers that flowed. But how could they? They did not know the girl like the Wind did.

  After its gale, it stilled. It went back to the fields and the canyons. It continued to be the whisper in the trees.

  The girl had returned.

  And this time, the Wind would never let her go.