The Wind

I don't know if I have ever shown this one to anyone before (mostly I show them to David, ask him about some of my other works). the prompt for this was an old Indian saying about traviling with the wind at your back and rainbows on your shoulder.


With the wind at your back you can reach places you could have never imagined. This was the principal that Jeff lived his life by. He traveled wherever the wind felt like taking him. He would never fight it, couldn’t bring himself to go agenst it or to even try to use it like most people did. All he could do is to trust it and remember that the wind knows best.

When he was a little child he would stand on the small cliffs near the beach by his house. There the wind blew inland and brought the smell of the ocean all the way to his bedroom window. He would stand facing the wind, trying to see where the wind came from. It would ring in his ears with a loud slight whistle as it rushed past. On day, while flying a kite on the cliffs he sat there envying the toy. Why should it get to play in the wind and he had to stay on the ground? He tied the kite to a nearby fence and lied on the ground to watch as the wind pushed the clouds by. How he longed to be up there with the clouds. Not like the birds who used their wings to fly, but like the clouds, ready to go wherever the wind saw fit to take them. He closed his eyes and pretended he was a cloud, being blown by the wind to the plains further in past the beach. There they would rain and bring life to the plants, and joy to the hearts of the people there. What a thought he had then, a cloud is just a cloud ready to help those who needed the rain it brought. But the clouds could not get there on their own; they relied on the wind to take them there to help. He stood up with his eyes still closed and turned his back to the wind. How he wished to be like the clouds and travel with the wind. He could feel it rushing past him, smell it in his nose, and he could hear it whistling in his ears. With the wind at his back there was no echo inside his ears, no pounding of air as it bounced of him. He imagined he was a cloud now and that the wind went right through him. The whistling in his ears grew louder and he thought he could hear a tune. He brought his arms up into the air and turned his hands over in the wind. “I trust you” he thought. “I trust you like the clouds trust you.”

All of a sudden the whistling became singing and for the first time in his life, Jeff heard the voice of the wind. It was a beautiful tune full of hope and joy. The wind was singing to the clouds as they pushed them along. Jeff heard the words that the wind sang and wished that they were for him, he wanted to be a cloud so badly. Then he realized that he no longer felt the wind on his body. It was still there but instead of moving past him it was moving through him. All of a sudden it became very strong, as if it had turned to face only him. Then it happened; Jeff clearly heard a word come across the wind. “Jump”. He did. It was just a small vertical hop, and he returned to the ground in a fraction of a second. He felt solid again and opened his eyes to look around. To his amazement he was no longer on the small cliff where he had left his kite tied up. He was in the field between the beach and his house. He turned to see the cliff behind him and the kite still in the air with its line tied to the fence. The wind had taken him here, all the way to the field in a little jump. He had been carried like a cloud. He could hardly believe it. He started to laugh and turn about in the wind. Whenever he turned and his back hit the wind he could hear the song ringing in his ears. He began to slow his turns and eventually stopped with his back towards the wind listing to the song that it sang.

That night he slept with his window open and was sung to sleep by his new friend.

Jeff grew and listened to the wind that blew from the ocean. It had different songs and he learned every one. He would sing along with the cloud song, he would dance to the rhythm of the song for the summer rain, and he would let the wind sing him to sleep with it’s soft evening breeze. When the storms would come, he stayed up in his room crying to the sad song of the storm. When he was alone he would practice becoming a cloud, that’s what he called it. He would stand very still and let the air pass through him. Sometimes he would here the words come across to him in the wind. “Jump.” On occasion he would here “Step”. Each time it would take him a little further, and each time he would jump higher or step further. Once he was out in a boat by himself listing to the wind when it told him “Dive”. He almost did it, but wasn’t sure how far from the boat he would end up.

When the wind would go away Jeff was always sad. He would go out to the small cliff where he first heard the wind and sing the songs it taught him. When Jeff was thirteen there was a drought surrounding the area where he lived. Near the beach they were all right but no rain came and the wind stopped for 18 days. Jeff was starting to wonder if it was ever going to come back when a rainstorm blowing inland to end the drought hit them. He ran out into the storm, up to the cliff where he liked to listen, and called to the wind.

“Where did you go?” he called. “Why did you leave us for so long?” he continued to call out to the wind with anger, not stopping to listen to the song. He faced the wind head on not wanting to listen or enjoy the much-needed rain. After a few minutes he stopped and sat on the ground, brooding in his frustration. Not wanting to admit that he had missed the music of the wind, he refused to listen to it at first. But his ears had become used to the sounds and before long he unable to resist. To his suprise there was not the one voice singing that he was used to, but a new voice singing a duet with his familiar wind. They sang of a land far to the east that was very hard to live in. the mountains surrounding this land had kept the rain from coming to this land from some time, so the wind there had asked for help. Jeff’s wind had agreed to move it’s clouds and help push them over the mountains to save this land. Now the wind had returned to bring rain back to the land with the help of the wind from the east.

Jeff sat on the ground crying. He felt horrible for the things he had said to the wind. He had always trusted it before and now, when it was gone for such a short time, he had turned on it. “I’m sorry.” He said. “I didn’t know.”

Slowly from across the ocean came the words, “it’s all right”. Jeff was stunned, the wind answered him. It actually spoke back to him for the first time. He called out in amazement, felling slightly stupid for asking the question; “you can talk?” he was even more surprised to hear the answer. “Yes but not now. We have work to do”. And with that the wind returned to singing. Jeff sat on the cliff in wonder until his mother made him come inside.

“The wind can talk,” he kept saying under his breath. “The wind can talk”, all the way to bed. He lied under his covers listing to the duet push the storm through to the dry areas inland. He liked this new voice and wondered where exactly it came from. Then it struck him and the sentence under his breath changed. “There are other winds”. That was the night he decided to travel.