the Wind Dancer

The cloud knew of love. It had fuelled her to live through the death of her father, the estrangement of her mother, the resentment of her sister. It had supported her when everything else tried to tear her down. It's memory had led her on a path to healing, where she could spread its warmth to others and see its effects first hand. Cirrus knew well of love, and how she hated it.

The girl did not feel love anymore. No passions that invoked feelings of happiness and euphoria existed within her; she probably wouldn't recognise them if they did, anyway. How long had it been? How much time had passed to make sure her stormy exterior was so adept at repelling even the notion of it?

Cirrus knew.

How could one love when one's own soul was missing?

The cloud wondered often how obvious it was. Did others stare at her with pity in their eyes, or was it her imagination, her paranoia? Surely they would be able to see, just as the sun rises and falls at night, the way the soul of this weather-borne girl is incomplete, broken, fractured and impossible to repair? Her feathers prickled, standing on their ends at the thought of being so exposed to the world, exposed and flaunted for all her imperfections and flaws, her failings as a companion to such a noble and cherished soul.

Though she had found herself a home in the desert sands of the south once more, nothing could fill the emptiness inside, nothing would ever replace the vacant space left behind from her beloved's departure. Nothing compared to the impossibly intimate, intricate way in which they had twined together, supporting each other through hardships and simultaneously enjoying the thrills that life had to offer them. They had been partners, bonded forevermore, a spell broken only by-


-death.

And with that death, those intricate twinings had shattered. But death could not differentiate between the intricate design of their souls, and so as it extracted her beloved's, it had taken some of hers along with it.

How does one heal a soul?

The girl travelled by foot, sometimes walking, sometimes running, but always moving, always keeping her heart pumped, her blood fuelled by the oxygen her lungs pulled in from the atmosphere, her mind kept busy while she absorbed the surroundings and dominated them. For it was the only way in which she could imitate the bond, the love she had once known. The racing heart, the thrilling chases, the highs and lows of it all; though the rush she felt now was a rush of endorphins and adrenalin, it was enough to sate her desire to imitate the past, to replace that which was lost, to cling to the memories and at the same time, hate herself for doing it all.

And that is how the little cloud came to be dancing across the grove, a warrior's ballet, a dancer's deadly duel that required no partner, except that of her own lonely misery.

@[Kaj]

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