The ash hit the ground.
The memory snowflakes melted.
The wind was a dead tornado, a suffocated breeze, a breathless, tiny, hope-filled wind.
Had it saved them?
It pushed itself up.
The trickster stood in front of both the woman and the musician, blocking them with his jackaltooth bulk. If his legs were broken, he was standing in spite of the snarling pain.
The death illusion had fallen with the wind.
The Bard conjured again. Then, halfway through, his mouth opened in a silent scream.
The horror that the wind’s fire tornado had held at bay careened toward them.
The father threw out his arms. The trickster crouched over his siblings. The wind moaned and wished it could gust and blow and protect.
It couldn’t.
No matter how cunning, how courageous, how loved, the wind couldn’t save them now.
The horror snapped its jaws.
And then, with the suddenness of the sun’s rays breaking through a storm cloud, the horror was speared with a flashing, brilliant, blinding light.
The horror screamed.
The humans covered their eyes. The wind had no eyes to cover.
It watched as the light raced through the horror and lit up every shadowed hole of darkness. Then it trembled with relief and moaned with joy as the solange-eyed one wove golden chains of fire and wrapped them around the horror’s writhing bulk.
It laughed, crying cosmic tears, as the solange-eyed one, his Smiths, and even the citrus and pearl dust scented woman joined together and created a prison beneath the earth to lock the horror in.
The Bard was gone. The cruel one and his sister were gone. The innocent one, the pixie-like one, and the solemn one were gone.
Where were they? Were they dead and gone? Or merely gone?
The horror’s prison gates closed with a thunderous clang. The wind sighed and drifted into a crack in the pavement. It curled in on itself, shuddered, and then wept.
Was it happiness?
Was it grief?
Was it joy?
Was it sorrow?
What did the wind know?
Those were human things. Human emotions. It had made itself just human enough for the boy, and now what could it do?
What could it do?
It stared at the sky, believing for a moment that an airplane was a shooting star.
It sighed. Humans made wishes.
