Four Winds
by Merka
Four Winds
by Merka
Tianee waited on the rocks, crouched down and balanced on the balls of his feet in the shade. Every so often, the wind would blow sand at him and over the faded black leather of his boots and throw the curls of his black hair against his face, but he paid that wind no mind.
It was the wrong one.
The dunes were before him and behind, broken only now and again by the jutting fingers of black rocks breaking through the sand. This was the highest point in an enchanted desert, and Tianee was waiting for the West Wind.
The East came first, hissing her voice in his ear; she had come and gone an hour past and twisted her fingers in his hair and his clothes, caressed the bare skin of his neck and pressed the cloth he wore against his legs. She promised him many things, lust and power, surrender and wealth, whispering promises and hinting at her form out of the corner of his eyes (a beautiful woman, her hair black and long as a woman's ought to be, her eyes dark and shining and skin smooth and brown...), but Tianee had shaken his head and paid her no mind.
The magicians of his enemies called on the East Wind. She was a trickster and a liar, and he wanted no trade with her. He turned his head aside from the kisses she tried to give and then she howled, throwing sand and cloud at him, threatening a storm.
Not until Tianee opened one of the small bags of sand from his home and threw it back at her did the East Wind go, stung by the strange smell of salt from the sea-sands and hurt by the sea-magic in it. She had cursed him as she went; he made a warding Sign in the air and spoke one of the lesser names of God to protect against her ill-will. She was only a Wind; he had greater magic.
This one now was the South Wind, a young Wind, and as much as he tried to ignore it Tianee failed. It was less like the East Wind's insistent, intrusive caress than it was like a small child tugging at the edge of his tunic until he paid attention.
"What do you want?" he finally snapped, impatient.
The South Wind formed himself into a boy sitting on the rocks, a pretty child with wide eyes and hair almost as curled as Tianee's own. "She's going to be insufferable for weeks, you know," he said cheerfully, crossing his legs, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. "Why did you have to go and upset her?"
"She's not who I'm waiting for," Tianee replied. His feet were beginning to go numb, so he gave in and sat down on the sand, leaning his back against one of the lower rocks and facing the boy.
"She liked you," the South Wind said, and Tianee thought he could hear some faint accusation in his voice.
"I didn't like her," he countered, letting his hand rest on one of the other packets of sand from his sea-side home, reminding the South Wind that Tianee could drive him away, as well.
The South Wind canted his head to the side. "She's a Wind," he said, sounding less childish now and more aggrieved. "You seafolk. You're so choosy."
"She's a Wind, but she's the wrong one," Tianee replied. He ran his fingers through his hair and then stopped, catching sight of his hand and putting it down and sighing. "I'm not here for the East Wind, or for you. I don't like children, South Wind; you're tempting the wrong person."
The South Wind looked offended, an expression that was strange on his childish face. "I'm not trying to tempt you," he snapped, and Tianee snorted.
"Then go away and leave me be," he told the Wind. "I am not here for your sister and I am not here for you. Seafolk are, as you say, choosy. We don't want just any Wind. We want the right Wind. And that, little one, is not you."
After a pause, the South Wind got to his feet, looking more offended than before. "Very well," he said. "Hope that we don't meet again, seafolk; there are other places where I am not so little as I am here."
When Tianee didn't reply, the South Wind faded a little and then a little more, his body dispersing as he let himself go.
He won't come, you know, the Wind whispered in Tianee's ear just as it dispersed entirely and let the air fall dead.
"That's up to him, though, isn't it?" Tianee countered, and the South Wind did not answer and for a time, the desert was still and quiet as the grave.
* * *
The sun was nearly setting before the wind picked up again, brief swirling flurries of cooler, harsher air ringing with laughter and the smell of snow from the mountains.
Tianee stood to bow to the North Wind, because whatever else he was, fool he was not, and disrespect to the First of All Winds would be foolish indeed.
She was tall and her hair was white; her face was lined and her eyes were blue and she was dressed all in a white robe. She laughed at him again as he bowed and straightened and waited until he gathered the courage to look her in the eyes before she spoke.
"You've insulted two of my siblings while chasing another," she said, her voice a ringing, challenging bell over the sands and the rocks around her. "And yet you bow to me?"
Tianee shook his head. "You and I have never quarrelled, North Wind; you have ever been my ally and ever has there been accord between us. You do not come before me as a temptress or temptation-in-innocence and you are the Eldest and First of All Winds; why would I not bow to you?"
"A temptress would have little effect on you, man of the sea," the North Wind said bluntly, with a smile on her face. "And you left innocence behind a very long time ago. Your hands are marked now and your eyes have near as many lines as mine."
"It's been many years, lady Wind," Tianee replied.
"And now you come looking," the North Wind prodded him, folding her arms beneath her white robe. Tianee felt that he should look down and be abashed, but he did not. Instead, he only nodded.
"Now I come looking. It has been a long time, yes, lady Wind, but I come looking now, as choosy as ever the seafolk were, searching the right Wind."
The North Wind laughed and said, "And I am not the right Wind. You are a hard prize to win, Tianee Sea-Son." And then she stepped to him and kissed his forehead and before he could respond she was gone, the breezes of her passing not even enough to unsettle the hair on his head.
And then there was nothing.
For a long while, nothing.
Tianee sat once more, the sand dyeing the black leather of his boots a dusty grey and the still air making the heat only more intense. The sun began to set, creeping its way towards the dunes below.
It glinted off the rings on his hands - this from a captain, that from a lord, that from his King, gifts and promises that sat on hands scarred by work and play and war and the rough, violent salt of the sea. They had been smooth and young; it seemed not so long ago.
So too had been his face and the skin beside his eyes, and once upon a time there had been no threads of white shimmering in the black of his hair. Not so, now. Not so at all.
With his hands resting on his legs and the sun falling faster towards the earth, Tianee waited for the right Wind.
The sun was only a small disc on the horizon when that Wind came. First a breath and then a gust, throwing up the sand and forcing Tianee to shield his eyes and look away until it settled again.
When he let fall his hand, the West Wind was there.
He sat on the same rock his southern brother had chosen and he was a Wind, but there the resemblance was gone; his hair was light and his eyes were, as well, and he was a man full grown and beautiful and there was challenge and not guile in his eyes.
And a smile about his mouth. "So," said the West Wind, leaning on one arm on the rock, "three of four you have turned away."
He had not changed, which surprised Tianee much by surprising him little. He was, after all, a Wind. He took the form he chose, and this was his favourite.
Tianee nodded. "I always looked for the right Wind," he said.
He felt, somehow, that he should say more. It had been so long. He felt that he should explain how he had scorned the South Wind, how the East Wind's blatancy had turned his stomach and how he had dared to refuse the North Wind, the First of All Winds and how she had laughed.
He said nothing, instead, and waited. The West Wind stood, shaking back his pale hair, and the challenge never left his eyes as both eyebrows raised, and the Second of All Winds asked, "And? Did you find the right Wind, or are you still waiting, son of the sea?"
The West Wind's eyes were light and light-filled and beautiful and Tianee said, "I think the Wind has found me," and hoped that it was the right thing to say. It had been so long -
When a Wind laughs, truly laughs, the air shimmers with it; where the North Wind had shimmered cold, the West Wind shimmered the light of a sunset and his mouth when he stepped forward to kiss the man before him, it tasted of the sunset as well.
Choosy seafolk, the West Wind whispered and the sun set to leave the desert in twilight.
