The Woman Who Knew the Wind

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They say there are winds that bring not weather, but stories. They blow through streets where listening has long been forgotten, carrying scents of distant shores, voices that have never spoken, and sometimes, when they sing in old chimneys, it sounds as if someone who is no longer there is laughing. In the town of Harrenfall, where the roofs shifted like gray waves, there was a woman known who could follow these winds. Her name was Seraphine Vale. No one knew where she came from. She appeared one morning, shortly after a storm had ravaged half the town. In her hand she held a black silk umbrella, old and tattered, but when she opened it, it glittered like the night itself. Her clothes were the color of the rain, and her eyes reflected the clouds. It was said that she had thunder in her blood and the direction of the wind in her heart. Seraphine lived in a narrow attic room above the bakery on Lantern Street. From there, she could see the whole city—a sea of chimneys, crows, and smoke. The neighbors thought she was eccentric, but the children loved her. She knew stories made entirely of wind and could flick fog into shapes with a snap of her fingers: ships, kites, sometimes entire cities made of air. When the sun set, the children would climb up to her, and she would make them dance in the twilight as the first drops of rain fell on the rooftops. But Seraphine wasn't a sorceress, just someone who understood whispers. She knew that wind was memory—everything people had ever said, felt, or failed to do drifted somewhere in the air. And sometimes, when she opened the window at night, she would hear her name called in the distance. One evening, as a storm was brewing from the west, she sat on the roof and sensed that something was different. The wind was restless, twitching, full of voices calling out in confusion. A child, she heard between the howls, a child lost. Without hesitation, she took the umbrella, stood on the edge of the roof, and waited. When the first lightning flashed, she jumped—not downwards, but into the direction of the wind. It carried her away, up over the rooftops, over the rain-drenched alleys, to a small figure standing in the middle of the street, hands above its head, eyes filled with fear. Seraphine sank down like a shred of night itself, wrapped the child in her cloak, and opened the umbrella over them. The wind obeyed. For a moment, the world held its breath. Then it carried them both up, higher, away from the storm, through the tangle of rain, lightning, and clouds, until the sun touched the horizon. When morning came, the city was silent. The child was found asleep on the steps of its house, wrapped in a blanket of warm mist.