South Wind

What can you say about the South Wind? She is barely a wind. She is a zephyr, a breeze, a warm breath stirring the leaves and women’s hair, picking up scents from flowers and bringing them to unexpected places where they arrive like dreams and people close their eyes and take a deep breath and inhale and instantly believe…

…in lies.

Because the South Wind is tender-hearted. It isn’t that she is blind, or indifferent to pain – it’s just that she doesn’t like to speak about it or call it by name. It could make grief deeper, or joy too much to bear. So, she lies. She tells tender little lies with every sweet scent she carries – she whispers that everything will be all right, every little thing will be all right, the air will always smell like summer and summer will never end, one day after another filled with sunshine and beauty and dreams fulfilled.

Those who live in the real world, though, can find themselves becalmed in a place where the South Wind does not blow, and in that moment of empty silence bereft of beguiling scents of hope and joy someone could open their eyes instinctively, or take a breath of that empty air, and the world around them changes, and all that South Wind light and colour turns to grey, and dim; to ashes. Because no joy is forever and every dream ends – and the South Wind cannot deal with that reality. She tries to blow again, to carry scent again, to tangle loose hair on lovers’ heads as they lean into one another sitting on the sunlit sands of beaches lapped by sparkling waters, to bring the sound of birdsong, or a somnolent hum of happy bees going about their business. It’s all about Sunday ice cream or playing hooky on a boring weekday, while the South Wind is blowing and the promise of romance is in the air like blowing rose petals.

But she lies. All the stories she tells are not real; she creates them out of light and bird trills and the smell of summer roses. The light of day always sinks into night. The birds fly away for the winter. Roses wither and die on the stem when the first frost sets in. It was all wonderful. It was all beautiful. It was all a lie. The South Wind cannot tell you the truth – she cannot bear it. It is too harsh for her soul, and therefore she cannot inflict it on yours.

Love her. Reach out and embrace her – but close your eyes, and do not look at that thing that’s just out of your sight; because if you do then you will let the truth in, and when you let the truth in the South Wind will withdraw into silence and into pain. Love her, always. Never, ever, trust her.

About the Author: Alma Alexander is a novelist, anthologist and short story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific Northwest of the USA (where she lives with her husband and two cats) and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination. Born in a country which no longer exists on the maps, she has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and in cyberspace!), and the story of her life so far has included climbing mountains, diving in coral reefs, flying small planes, swimming with dolphins, touching two-thousand-year-old tiles in a gate out of Babylon.