West Wind and East Wind, children of the sky. One from above, one from below; a clash and a thrash and tied in a bow.
They were good, obedient children all day and all night, except on one little topic.
West Wind and East Wind, bickering all day. Never giving ground, each in other’s way.
Oh how those two fought and fumed. No sidling, no idling, no taking turns, just WEST or EAST with no backing down!
West Wind and East Wind, whistling through the glens. Ruffle through a tent’s walls, that’s where it begins.
The tent walls belonged to an old man, and this was their first mistake, because it is generally considered unwise to offend or trouble those who have had more planning time than you’ve had birthdays. “Hey!” he shouted up at them. “Who did that?”
The two winds paused for a moment on either side of the meadow. Because they were not bad children, they felt sorry. Because they were children, they looked at each other and glared.
“THEY did it!” each shouted, and then oh they were back at it in a flash, whirling and snarling and thundering against each other fit to wake the dead, blow away topsoil, and set the old man’s tentwalls flapping hard enough to give it wings. Which it did.
He watched the tent walls sail away over the trees with sorrow in his lined face, annoyance in his clenched hands, and vengeance in his (surprisingly strong) pulse. “Right,” he said. “That’s time to do things about this.”
So he went to their parent, the sky. It was a short trip.
“Problems down there?” asked the sky.
“Your children are endlessly quarrelling, which is giving us all no end of grief and also they have destroyed my tent.”
“Whoops,” said the sky. “Sorry. Kids will be kids, right?”
“They have kept us all up night after night with their swoosh and swish and wrestling.”
“Ah, I’m sorry,” said the sky. “Whatchagonnado, yes?”
“There’s starting to be Talk going around about your parenting skills.”
The sky bristled, giving people quite a start from here all the way on to there. “They WHAT?” it said in a voice so frosty crops failed three miles away.
“Oh, you know, the usual. Idle young people without enough to do, talking about how you leave your idle young people without enough to do. Nonsense! Chatterfluff! But it’s happening, and it’s happened, and it’s not stopping. Best fix that.”
So the sky yanked itself off its hinges and stood up and stomped on down to the glade and it glared at the two winds fit to give them hives of embarrassment which they acquired immediately.
“YOU!” shouted the sky.
“Yes?” said the winds meekly.
“YOU!” exclaimed the sky.
“…yes?” mumbled the winds feebly.
“YOU?” expounded the sky.
“What is it, parent?” asked the winds, somewhat confused.
The sky scratched its head and tried to wrap its head around this question. It didn’t get up very often, and the blood rushing from its head was a very strange and disconcerting experience. And seeing the ground from this angle was making it woozy.
“Be good. Or something,” it said somewhat lamely. Then it stomped off and lay down again, and no amount of fuss from the old man could rouse it from its snores. All that walking took a lot out of a body, even one made of blue and air.
The winds looked at each other in chufty disagreement.
“You heard the sky,” the West Wind said. “You must be good.”
“You mean YOU must be good,” said the East Wind.
“You mean YOU” and so on and before long the glen rustled with the gusts and gales of wrestling winds once more.
The old man’s hat blew off his head. That was surely the final final straw. His wife had told him it had granted him a rakish character. Without it he just looked like a character. Nobody takes those seriously, as he had found throughout much of his younger years.
But he still had plans. Big plans. So he made a big cone of his hands and put it to his big mouth and let out a big holler.
“Hey up there!” he hollered.
“Hello down there,” said the clouds in a breezy, pleasant sort of voice.
“Nice weather, huh?!” bellowed the old man.
“Sure is,” said the clouds contentedly. “Feels good to give it, too. Better to gift than to receive, our mother ocean always said.”
“You could give a mightful gift of peace and quiet to everybody right now, and also my lost hat, if you would do a favour and go and tell those two winds off, over yonder in the glen!” the old man shouted.
“Mmm,” said the clouds, in a polite way. “Well, we could… but I’m not sure if they’ll listen. They’re awfully noisy young things, and we don’t know if it’s our place, and besides it’s only Tuesday, and…”
“Just do it!” screamed the old man. “Go on!”
“Oh alright,” murmured the clouds sadly, and they slid sideways through the air (discretely, and apologizing to it for the trouble) until they hovered over the glen, which was still filled with thrashing air and cursing. The clouds practically turned sunset-pink at the language, which was not at all fit for ears.
“We beg your pardon,” the clouds said, “bu-”
“Your head in a platypus’s belly!” shouted the East Wind.
“Your face on a rhinoceros’s rump!” snarled the West Wind.
The clouds cleared their throat and tried again. “We’re sorry to interrupt, but if it’s at all possi-”
“A weasel’s guts and your brain!”
“Defecation in your eye!”
The clouds were now almost fluorescent, but they made one last heroic effort. “Would you both PLEASE stop-”
“Brown bear’s anus! You!”
“Copulation! Sideways!”
The clouds stiffened their spine, hardened their resolve, and fled without dignity.
“What was THAT then, eh?!” yelled the old man at the clouds. But they only apologized at him, and he took his leave with much muttering and griping.
After THAT the old man’s pants blew away, and this was the final final FINAL straw for good, seeing as the old man’s skinny chicken legs now did not even belong to him but rather to anybody passing by in possession of working eyeballs and a reasonable amount of bad luck. He sat and he grumped and he didn’t cry because he was a big boy, but his not crying made such an awful fuss that an old woman slipped out from under a corner of the sky (which was snoring) to check on him.
“Boy,” said the old woman (who was his wife) to him. “Don’t you remember anything about all the things I said to you?” You’ve screwed up good here, my love.”
“I know, I know, I know,” muttered the old man (who was her husband). “But they blew away my hat and my tent and now my pants. I have nothing left, not even dignity.”
“Aw, nothing of value lost anyways,” said the old woman. “Come on, use that little brain of yours, husband-mine. What’d I always tell you?”
The old man’s brows knit. There was a lot of brow; you could’ve made a sweater with their output. “It takes more muscles to frown than to smile?”
“Naw, the other one.”
“A watched pot never boils?”
“Warmer. But no.”
“A kind word gets more done than a harsh one.”
“Yeah! That one! Now get ‘er done smart guy, that’s my lad.”
The old man nodded and gave the old woman a kiss on the cheek. They both blushed a little, and then she went back under the sky where all the dead people went.
“Right,” said the old man. He straightened a hat that wasn’t there and hiked up pants that weren’t there and he put on some real and very solid determination. “I’ll do this now.”
So he walked up to the clouds and whistled them down again.
“Hello,” they said.
“Hey,” said the old man. “Listen, I’ve got a message for you. It’s from the sky. It says it’s awful tired and sore after all that running around it did today, and would you mind giving it a nice soft place to sleep for tonight?”
The clouds puffed to themselves. “Oh! Oh yes indeed! Sure! The poor sky. We’ll help it out, no fear. Thank you.”
“All good,” said the old man. Then he strolled away nonchalantly and the moment he was under tree cover he ran like mad because clouds travel slow but so do old men.
Next up he walked down to the loose corner of sky that the old woman had slipped through, and he picked at it until the sky snorted itself awake.
“Ow,” it complained. “That stings.”
“Hush up,” said the old man. “I’ve got news for you. The clouds are all tired tonight, you see? Your Winds are keeping them up all day and all night, and they just want a place to have a nice nap. Do you think you could give them a nice place to sleep tonight, where there’s no fuss?”
“Oh, the poor clouds,” said the sky sympathetically. “Nothing worse than to be tired, and woken up all the time. If you know what I mean. Yes, of course I can help them.”
So that evening the sky comforted the clouds, and the clouds comforted the sky, and everybody else sort of coughed and looked the other way and hummed to themselves a lot. And in the morning down in the glen, as West Wind and East Wind paused in their labours, both of them felt a shove.
“Was that you?” asked East Wind.
“No, it was you,” said West Wind.
A shove, a shove, a shove shove shove, and West Wind was spinning and East Wind was twirling, all out of direction, gridlocks broken.
“It was us!” sang a happy fresh voice.
“It was me!” added another, proudly.
“And who’re you?” asked the two winds, confused – and a little happy – as they were blown all off course and away from each other, already starting to slide over distant lands and far-off horizons.
“South Wind!”
“North Wind!”
“Oh no,” the two older winds groaned, “more siblings!” And they grumped and complained and whined but they were basically alright with this because they were already seeing so many new places, and it had got awful boring wrestling with each other in that glen. Besides, the new winds were so very young it was hard to stay angry with them, or with their far-away sibling. Not with so much new to say and do.
All in all, it was a good day for most people. The winds explored. The sky and clouds snuggled together, beaming quietly. And the old man retrieved his tent and hat with the aid of a fine stick.
His pants took some doing, though.