The Windstorm

The Windstorm
By Faith D.

Has it always been that way?

I have always remembered it being so, after the dust settled and the first signs of life poked their heads out of the rubble of ruin and disaster. Like saplings emerging anew from the earth’s life force, they came, covered in ashen debris and clouds of inhaled dust puffing out of their noses and mouths once they emerged for the freshness of air. The likeliness that the air, for that matter that it was fresh, was doubtful at minimum.

These were the survivors of the Day, the Long Windstorm which bought us to our knees: once brave and proud, now reduced to quivering shaking shells of humanity. Was it the blinding gray-blue light at the glass and electric panels snapped and burst into bright flames and sparks flew into the air? Or perhaps that screech which filled the ears of every person, rattling them to their central core? So loud it was, that wires snapped and the hearts of both man, beast and machine shook and stopped at moments. Entire city buildings came tumbling down, like bombs being blasted off at their bases of concrete and steel: glass shattered, a rain of clear shards showering the streets. Miles away, trees were blown with a gust that rendered their branches as barren as wives unable to bear a child.

The Nomads, they were called. The ones who managed to escape unharmed by the Day; traveling away, in a sense, from the carnage that it caused. Not truly travelers, but those who were not ill prepared like most of known civilization. Some say they were well-off and prepped correctly. Others say, in silent whispers, they were not entirely human from the lack of damage done to them: no more than a speck of ash or streak of grime upon otherwise perfect skin. Rarely, a gouge in the skin or bruises on their arms, legs and anywhere else upon the body was seen on them.

Escaping on steam and solar energies, their devices of travel being small personal sized airships, they suddenly disappeared several days prior to the incident. Perhaps they knew knowledge which the masses did not. Foresight or being well informed? Clairvoyance or a secret knowledge?  It matters not, for they were the ones to come back to the aid of the less fortunate ones before, just as quickly as the Windstorm happened, they disappeared once more in their strange devices: drifting away in the skies above, on unseen currents ferrying them to an unknown destination.

They, the Nomads, left not a trace of their coming and going before going back into silent recluse and isolation, save for the vapor trails coming from their ships. Occasionally, one may see their dirigibles in the highest part of the atmosphere but they, even then, refuse to make no contact with those below.

Now, many a year after the Day, they are all but forgotten for the most part. The ones who survived the desolation during the Windstorm, their children are alive but they themselves have joined the others in the grave. Life has returned to a relative calm after the event, dubbed a product of modern technological faults and errors.

But still, there is something oddly divine about it: the flash and bang, the eruption of sparks across the urban sprawl reminiscent of some god or deity’s wrath upon the mortal plain of existence. Some still contemplate that the Nomads will come back one day, their return either a sign of the end of times known or the start of a new beginning.

And they will bring with them their flying machines, the sound of propellers in the wind and the whirring of cogs and gears. The colors of their cloaks and hair, in wild disarray, like a psychedelic rainbow flock of birds: the chanting of their voices in a tongue unspoken but only amongst them.  Clouds of steam will swirl and dance around them, with fluid grace when the following Night falls heavy-bodied after the Day. For, of course, one leads to another, a beginning, a middle, and of course an End.