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Catching Wind (14) : The winter wind has never been gentle, but this is something else entirely. Snow whips around you with sudden force, rushing in sharp bursts that feel less like weather and more like someone. Sometimes it's strong enough to feel like a person is colliding with you--brushing past your shoulder, nudging your back, grabbing your wrist or ankles--or even wrapping around you entirely, like unseen arms. Sometimes it’s only a light, fleeting touch--maybe even comforting, but most of the time the gusts feel insistent, intrusive, even aggressive, as though the wind itself is following you with purpose. No matter how many times you look, no one is ever there, just the swirling snow and the unsettling sense that something unseen is trying to get your attention...for better, or worse.
It was the strange time between Christmas and New Years when everything kind of stills and breaths. No one is really out scrambling at the stores any more, people are still spending time with their families, and the festive lights in the city brighten everything. If it wasn’t so cold and snowy Abby would have thought it would be the perfect time for a stroll through a park with a beloved but the chill nipped at her nose and wheeled its way beneath her coat. She didn’t want to remain outside for any longer than she needed to. She wouldn’t have even gone out but they had run out of several ingredients for dinner and while her father had offered to go, he was also in the middle of working on a screenplay, so she had assured him she could take care of it. Besides he wasn’t as picky when it came to ingredients as she was. By the time she was on her way back home the wind had picked up. She stepped off the bus and instantly tugged her coat closer. What had been a chilly breeze ever so often, maybe a gust here or there, became a gale. A bitterly cold, screaming, blare of winter’s power
It whipped around her, tugging at the hat pulled low on her head. Pushing her to move faster. It was almost like there was someone there urging her to move faster. Telling her to pick up her feet and move! At first Abby just hunched her shoulder, tucked the reusable grocery bag tighter against her side, and continued on but the feeling of urgency, the pushing of the wind, was followed by the very real feeling of someone shoving her. The young woman stumbled forward a bit before whipping around, ready to scold whoever thought pushing her was a good idea, only to see that she was completely alone. There was no one on her street. Just the twinkling lights of the houses and a dog barking some streets over.
Confused and cold, Abby turned back around and continued on her way. This time when the push happened she was ready for it but the result still turned out the same way. There wasn’t anyone there. She was still just as alone as she had been. Just her and the swirling snow. A push here, a tug there. A brush of an unseen hand leading her forward. There was something behind the cold wind urging her forward. An urgency that had her speeding up, if only to get out of the biting wind. Abby was also getting rather tired of being manhandled by nature.
She turned the corner onto her cul-de-sac only to stare in shock and growing horror, the wind whipping around her completely forgotten. One of the trees outside of a neighbor that had been wrapped in lights was now burning. Happily and cheerily. Just a yard or two from the very flammable house right behind it… The young woman didn’t even hesitate. She dropped her bag and raced towards the neighbor’s door, banging on it and yelling ‘FIRE’.
Soon the fire department had arrived, the tree was out, the electrical short that had caused the fire had been cut. The fire had been a near miss apparently. Abby had completely forgotten her groceries, and the odd urgency behind the wind. And yet the gentle little brush against her cheek had her wondering if maybe there had been something in the way the winter wind had urged her forward faster.
