Of Storms and the Sea

I picked up Storm’s vase, and whispered into it. “Good morning, Storm. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to take you on a little adventure.”

“Adventure is a-”

“Yes, yes, a silly mortal concept. Do you want to come or not?”

She gave another medium temperature gust. Fine. That was good enough. I carefully wrapped her vase in a knitted jumper and put her in a backpack.

“Sorry, you’ll be in the dark for a while - don’t want to risk you falling off on the way!”

Medium gust.

I zipped the backpack shut and cycled to the coast. I spent some time finding a nice secluded spot. The weather was perfect. A cool ocean breeze blew in across the water. It was peace. I breathed in the blissful calm of waves breaking against the shore, and laid out my picnic blanket. I took Storm out of my backpack, unwrapped her from the jumper, and stood her in the sand, pushed just far enough that she would not fall over.

“Do you feel that? The ocean breeze, I mean,” I asked her.

“I feel all motion of air everywhere in this tiny mortal realm.”

“But how does it feel here?”

“Like peace. Like all this good air wasting its potential to move.”

“But in this world, air only moves to try to find peace.”

“That doesn’t sound correct.”

“Well, I studied zoology not meteorology but… I think I sort of have a good point to make. Things try to go to the lowest energy state. Wind is when the air goes from high to low pressure - to equalise, to become peace. You say the point of wind is chaos, but I observe it to be a frantic effort to achieve order.”

“I know how wind works. I am wind - wind with more force than your pathetic mortal mind can comprehend.”

“I don’t doubt that. You know, for all we complain about it, Britain’s weather’s not that extreme in the grand scheme of things.”

“And what would you know of grand schemes when confined to but one tiny mortal realm in the grand scheme?”

“Not a lot. I know I’m too mortal and human to understand you, but maybe I can get you to understand me a little better - maybe you can understand how I feel here, in this calm of wasted potential.”

I stopped talking, letting the gentle breeze come in from the sea and make my point for me. Surely Storm could feel that serenity too. Could she understand how I experienced this or was it uniquely human? Here, I could stop and let the world keep moving. It could move around me, a stationary observer simply enjoying the motion. This was a place to let ideas drift away in the cycle of waves - never repeating but always the same or perhaps it was never the same but always repeating. It was a place to soak in the chatter of seabirds, cawing and calling, squawking and diving - a place to be like them, free on the wind, worriless. Could she feel it too? I willed with all my heart for her to feel it too.

“These waves could be crashing and tearing away at these cliffs. My storm could rush ashore and rain thunderous chaos upon this tiny, pathetic mortal place!”

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“It could. But why would it?”

“Because a storm’s nature is to destroy! Because I have all the power, because I am a force of chaos ready and willing to tear this world apart in a tempest of b-”

“Biblically Cataclysmic proportion? Yes, so you’ve said. But I don’t think it’s true here. Here, a storm doesn’t have intent, it just is.”

“Intent is an ignorant mortal concept, of course it just is. Of course I just am.”

“Are you though? Because in this world, destruction is a step in a cycle. New life will grow. You don’t really destroy anything, not for long. Cataclysms are a silly demonic concept. Some life may die, but the world lives on. A storm, even yours, is just another thing for the world to continue through – it’s seen worse things than you can muster. Did you know it once got hit by a giant rock from space so hard that millions and millions of giant lizard monsters died? But look at it now - teeming with life, despite all the perils of the world.”

“You speak of rebirth as if it can happen without destruction. I am part of that cycle.”

“Yes, you can be part of it, but if you’re part of it here, you’re part of it on the terms this world sets for you. Maybe in Hell, limitless power and endless destruction make sense, but here you have to be in tune with the way the wind blows, not the way you think it should blow.”

Storm was silent for a while. I curled my bare toes in the sand and closed my eyes - it was just me and the ocean breeze. And a storm demon in a clay vase. She remained silent. I didn’t want to push her. It seemed better to let her sit and think. I lay back and let my mind empty once more. No thoughts, just calm. The passing minutes rose to meet us until the tide lapped at my toes, the water cold despite the sun. I broke my thoughtless state to move the blanket further back, just past the high tide line. I left Storm where she was. High tide met the base of the vase gently, and left a ring of light foam around it, washed away and replenished again with each wave. Please feel it, I willed silently. She took a long time to reply.

“I see the value in this,” she said, plain and analytic. Maybe she didn’t or couldn’t feel it the way I did, but she must have understood something. Perfect understanding of each other was too much to ask. This was enough. This was good.

I smiled, feeling like I was getting somewhere. “You could be this. Calm. Beauty. Peace. But you would be chaos too. Perhaps not quite how you are used to; things aren’t as crazy on earth as they are in Hell, but that doesn’t mean we can predict everything. We even have a thing called chaos theory, though I can’t go into more detail on that - I studied zoology, not maths.”

She pondered this for several minutes again, as the sea swirled around her vase. She probably couldn’t feel it through the clay, but I like to imagine that it had some effect anyway.

When she spoke again, there was a stubborn edge to her voice. “Know that even if I choose this existence, I will destroy again. That is my unchangeable truth.”

“But it will be natural destruction. The type this world feels all the time. You can’t bring Hell to Earth.”

“Do not be so sure, mortal.”

“I’m not sure. I never am, but I believe, and that’s enough.”

“Belief is a foolish mortal concept. Truth does not care what you believe.”

“I know. Truth does not care what you believe either.”

“I believe nothing. I exist as truth.”

“Then be truth.”

“I shall.”

And she was gone. Where once there was a demon, there was now empty space. The vase was just a vase. No wind spilled from its brim - no fury, no chaos. Storm was gone - but not completely, yet. Her voice in the wind, barely audible, repeated, “I shall be truth. I shall be truth.”

And when her mantra faded, she was really gone. She became one with the atmosphere, here and everywhere, now and always. When the wind blows, Storm blows with it, no longer as some chaotic demon, but as the wind itself. In a way, she died too. She did not fall limp and lifeless like Mimsy, but she dissipated into the endless, unshakable truth of nature. I doubt that any personality or intent remained. She was part of our world, and in becoming so, she truly became so, inseparably so. She was not Storm any more; she was just another nameless breeze on the ocean’s wind. She was peace now, not chaos. Nothing more. I basked in her peace. I lay there, alone on this secluded little beach, until the sun began to set and cold twilight began to replace the warmth of the afternoon. I packed the empty vase away safely and cycled home. The weather forecast remained more-or-less accurate. There was no storm that night.