The Wind Who Tried to be Gentle

 The wind danced the night—carefully. It was that sort of wind. It tiptoed and sashayed slyly and wove a bit about the middle in a quiet kind of way. 

    The reason it did so was not because it had a cramp or that it was being careful of waking a monster or that it had recently drunk a large amount of rain from a passing cloud. It did so because it wanted to be as gentle as it could, but it was terrified that it wasn't a gentle thing in its heart.

    The wind carried on it's careful dance, but the thing is that being so very afraid makes it difficult to be gentle. As the wind's fear grew and grew, the tiptoes became stamps, the sashays were no longer sly but startling, and the weaving escalated to tearing as the wind rushed and gushed and galed. 

    Suddenly the wind stopped.

    It thought of how it had become what it had feared to be.

    Then it made a choice.

    It breathed.

    And as long as the wind kept breathing, it was as gentle as it had always hoped to be.

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