We knew each other’s flesh as the lovers in The Tragedy of Kara did; yet, if theirs was love—we were but strangers. Once, she asked why men agonised over love, even when there was none. I told her men feared their lives would sooner burn out with nary a taste. We had both lived longer than any man could fathom—yet it eluded us still; is it possible, then, that no man truly knew what love is?

—FROM “THE TWISTER I COULD NOT TAME” BY STORM CHASER ULF OF ANEMOS.

“I’m convinced anyone impressed by lightning in a glass bottle has never jostled a tornado down the round-bottom,” said Sigrid. “Any halfwit can direct lightning—twisters have a mind of their own!”

“I’m convinced we call it a night,” Wray said, his warm breath tickling the back of her neck. “There will be other storms to chase, Sig.”

Wray would remember the Valley was frigid that night. Sigrid held him tight, breathing slow and soft between trembles as his flesh warmed her own. The pair of them shared a cloak right outside the Council walls, and the deep thrum of Wray’s voice—with an ear to his chest—calmed her.

Sigrid did not neglect that it might have been the lingering effect of the mind-altering herb the pair had chewed earlier—she could taste it still on Wray’s breath—and was uncertain which was more intoxicating: the herb or the elvenman.

“Son of Ulf, do you know why I merely squint at your presence despite being such a wet blanket of a storm chaser?” asked Sigrid, looking up to see the deep green of his eyes.

She knew, when Wray’s eyebrow arched and his lips parted in an almost-smile, that he had a quip. Sigrid quickly added, “Because where your ancestor was a hulking mad elf who lived for the Chase—you’re the calm at the eye of the storm.”

Wray went quiet for a few breaths—lost in her; he felt Sigrid shift under his gaze, holding him tighter, if that was possible. Then, her lips pouted as he burst into laughter. What was so funny?

“Daughter of the Wind, those were not your words last night!” said Wray; the arch in his brow and his almost-smile returned. “Was I not the unrelenting windstorm, claiming what is mine with the fury of Anemos?”

Sigrid’s oval face went red up to the tips of her long, pointed ears. She hid her head under Wray’s cloak, squeezing his sides with might unbecoming of one so petite. He cried out, too loud; so she covered his mouth with both hands. Had he not heard the Council Guards say to be silent in their protest?

“Henceforth, the one I hold dearest shall not, in good faith, utter what I said last night—indeed, what I say any night we embrace—to win his arguments!” said Sigrid, her muffled voice ordaining from the confines of his cloak.

Wray’s eyes told of the smile Sigrid’s soft, pale hands hid. She shrieked in glee when a gentle twister lifted her off her feet and from under his cloak with a crunch of glass under his boot.

Their eyes met for a long moment; Wray admired Sigrid’s beauty—long, midnight jade hair that danced in the breeze and a gentle smile formed of lips as soft as they were sly. And she could not look away from those eyes that longed for her: his was a face so wolfishly charming—although he might have trimmed his hair of a darker shade a bit too short, even for an assembly with the Councilors—he could be so silly at times.

“Well, that’s one way to take advantage of the locale, Sig,” said Wray, breaking the silence. “Think we should have led with that when we beckoned the Council for a small fortune to tame a wild Storm of Ages no one’s seen in eight hundred years?”

Sigrid laughed dryly. “They’d sooner empty their coffers sponsoring wanton marriages this century than any Chaser’s ‘grand delusions born of men’s rituals’—by Anemos, it is the discipline that powers all of the Valley! And didn’t men marry first?”

“The crones can never agree on that,” Wray said, tilting his head. “Speaking of marriage: the Council’s actuaries warn of a population crisis.”

Sigrid wrapped her arms around his neck as a chilly southern breeze brought with it the taste of the Voreiosian Ocean. “When have they not, my love? Although it might just be true this century—we see too many of the same gruff faces in a Valley so big,” she said. “But you know well as I do we need not marry for reasons so trite.”

“Least of all for pittance,” said Wray in mock lordliness. “Those halfwits on the Council know nothing, Love—we’ll tame that storm without their coin and shatter the bottle on their heads—the pair of us.”

Wray would have no greater regret than uttering those words to her then; he would later toss and turn in his sleep, haunted by nightmares of his own making. For how could the young elves have known then what awaited them in the dark, with the night still so young yet ripe with desire?

Their eyes met, and their lips soon after, stormily sharing warmth and the taste of each other… until:

“That’s enough of that, ya weasels in heat! Not out there ya don’t, and certainly not on Sven, Son of Dahlia’s watch!” said an elven guard donning sublime Potirian glass armour. “These Council walls may have gone to sod, but yer forefathers raised them in the King’s name—find yer decency where it's lost, and perhaps a cottage to shag in, lest I sooner charge ya with high slander!”

Tongue-tied, Sigrid giggled and Wray laughed. She took his hand as they ran the length of the bottomless bridge mechanics at the heart of the Valley: away from the sordid Council walls and into a tunnel eyeing an underground tourist sensation—abandoning their placards.

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The lovers’ protest advocating more funding for native storm chasers than immigrant lightning catchers had fallen on deaf ears!

They ran on cobblestone till they were breathless, snickering and glancing over their shoulders as tunnel lights flickered. Soon, the stale air gave way to the earthy taste of soil and the crunch of leaves beneath their feet. Sigrid and Wray had stepped into a colossal cenote—the largest in the Realms.

Under the shadow of a tempest tree, they stood admiring the stunning cenote pool—a lake, really.

“Why not Storm?” asked Wray, behaving far more winded than he was. “We’ve the vials to spare—I should know; I carry all the cheap ones!”

The elvenman revealed the underside of his cloak: laced with a leather seam riddled with enough pockets to stupefy a toddler. Every pocket held an assortment of labelled glass vials in which luminous smokes and mists raged in miniature windstorms.

“And whose fault is it that you won’t try as hard as I know you can on the Chase?” Sigrid replied, knitting her brow, as she eyed the other side of the lake. “Nevermind that—look over there: I thought it’d be worth it running here—was I wrong?”

Wray lingered on her profile… his heart a gathering storm of emotions. He clenched his stubbled jaw, then gazed at the moonlit blue waters of the pool; there, he spotted a small, vine-infested castle in the woods of the opposite shore.

He’d seen enough sad castles in sorry states scattered across the Greater City of Anemos to tell when one was forlorn or tenanted by an affluent grinch who fed on garden trolls for brunch.

Most Anemosians squinted at the latter and carried on with their business. But the former were a blight in the Council’s repopulation plans: architectures of a stale era whose long-travelled landlords refused to sell their deeds out of spite—perfect hideouts for a pair of wind-worn hermits searching for a moment’s solace in each other’s embrace, yet already plotting their next storm chase.

“I doubt you’re ever wrong, Love.” Said Wray, stroking his chin. “Although, there was that time you were convinced a night in a Potirian dungeon would set the mood.”

Sigrid winced, yet met his eyes still as she drew closer. “Well, it’s no cottage, and it is most certainly no dungeon—I hope,” she said, reaching a hand into his cloak and smiling mischievously. “But… it will have to do!”

Out her hand came, and in her grasp was now a blue vial cool to the touch. In it raged the tendrils of a smoke that seemed living. Sigrid clenched the vial and brought it to her ringed nose, snorted, then shattered the glass! Her back arched in a gasp as the smoke slithered into her lungs—Wray stood her steady on her feet. The elvenwoman’s striking green eyes took on a haunting shade of blue. Sigrid grinned at the worry in Wray’s gaze, then blew in his face a puff of azure smoke that tasted of a brewing storm.

And then… she was untethered from the earth. The very breeze bent to her fancy—Sigrid was free as a bird that tamed the wind: first, a silent owl, unseen yet sensual as she stalked her lover; then, a wild swallow, unshackled as she cut through the air at deranged paces.

The elvenwoman was spellbinding in her allure of him off the cliff. With every puff of azure smoke Sigrid blew, the cadence of her intricate waltz hastened. Within a handful of breaths, she was nearly across the lake—the tendrils of her ashen cloak like ruffled feathers.

The clear water rippled to a gentle breeze as Sigrid twirled and peered over her slender shoulders. Sheepish under the moon’s gaze, she parted her cloak slightly and bared her breasts to Wray for a fleeting moment—blowing her lover kisses of azure smoke right after.

No sooner had a gale in her wake raised waves than she perched—silent, nimble, and with grace—on the tiled castle roof. Sigrid breathed out the last of the mists of azure in her lungs—an icy flare in the dark for her lover to chase—before scurrying down a windowpane and sneaking in.

“Oh, Sig, you will be the death of me!” said Wray, feeling his blood rush. The elvenman ran at a brisk pace and soon abandoned the shadow of the tempest tree as he leapt off the high cliff.

Vial in hand, Wray snorted, brought it to his nose, and shattered the glass! He gasped, and Wray’s skin prickled as a frigid azure mist seeped in. Wray tasted the storm brewing in his lungs as he breathed out right before he hit the water.

In the elvenman’s gaze, reality eased in passing, and he appeared still on the water’s surface as if weightless. In truth, Wray knew tame Wind Wraiths saw him as one of theirs now—albeit, a mere infant—so they held him up. The spectacle of dilated time was less mystical—it was the effect of the mind-altering herb every Anemosian spiked in his vials to aid in reasoning at the deranged speeds Chasers moved when they Stormed—and to numb the pain.

It was agonising to hold his breath; as the storm raged in his lungs, an icy fury seeped into his veins. The longer Wray held on, he became less an elf and more like a frenzied Wind Wraith, and he could, as they did, touch the currents of Anemos the Unruly—Deity of The Way of Wind.

Only breathing out the azure smoke eased his agony—it spread a titillating warmth through him and calmed the storm’s fury, but lessened Wray’s likeness to the Wind Wraiths whose power he borrowed.

In those endless cycles of pain and repose was a pleasure no Chaser could get enough of—that, or it was the thrill of riding currents shaped by a deity—while cradled by Wind Wraiths that would otherwise slice one to ribbons!

Water seeped into Wray’s boots as the surface finally splashed, unnaturally slow in his altered reality; he’d stayed in one place too long already. The elvenman gazed at the castle on the opposite shore, now seeing spirals of windstorms around all things: architectures, flotsam on the water’s surface, plants, moths in flight, his own flesh—rapids in a river of gales. He held his breath, and as the storm raged its wildest, Wray tentatively reached for a spiral that led to the windowpane—on which Sigrid swung as she snuck in. It still swayed, and there was a strong enough current around it to pull him out of the water… too strong!

Wray was already nearly past the lake as a massive gale sent waves flying and him throttling right at the castle’s windowpane.

He had been impatient and went for a spiral around a moving object. Wray hastily breathed out plumes of azure smoke—nearly all of the vial was gone in one breath—to slow down. The Wind Wraiths let go as the elvenman’s flesh became less like theirs; the spiral to the windowpane now blurred to his gaze. No longer able to navigate or overcome the current, it jostled back at him with a woeful gale—this was no path for elves!

Wray’s hand reached for the windowpane as he fell; shards of glass nicked at his flesh as he flung himself upside down through the window and into the attic—thankful for the mind-altering herb that allowed him to make reason of his senses at such speeds—and crashed onto old mattresses and cushions Sigrid raised against a wall and littered on the floor!

Azure mist was pushed out of his lungs as Wray collided with the mattress against the wall with a thud, then landed on the cushions. Sigrid rushed for him and fell to her knees. She held his face as she placed his head on her thighs, over her ashen cloak.

“Son of Ulf, will you die and not make me your widow first?” she asked, smiling away the worry in her voice and picking the glass shards off him.

“Daughter of the Wind, you make Storming look so easy,” said Wray, as the final wisps of azure smoke left his lips and the spirals, currents, and Wind Wraiths disappeared altogether. “And I wouldn’t dare, Love.”