The Wind Flute

Oh well, since I haven't posted anything here in ages, and I'm stuck on drafting my novel, I decided to get started on my "Tales" stories. It's basically a few short stories that help me shape the world of one of my fantasy stories. The wind flute is the only one I have fully drafted so I'll post the beginning of the edited version here.

He stumbled over a fallen branch and fell into the muddy floor, hands first so as to protect his face and mouth from the filth of the forest grounds. He pulled himself up as quickly as he could: this was not the first time he had fallen, and his left leg was going limp. Stealing a brief look behind him, he saw thin branches and tall grass being pushed aside to make passage, and quickened his pace again: they wouldn’t give up so easily.

Oh! If only I learned to silence my heart! - He panted, forcing himself to keep on running, lest they caught up and silenced it for him.

After a few more minutes of desperate running, the young man came to a small clearing. He looked behind him, terrified, straining his ears to hear the faintest sounds of clumsy men cracking dead leaves, but no such sound came to him. In its place, a calming song played far away, the sound of a million leaves dancing in chaotic unison to the wind. Soon the thinnest trees joined in, followed hastily by the thicker ones. It didn’t take very long for the whole forest to come alive with the wind. The man smelled rain and, looking at the skies, confirmed what his nose was quicker to notice - a sudden storm was about to fall on the forest. The wind, which was quickly gaining strength, was now strong enough to make it nigh impossible to make any movement against it, and to push himself in the direction it was blowing was but all he could do to keep moving. Soon, the rain came pouring down hard, heavily forcing the lad’s tired shoulders down.

I need a cave of some sort, the man thought, now away from the clearing and back to working his way thru the thick of the forest when, pushing himself thru a man-sized bush, he found just what he sought: a small cave, as if by magic, had appeared at the other side of the bush. He simply couldn’t believe his luck. He hastily made his way into the cave.

The cave was dark, but he expected as much. The problem with dark caves was…he had no means of knowing how big it was. And if he entered a cave inside a forest,he liked to know how big it was: the bigger the cave, the bigger the creature that might be using it. But at the moment he was too exhausted to think about that. The flight from the village had cost him every ounce of his strength so, taking away all but his undergarments – which he stretched on the ground so they’d dry up a bit during the night – he made himself comfortable on the hard ground and slept.