The Wind Does Not Wait

The Wind Does Not Wait

Leo Bateman

In the far eastern valleys of Veyra, where lavender fields swayed like sighs and twilight stretched long between the mountain spires, there lived a girl called Seren.

She was born with too much silence in her, her mother used to say. A quiet baby with wide, storm-colored eyes and a habit of staring just past people, as though she saw a thread unraveling that no one else could see. But when she ran, the wind followed. When she laughed, the birds answered. Her mother called her “little wind,” because she never stayed still.

Then the War of Ember came.

It began with smoke on the horizon—just a smear across the sky, easy to mistake for a summer fire or a distant storm. But the skies did not clear. The fire grew hungry. Soldiers in black armor rode through villages like locusts, and wherever they passed, nothing grew again.

Seren’s village burned in the third month of ashfall. She remembered the color of the flames more than the sound. Her mother had pressed a bundle into her arms—flatbread, a cracked compass, a vial of river water—and pushed her toward the forest.

“Go north,” she’d whispered. “Find the Glass City. The Queen will keep you safe.”

“But what about—?”

Her mother had already turned back to the fire. Seren never saw her again.

She ran. She ran until her legs gave out and her breath caught in sobs. And then she kept going.

North. Always north.

But the compass spun in wild circles. The stars above shifted subtly every night. The trees grew stranger. At first, they bent toward her gently, brushing her arms with their leaves. Then, they watched.

One night, curled in the hollow of a tree with the wind howling like wolves, she heard the forest speak.

“Turn back.”

She froze.

“This is not your path.”

Seren clutched the compass tighter. “It’s the only one I have.”

The forest fell silent again, as though considering.

The next day, she found the river choked with white petals. The fish had turned to stone. And when she dipped her hands in, the water shimmered silver, then vanished. Only a stag with burning antlers remained, watching her from the opposite bank.

“You walk where few dare,” it said, its voice cracking like frost. “Why?”

“I was told to go north,” she replied, though she wasn’t sure why anymore. “To the Glass City.”

“That place is gone,” said the stag. “Fell to ruin a decade ago.”

The wind picked up, scattering ash.

Seren blinked. “Then… there’s nothing left?”

“Not nothing,” said the stag. “You. You are still walking. That means something.”

She opened her mouth to ask what—but the stag vanished in a burst of cinders, and the river was ordinary again.

She didn’t turn back.

Instead, she walked deeper.

She learned to sleep in the crook of singing trees and eat root-veins that glowed under moonlight. The wild taught her its language. Shadows whispered secrets into her dreams. Her skin became tough as bark, her eyes keener. She forgot the faces of her village but remembered their names, keeping them safe like seeds.

One night, years later—or perhaps only months, for time bent oddly here—she came to a gate made of bone and branches, entwined with night-blooming vines. Beyond it stretched a crumbling city, half-swallowed by the forest. The stones hummed with old magic. Statues stood broken, their eyes gouged out. Owls perched on window ledges like silent guards.

This was no Glass City.

But Seren stepped through the gate anyway.

In the heart of the city stood a throne of twisted iron, brambles, and feathers. A woman sat upon it, ageless and robed in dusk. Her eyes contained stars. Her voice was the hush before a storm.

“I felt you long before you arrived,” she said.

Seren looked around. “Where am I?”

“A place forgotten,” the woman said. “But not dead. Not while you still breathe.”

“I was trying to find the Glass City,” Seren said, gripping the broken compass. “My mother said the Queen would help me.”

“She was right. The Glass City is gone, shattered by the War of Ember. But a queen remains.”

The woman stood, descending from the throne. Her hands were bare, her touch warm as sunlight.

“You kept walking, even when the path vanished. You listened when the forest spoke. You held your name like a sword.”

Seren frowned. “What name?”

“Seren,” the woman smiled. “But that name has grown too small for you.”

She stepped aside, and a pool of still water shimmered to life.

Seren looked—and did not recognize herself.

She had grown taller, her hair silvered like moonlight. Her arms bore markings in the shape of constellations, etched like frost into her skin. Her eyes burned with the knowledge of old things. She looked like the forest had claimed her, shaped her, raised her.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered.

“You walked north,” said the woman. “But the world does not move in straight lines. It turns and folds. It placed you where you were needed.”

The woman placed a hand over Seren’s heart.

“You are the Queen now. Not of glass, but of root and bone. You will rule the forgotten things. The lost children. The dreams that rot in forest soil until they bloom again.”

Seren swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean to end up here.”

“Few do,” said the woman, fading like mist. “But you did. And that makes all the difference.”

The next day, the vines obeyed Seren’s touch. The forest bent toward her like a bow. The winds carried her voice. And when the ashes of the War finally reached the Forgotten City, they turned to flowers on her doorstep.

Children who wandered too far found her city when they were lost. She fed them starlight soup, stitched their wounds with spider silk, and sent them home with songs in their bones.

She ruled gently.

She ruled wisely.

She ruled with a broken compass that never pointed north—but always led true.