"Phew! That was already more than enough for me!" Charger sat proud and full, arms crossed behind his back, leaning into the skiff's bottom.
"I didn't even know you could eat."
"Too many things you didn't know about me, Eve."
Today, the three wanderers ate well—not much, but well enough. That was the first achievement they could've had for themselves after surviving the deadliest storms and bidding farewell to their town. The taste of their efforts could not replace the flesh and bread from the bakery of Gold Creek, let alone the fresh reservoir from Wellspring.
Everything is still an abyss below them, and the sun is sinking deep into it. It will all be dark soon, leaving the world in darkness as they sail this vast ocean without guidance for tomorrow. For now, they could only enjoy the dusklight and the silence of the sea.
"So, what now? Have we reached anywhere yet?" The cleric wonders.
It was hard to find delight in the calm sea where nothing seemed to challenge their thoughts once more. Even the librarian could only perch at the stars blinking from the dark side, waiting for the night to come. The Tin Man could only push the skiff forward on the sea, ignoring the sound from behind that wasn't his skiff's doing.
Brrt! The skiff goes for a rest alongside.
But then, trouble struck at an unfortunate time. As the skiff sailed further into the ocean, seeking closer to the destined land of Britannia in the dusk view, the skiff rested with the wanderers. Its engine silenced, its purpose stirred into nonexistent, and the three wanderers were nowhere. At last, it finds itself meaningless to go even further.
"Buttleboo! We're running out of fuel. We're stuck..." Charger holds the key ignition, trying to start over and over.
"Haha! You're joking, right?" Cyrus glances with a smile.
"Nope. Out of fuel...engine's working, but we have no juice to give this thing another round."
The three wanderers are in disbelief, left without an answer. Their lives started depleting from the time the wooden plank stopped moving. There's nothing they could do to push themselves back onto the road. The fuel canisters were empty, and the propellers found themselves doubtful.
"We're stuck! We're stuck! Aah!" Cyrus yelled in desperation.
"Are you serious, Charger? Is there a spare fuel here?" Eve glanced anxiously. Even she could not handle the stillness.
"Nope, and if I had one, I would've gone for that! We're stuck!"
"Then what do we do now? We're gonna die!" Cyrus yelled in panic.
"I'm sorry. I didn't expect to refuel this trip yet. I was in a hurry, so I couldn't prepare anything in time, so—" Charger closes the hatch.
"Wait. Did you feel that?" Eve pauses.
The air feels unwelcoming but opportunistic. Today, the gust of unexpectancy arrived at their aid. The three wanderers felt a sudden gust of passion from their backs, where the whispers of the invisible voice echo into their ears with ideas beyond their beliefs. It was a fierce desire but volatile.
"Augh! Aagh! The wind!" The cleric shrieked. An unwavering soul turned troubled by the gust of ignorance and indifference.
"Aah...The wind." The librarian was relieved. From suffering and hopelessness rose the sensation of ambition towards wisdom.
"Woah! A wind!" The Tin Man cheered. Life was not complete until he felt the objective drifting from him.
The sound of unpredictable and cluttered thoughts across the air where the librarian herself finds it struggling to hear. Their words—not a wisdom or a reason—but a thought still. Such fierceness is an oddly gift for their misfortune.
"Wind! Help me carry this sail into the north for knowledge! Truth awaits before me!" The librarian stands up resolved, pointing her fingers in the direction of the winds. She begged the invisible strength with her insight, but it was deaf to her plea. Her echoes were unheard, and the wind passed through her head like she was a fool to bear a knowledge.
"We don't have a sail! And how do we know it's north?" Cyrus sweeps the water, trying to push the boat himself.
"Well, we can always use anything soft and thin to make a sail!" Charger suggests. He was one step ahead of the two, and his mind brought Eve a sudden idea.
The librarian realized the only way to move along with the winds was to sacrifice their decency to listen to their wisps. The winds would not wish to look upon them, nor do they care enough. They see the wanderers low and different—the noble who wouldn't sympathize with their cause. But they would listen to the wanderer like Tin Man.
"Wind of the south! I begged from my deepest soul, drag our boat away from this misery and grant us a path from this nightmare! Define me courage and hope in your gust!" The cleric pleaded for the wind, begging through the sense of reason for the winds in hopes that their littleness would grab a heart for them. But the wind remained firm and ignorant, blowing as low as it wanted to be.
"Hahaha!" Charger chuckles. The winds blowing on his face are tickling him.
"Alright. That's it!" Eve yelled, yearning for the knowledge of the wind.
But her tattered and ripped coat has lost so much strength to push, leaving her helpless and naked along with the winds. However, the cleric stood there comfy and thick, wearing most of his best robe as he was seemingly unaware. Perhaps if the cleric offered, the skiff would have moved.
"Wind! Grant me the truth about this travel! Tell me, shall I strive or shall I not! What truth do you have for me?" The librarian yelled, bare from head to toe as truth seeps. But the wind remains ignorant.
"Huh? Aah! Eve, what did you? Why are you naked?"
"Because I'm making the sail to catch the wind. Now, come on! Hand me yours so we can push this boat together!"
"What? No way! How desperate do we have to? Don't you see how inappropiate that is?"
"Well, it matters not when you are looking for truth! Come on! Hand me some!"
"*Sigh* Fine, but don't look! This man didn't want to be judged." Cyrus drops his amice, soon his robe, pants, and more.
The two wanderers shared their clothes, turning them into a sail as they prepared to set the voyage once more. The librarian finds it harder to set the sail than to bear a shame, watching as the pole couldn't stand firm against the gust and the ropes kept waving away due to the lightweight of the clothes.
"Wind of the south! My fire grows in need of your blow! Set me ablaze and spread across the land from this water as I find meaning in this adventure!" The cleric pleaded, but the wind remained weak and helpless. The reasoning won't work.
"Wind! Why are you ignoring me? Where is my truth! My wisdom? My knowledge? Wind!"
"Why is not working?" The librarian worried.
"Because you didn't believe enough in the wind's cause," Charger yelled as he raised his arms.
"Let me show you how you did it!"
The wind is howling, the air is breezing, and the sun is slowly setting. The touch of an invisible force that carries not only a shift in the world but also another thing to all beings. It is everywhere, even if one cannot see or feel it. It is where you exist and die, where you find darkness. The question lies—what is truly a wind?
"Wind of the south! I command you under my reign, define me your strength now!"
"Wind of the south! My skiff is ever-gleaming, forever forward, and eternally travelled in the quest of the ocean."
"Wind of the south! My pebbles are as hard as my words. I am but a mere will, but stronger alone."
"Wind of the south! My destiny is disarrayed, but my eyes sees one path to unravel."
"Wind of the south! Tell me, what is wind? What is sail? And what is north?"
The sail was weak, but the skiff thought otherwise. The direction was clear, and the machine followed. The flawed gears, the unskilled waving, and the unclarified destination somehow kept the boat moving despite the fact that it shouldn't.
"It works...? How?"
The librarian and the cleric were surprised. No effort was put into the sail from the Tin Man, yet his words inspire a desire that sets the wind forward like magic. No reason and no explanation, only a pure ridicule from one's pride for his skiff.
This cannot be accepted, for it bears nothing but self-perseverance and ignorance. The wind might be disarray, but it could not be understanding towards only one man against three. The Tin Man himself had created yet another question for the librarian and the cleric. The wind is howling, yet the wind is not answering.
"What the...what is this? What's the logic of your words, creature?"
"Nothing. I mean, mostly myself! The wind listens only to the wise word..."
"Are you saying I'm not wise? Am I not?" Eve angered. She never had been so insulted by the Tin Man.
"Yes, I worried so. Why do you think the wind promises you knowledge? Or reason?"
The dilemma began. The three wanderers stood at the questioning thought as their eyes sharpened for doubt. The cleric, the librarian, and the Tin Man remember the stance well.
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The cleric began, fire-seething and soul-glazing. The wind is not his expertise, but it remains an obstacle. The cold touch of this wind can sometimes ignite or extinguish the fire, depending on how powerful it can be.
"Because it has a direction. It moves in a way, and where there's a way, there's a reason. Don't you see? Reason is what keeps things moving, what keep things focus on."
"Reason is what makes us here, in the vast ocean of nowhere rather than accepting our demise through stillness. There is a reason we are to be blown with a gust,"
"My church sets ten candles every day, all of which are outside. They enlighten the night with a warm orange hue, keeping the darkness away as we pray through the mass. But there's something that caught my eye when I saw the candles."
"The wind blows through the church's window, and the fire feels it. Instead of being snuffed, a little of its hair start going left from where the wind left. It then refuse to move back from where it goes, forever following the gust that didn't miss it."
"I then looked back and find out a hailstorm was coming on the right of the church. From distant, it seems to blow right through the window and warned the candle to follow it. Did the wind gave a direction to salvation? I believe and I do not believe so."
Life is an order, order creates reason, and reason preserves life. Wind flows in a pattern and reason. Hence, the direction is reasonable. But the destination is nowhere and unpredictable, leading to few misalign with destiny. Wind is the reason and direction of all things, but it also the one turning against the reason.
"I believe the wind is the direction. Though cluttered, one could still follow a piece of it. I believe the wind is always directing a soul through difficult times."
"You wouldn't move without it. You would find a reason and you would find the wind for a reason."
"Thus, the wind is the reason."
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The librarian continued, cold-faced and diligent. The chilling sensation of its rub reminded the people of a world untouched, an existence unfelt, and a chain of one's soul. The icy night was longing with numerous gusts and huffs from the unknown. One only realizes the pain of freezing from the cold wind.
"Wind is a mystery, yet it always reveals itself. The invisible force that dwindle by numbers each second it exist, discovering new lands and flowing back and forth across the earth with things it only knows."
"Wind is somewhat a curiosity to me. I always say that truth is what you see with your eyes, what you truly judge from the irrefutable."
"But wind? You don't see it, yet you feel it. You feel weaknesses you never know. The cold of the outside you don't realize when you were in the library until it blows over your head. Then you find out you left the library door open."
One could not truly claim life from the void without an effort, for a swing of one hand creates a gust that intervenes in the works of reality—breaking what was originally perfect. One touch on the skin, and any being can feel something they haven't felt before in their blank and simple existence. Wind is the realization of something despite the wisdom being short-passing.
"To me, wind is not the wisdom but a realization. I realize something, and I know the wind didn't intend to me. But now I am aware that sometimes truth can be realized, not seen."
"Thus, I follow the wind because of its wise cause. What did it realize that I don't? What did it blow to bring me a realization? Can one say whirlwind is an enlightenment? I believe not."
"I believe wind is the realization. Somehow, in a grey area of wisdom, you would find out that there's nothing. Then you find the wind and find out the source of that wind. The wind made you realize that you were in the wrong place."
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And so, the last wanderer spoke. The Tin Man intervened, gale-headed and whirlwind. Where his mind is not is where the wind takes. The skiff blows further into the north as the wind guides the three wanderers into the soon-to-be night ocean. Darkness is coming, and the lantern is set bright, only for them to keep moving against the ocean stillness.
"Well, you two sounds promising with your reason. Especially with Eve." Charger praises the two.
"Yes..." Eve praises herself. The satisfying compliance had never felt so much better."
"Life is unpredictable, my friend. Possibilities exists and desire sparks in every being's heart. Even if they are but a bunch of metal skin like me, what matters is the passion where they are going."
"I wake up once with a cold yet numb skin. I could not feel pain from sleeping on a tin everyday, yet I can hear the wind whispering through my tin house about their lives. Not their reason or wisdom—just history."
"They keep your ears open and keep you awakened. Something grows in my skin, something new..."
There was silence, and there was a blow. The wind is not setting the world at peace, not when it chooses to stay immovable in an unstoppable prospect. It moves indifferently, facing the world against judgement and definition, until the day it huffs a wall and sets a tower struck.
"Wind is unpredictable, cluttered, and independent as it moves. It cannot stop, for if it is stopped, the history stops. You cannot direct it or sees it, it didn't want to be seen..."
"The wind moves in its own way. No reason, no wisdom, and no pattern. Only a shift that could change due to the environment, altitude, and space. Like history, you can remember it, but you can't hold it."
"Wind is the history. History can change, not because thousands or billions desire it. History changed because there's always something that drifted away from its original design. No matter how small or big it is, the shift will always create a history more than the thousands of civilization records."
"So when I called the wind upon me, I told my history, the days of this skiff and my journey with you. The wind follows because it must gather us as part of its history."
The two wanderers are at a loss for words, the Tin Man's words proven irrefutable. The wind is howling, but there's no answer to its content for the two of them, only the sensation that brings comfort. The night is coming, and the three wanderers are now carved within the wind of history.
Their destiny lies far still, but with the sail blowing still on the dark night, they can rest assured that they will find a land before they lose their tracks on the ocean. For now, all they could do was wait and wait.
"I am at a loss for words. I know nothing about wind, and I could not judge the wind further than its direction. I know nothing about its content, only its movement." Cyrus mumbled.
"I can't argue with that, either. It does sound more reassuring to realize...perhaps the winds guided me and Charger for this exact reason." Eve added.
"So I guess we've lost, did we?"
"Well, look at the bright side! At least he won for the first time!" Eve praises.