Pneuma

Keme hesitantly entered the cafe. She spotted the faintly familiar faces smiling and calling out to her, and went over. It was her first outing with people from her new college. 'Friends', perhaps...? She was glad to have found a group of such passionate linguaphiles. She smiled and nodded enthusiastically, a shy reply here, a surprised comment there. One of them even complimented her white floral dress. What were all their names, again...? Well, she would learn to remember gradually... It felt so good to enjoy the simple company of others, the pleasant echoes of laughter and mirth, and the warm coffee in their hands... The soft March winds playing with her hair, the twilight sky from the open windows... So much different from the claustrophobic mustiness of her room, the increasingly frequent hysterical episodes of her caring Granny, shunning her to the limits of school and home.

As Alzheimer's claimed her ailing body last year, Keme's only family, somewhere amongst the bittersweet loneliness, was the thrill of freedom... a bit too overwhelming perhaps.

The cafe was rather empty that day, and soon the only other people left, an old couple, headed out. The sole barista wished them a good evening at the door, the constant swish of the broom stopping short. They were all mid-laugh when the heat struck. Out of the corner of window Keme saw him swiftly twirl the broom, and in an almost cinematic way the bristles of the broom turned to glowing orange-yellow strands; almost serpentine, maliciously growing and coming straight towards them. Only when it came lashing at her face, did she feel the instant burning sensation; the intense heat and the sheer force knocking her out.

Fire...

Keme felt hands grabbing her by the neck, the same searing heat closing in on her throat. She squinted through the dancing white spots at the fiery figure.

"Just my lucky day, eh? Hah! Sure didn't expect another elemental walking right into my lair!" the rasping voice echoed through her very being. It was difficult to discern her attacker's face, through the raging flames fully covering him.

Where were her friends...? The whole cafe seemed to be on fire, and she couldn't see much beyond the smokes. But she somehow felt that they were nearby... and alive... As her senses became steadier she felt the upturned table crushing her left calf. And... The fact that she wasn't burnt... at all... Even though she could very well feel the stinging pain, and her life getting snuffed out, even though the whole place was on fire and literal flames clutched her throat in a chokehold... there wasn't a single burn on her. The barista suddenly tightened the grip, heavily muttering.

"You should be dead already, why isn't the Pneuma coming out? Are you a dormant one??"

Keme couldn't utter a word, as her revived senses waned again... What was he even talking about? Elementals? Pneuma..? Dormant one...? She could only think about the ever so gentle breeze, as she lost consciousness again...

Only to wake up alone... to find herself in the charred remains of the cafe and the overwhelming stink of burnt flesh... only to search frantically for her friends knowing in her heart the fate they had met... only to come out unscathed and find the entire neighbourhood in the aftermath of a fire... to not find a single soul and yet be haunted by their screams, too oppressive... way too etched on her consciousness to be her imagination...

Yet the winds carried not a hint, as if coming from ethereal worlds. As if the entire existence of her surroundings... of her very being itself, were but a lie, a nightmare...the winds... they tingled her senses, caressing the singed ends of her daffodil-print frock, washing over her sanity with a light-hearted, tranquil silence, whispering the little details of the en route scenes they've glimpsed.

She felt at one with them... as if, she had become a part of the winds themselves...

Crystal clear...

The parts of the memory she had been the most aware of... the ones she had wilfully forgotten, to discard that aspect of her from herself.... Keme could remember that evening from years ago crystal clearly...

The winds sweeping into the blazing cafe, her body levitating into the very midst of the rising whirlwind of fire, the fiery figure (a stray fire elemental, as she had later realised) cowering away in a sudden reflex... The barista pinned against the opposite wall, the fire sucked right into the vortex, until the very last flame, his existence waning into absolute nothingness. Dying screams only another elemental could've heard...

Of course, it hadn't stopped there. The raging tempest grew, the flames spreading faster than ever, as if carried with the howling gales. The whole neighbourhood a turbulent furnace, the winds saturate with data only she could decipher. Each distant cry of death amplified to life in the psyche of the obscure, hovering figure...

But the worst was perhaps Keme's consciousness throughout... a crushing consciousness...

It was self-defence, right...? She wanted to live, to live... just to live! Were the winds a mere servant to these pounding, unfiltered thoughts of survival...? Was she truly wishing for this destruction, acting out of sheer survival-instinct? Did she really have to consume the life-force of another elemental, of her friends... and the countless other humans... to be the eternal abode of their lingering tales...?

Her Self never replied why, and neither did the winds listening in silence... What a way to discover the supernatural world, to cease perceiving herself as a human, to unleash her own slumbering elemental powers...

She had learned over the years that the ones to be controlled weren't the winds, but herself... 

But, then again... could it ever be tamed...? 

A creature... a power born out of the sheer core of Nature itself...

A Pneuma of the elements...?