Tornado

Ages ago, there lived a boy. He was mute, the wind stealing his words away as he spoke them.

He found expression through dance.

His name was Tornado, and he had fallen in love with a beautiful maiden in the village.

A maiden who couldn't see.

He wanted to share his feelings with her, but became frustrated. She was blind to his actions. His voice was useless in communicating his thoughts.

After years of bitter silence and provoked by love, he gathered the courage to seek out the only solution.

Tornado set out to find the scamp, a creature rumoured to live the cave of a nearby mountain. He left the village at sunrise, to seek out this dangerous supernatural creature. He knew only magic could provide him what he wanted.

He reached his destination by sundown.

Despite the absence of a beach the cave was surrounded by masses of white sand, glimmering in the dying light of day.

The cave scamp would grant him his wish, and he could return home.

He reached the mouth of the cave and it swallowed him whole. Tumbling through jagged teeth like rocks, he he wandered deeper and deeper into the mountain - he stopped as the cave whispered.

It was a wet, raspy whisper that made him recoil in disgust and unease.

"Come to me. What is it you crave?" Tornado stayed frozen in place, struck with a panic. Up until this point, he'd been suppressing any feelings of fear.

Get scared later. He told himself.

The voice came from his left. The cave scamp laughed like streams of gravel scraping down walls. "Come closer so I can hear your words, before the wind carries them away." Tornado took a step closer to the direction of the creature as the air grew impossibly still. He heard his own words for the first time.

"I long for a voice. One that will stay forever. " it was louder and deeper than he had expected it to be. It resonated in his head and rattled the walls like thunder.
The air stank of perspiration and rotten flesh. Had it been sand at the entrance to the cave, or something else?

He gritted his teeth and stepped back, as he'd been standing on a decaying skeleton - it's ribcage crumbling to a fine powder beneath his boot.

"An expensive request. If you cannot convince the maiden to fall in love with you by the end of the moon cycle, you will be rendered once again speechless. You will dance forevermore. I will grant your wish, for this payment."

Tornado agreed to this transaction. He had already been dancing his entire life, therefore the rest of it wouldn't make much difference.

He left the cave and returned to the village, beaming with excitement. He spotted the maiden in the square - but as he approached her, she was swept up into the arms of another man. Heartbroken, the boy realized no arrangement of words strung together, could ever make her love him.

The moon cycle passed. That morning he woke, voice trapped once again in his throat.

Could he still dance as the cave scamp promised?

He spun gracefully, turning around one leg with the other off the ground. But once he started spinning he found he couldn't stop. He twirled faster and faster until clouds from the sky were dragged into his vortex. The village was soon dragged in as well.

Nobody would ever hear his cries, his voice swallowed by the winds forever. To this day, Tornado returns to swallow villages and destroy everything in his path.

He dances forever out of control.