Trident

Storm

Storm lives up to her name every day from the moment she is born.

She shakes things up. Leaves nothing the way it’s been.

Her mother goes into labor in the midst of a terrifying storm. It is weeks before she’d been expected to give birth.

The child that is born to the sound of thunder is of normal size. She also looks nothing like her father.

Aamoth takes one look at this girl who has eyes of silver where his are brown. She has curls that are black, where his own hair is straight and the color of the dirt floor he is standing upon.

Aamoth takes one look, and then he leaves. Never to return to this house where his forefathers have lived for fourteen generations.

You might think it should have been the mother and child to leave his ancestral home. Not the father whose roots are here.

You would be wrong.

As wrong as Aamoth.

Heyala, wife of Aamoth, mother of Storm, has never lain with any man but Aamoth. This can be attested to by several witnesses, all of Aamoth’s own blood.

From the time of their wedding up until the day when Storm is born, Heyala never spent a moment alone if Aamoth was away. She always kept the company of one or several of his sisters at all. He had ten sisters, so someone was always able to be with her both day and night.

Does Aamoth listen to any of them?

No. He does not.

So convinced he is of his wife’s infidelity, of the child not being his, he refuses to listen to anyone saying any different. “Look at the girl! The evidence is right there. She cannot be mine!”

It does not take long before Heyala is so furious with her husband she absolutely forbids anyone to speak on her behalf ever again. “He wants to be a fool, so let him!” Heyala yells.

She lives with his family, and she raises his child, their daughter Storm.

He lives someplace else. Nearby at first. Drowning his sorrows in drink. Then further and further away. Until one day he joins the army, and leaves their world for good.

It takes the whole of the family to keep Storm happy as a baby. Takes them all to run after her as soon as she learns how to walk.

She’s a lively one, she is. Lively and well loved.

Storm turns everything upside down. She questions all. She never sits still but a moment, and yet, except for sitting still and being quiet and unquestioning, she learns all that one could wish for a child to learn and more.

So much more she learns.

She reads every book, every news, every story so fast. How she does that without ever staying put is a mystery no one can explain. She herself just says “It’s enough to look. I can read in my mind when I run,” and shrugs her shoulders when others do not understand.

Storm lives up to her name. Every moment from when she was born. And still she wins the hearts of everyone who knows her.

There is something very special about Storm.