I was thirteen years old, the first time the wind kissed me.

There I was, standing in a row with all of my year-mates, waiting for our teachers to announce our training placements, waiting to be told what we were to study in the years to come. Since we were little sprouts of six years old, we'd been in school, being tested and observed, and finally the day had come to find out what the adults felt we were most suited to doing for the rest of our lives.

I wanted to be a Scribe, and I found out decades later that I'd been chosen for exactly that, but the announcement was never finished, for me.

They called my name, and a little thrill ran through me. The air stirred, lifted my hair on a rose-scented breeze. Leaves and flower petals began to dance around me as I became the heart of a whirlwind, and my heart soared. There's no feeling in the world like being Blessed by an Element.

Now, I sit in my tower, once again coaxing the wind this way and that, protecting the crops and homes of my people and the wild things in the nearby forests. In my years as Wind-Caller, I've gentled hurricanes and called down the North wind to freeze and terrify attacking countries. I've saved lives and I've taken them, answering to no one but the Winds themselves. I can't imagine another path as fulfilling and beautiful as this.