The Wordsmith's Forge

This is the freebie for the August 2014 Crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from clare_dragonfly. It also fills the "trade winds" square in my 6-1-14 card for the genprompt_bingo fest.


"The Wind Traders"


We are the people
of the trade winds.

We live on tropical islands,
each of us alone,
one to an island,

borne wherever
wind and water take us,
born into solitude
and community.

We are trees,
each of us one person
with many trunks.

We blossom and fruit,
and this is how
we communicate:

chemical messages
encoded into
pollen and nuts,
drifting on wind and water.

We can only speak
to those who are
downline of us,

for the trade winds
trace a steady path
and the water follows them.

Our world is a world
of islands and waves;
the water and the wind
can go all the way around it
with nothing to stop them.

In a year, perhaps,
some wisp of our own
sending may return to us

or ghostly replies to our words
from those who have heard them,
but our biggest fans are farthest away.

We can speak only to those
whom we barely know,
downline, who love us;
but to those whom we love,
upline, we are nearly strangers.

Perhaps this is why
we release our seed in pollen
and open our flowers to catch
whatever may come --

so that it will always
be sent with hope,
received with love.

We live for centuries
but bear fertile nuts
very rarely.

Sometimes, after
a wildstorm has
stripped an island bare,
one will take root and grow,
born of a distant passion

and in time,
a new voice will join
the chorus of the line.

This is our world,
our life, our way.

We are the Wind Traders.

* * *

Notes:

Trade winds are steady streams of air, which on Earth flow easterly just north and south of the equator. Parts of the ocean current tend to follow them, although there are other influences that bend ocean currents in different directions.

Tropical island trees are adapted to withstand salt and wind, typically dispersing large buoyant seeds by means of ocean currents. The Wind Traders belong to a species which blends traits of coconut palms (the large floating nuts) and mangroves (the multiple trunks). They live on a planet which has no major land masses, only larger and smaller islands scattered throughout, so it is possible for messages to travel a very long way by wind and water. But they're still sessile, so their society is basically a giant game of telephone. Try playing telephone and imagine building a culture that way.