by Caleb Monroe
I allow the wind’s cry to fill me and to create a sense of peace that falls over me as I realize that one day soon my friend will come back to me.
EPILOGUE
“I don’t want to go bed, Daddy.”
“Yea, neither do I. Will you tell us a story?”
“Yea, tell us the story about how you met Mommy again.”
“No, tell us the story about Shadow, the greatest griffin that ever lived.”
“You guys know I can’t say no to you.” I make my way across my children’s dimly lit room, and sit down at the foot of my youngest daughter Leda’s bed. Leda starts hopping up and down and lands on my lap, looking up at me with eyes just like her mother. “I will only tell you this story if you promise to go to bed right when I am done.”
Peter quickly throws himself under the covers saying, “We promise. Right, Leda?”
Leda quickly jumps off my lap and copies his every move as she tells me, “Promise, Dad.”
“Let’s see. How about I tell you about how Shadow, the greatest griffin in all the worlds, helped me meet your mom?”
Leda jumps up to her feet shouting, “Shadow helped you meet mom!”
I pull her in tight saying, “Quiet down, sweetheart. Your mother will hear you, and nothing in the multiverse can save us from her wrath.” Both of my children start laughing hysterically as I pretend to look out for Cecilia. I lift Leda off the bed and tuck her back into bed.
“Sorry, Daddy.” She softly tells me.
“It’s alright, Leda.” I give her a kiss on the top of her head.
Peter leans up onto one elbow telling me, “You never told us that Mom’s and Shadow’s stories are connected.”
“There are a lot of things you might not know about me and your mom. But we can talk about that story when you guys are little older.”
“I’m three and Peter is five. We are practically adults already, Dad,” Leda says with such enthusiasm in her voice.
“Oh, is that so?” Both of my children nod in agreement. “Then I think this story needs to start at the very beginning. It all started one night when the world was screaming out for someone to help.”
“The world was screaming?!” Leda shouts.
“No, silly, it’s just a story,” Peter tells her.
I laugh a little as I continue. “The wind was so loud that night that it woke me from a dream. I could hear the sky crying out, and what happened next would change my life forever…”
I stop talking when suddenly I hear a familiar sound coming from outside the window. I hear a mighty roar, and it is not the wind on this calm spring evening.
“Why did you stop?” Peter asks me.
I stay silent for a moment as I listen to the sky.
I hear the beating of wings.
“How would you like to meet my best friend?”
Author Biography
Caleb is the author of Breaking Free, Book One of The Wind's Cry. He is also a Chemistry teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School, in Lake Charles, LA. He studied Chemistry at McNeese State University and is married to Jamie Monroe.
He loves comic books, putting some of his deepest fears into his own characters, stories that have a way of speaking to a person, and books that are just plain fun. That was the basis for his book Breaking Free. Caleb wanted action, the story of a man who had something to prove, and even though he never meant to, his characters even found love.
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