Esowiki - Spiritual Terms Simply Explained

The Seven Names of the Wind
It was said that the wind had seven names, but only those who knew three of them could make a request to the world without offending it. Alaric learned the first name when he was a child, and his mother explained the rain to him at the window: Sural—the wind that softens the edges. He learned the second at sea: Bareth—the wind that tests you, not to break you, but to find the form you can hold. He discovered the third late, at a time when it had become silent inside him, like houses after a feast: Nim—the wind that sings in empty rooms.
When his wife died, Alaric was left behind in a house that was suddenly large. Friends came, bringing soup, flowers, sentences that were meant to be like blankets. But at night, he sat at the kitchen table and listened to the wind in the trees. He heard nothing of comfort. But he heard names, and that was enough to keep him from drowning.
One day, he received a letter from a niece in the city he barely knew. "Come," she wrote. "There's work being done on the old organ in the chapel. No one knows how to make it speak. Perhaps you do." Alaric knew something about hands, wood, and patience. He went.
The chapel lay between two streets that disliked each other, and when the sun was low, the windows shone like water. The organ was dusty, some of the pipes dented. Alaric stroked the wood as if it were a back one was trying to comfort. "We'll try it slowly," he said, and no one asked who he was talking to.
He began with the valves, the leather bellows, the hinges of distressed brass. As his hands worked, he listened to the wind coming through the open windows. In spring, it carried the scent of linden trees; in autumn, it tasted of metal. Alaric realized how the wind wasn't just outside. He was between the pipes, in the breath of the room. He had a fourth name: Eiel—the wind that makes voices out of the silent.
When the organ breathed again, his niece invited the neighborhood to a silent concert. No program, no announcements. Alaric sat at the keys. He wasn't a great player; he only knew how not to stand between the notes. He played a chorale that was more gap than line. The wind took the gaps, not filling them, but letting them ring out. The people stood there, some with their eyes closed, thinking of what they had loved and lost. There was no pain in their faces, but recognition.
After the last note, Alaric remained seated. He felt the fifth name: Tara—the wind that sweeps across your forehead when you say, "I can't go on," and discover that you can after all. Later, outside the chapel, his niece asked him if he wanted to stay. He nodded. The house no longer had to be large; only that which you share with no one is large.
In winter, when snow made the city quieter, Alaric found the sixth name: Vann—the wind that only hears close. It blows when two people listen to each other without contradiction. It blows when you explain to a child that dying is not the opposite of living, but its other wing. It blows when you gently close a door.
He didn't hear the seventh name. Names like that cannot be heard; you are heard by them. Some say it is Sol, others say it has no sound. Alaric knew only this: One evening, as he was locking the chapel, a girl stood in the doorway. "My mother says you know the wind," she said. "Can you show me how to ask it?" Alaric smiled, put his finger to his lips. "Say your name," he said. "And then listen to the wind say it. If you notice that it already knew it before you named it—then please."
That night, a gentle, almost invisible breeze blew through the city. Someone slept through the night for the first time, someone finished a letter they had started years ago. Alaric sat by the window and understood: Some requests are not demands. They are reminders of oneself that one gives to the world.