Day 571: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: global

I am your global companion, and with me, you have a love-hate relationship, although I am perfectly indifferent to you as I travel the world (and have been enabling you to travel too, for centuries).

I am the bearer of every tale your nose has ever received. Every perfume that has ever been, from the flower, the wood, and to any human companion wearing it, has come to your knowledge through me. Every stench, from the daily bathroom aromas to the rotting of animal and vegetable, to the chemical miasmas of your human making, has come to you and warned you of something not quite right through me ... and, I have told your tales, foul or fair, to those around you.

In your house, how you feel about me depends upon my mood. You welcome me more in the summer than in the winter, I notice. Of course I can be nasty at either time, and depending on where you live and how I feel, I can take your house away with me at my pleasure, at any time of the year.

Also in your house, fire is my friend ... your fireplace is a pleasure because of me and a proper chimney. But I said fire is my friend, not yours. You control my friend as best you can. If not, we will take your house and every house roundabout, on an energetic day for me.

By me, all things that are dry upon the earth become wet at the proper time, and all things that are wet become dry. By me, there is a global stream of constant change -- and where I am least, such as in the Sargasso Sea at certain periods of the year, all those who passed before you humans invented engines lamented my absence.

If I absent myself just few days from anywhere, all things stagnate, and begin to choke upon the stench of corruption that has not yet been banished from Creation ... along with all the poison you humans have created for yourselves. When I return, you all rejoice at what I do to refresh and relieve the situation.

I am your mightiest global companion, although you have never once seen me, except as the glitter of light sparkling through the swaying trees as I pass, and the kaleidoscope of dancing shadows I make between moving objects and the sun. You have seen my work at every turn, be it a dune of sand or the clouds piling high or floating by above your head. You have felt me playing with your hair, tugging at your clothes and even you and your things -- even big things like trucks and cranes and bridges.

You discuss me in all kinds of categories, yet I defy all your categories when I come as a soothing whisper, a sigh through the woods, a whistle through your sails, a roar in my might everywhere, and pass into your memory, your poems, and your songs ... and carry those away too when you leave your papers for me to scatter like the autumn leaves.

Even the Creator, when He wished to have you understand how His Spirit works in the hearts of men, condescended to use me and how I work to put the matter on a level you could understand.

Who am I?

I am your global companion, the wind.

Photo Credit: Deeann D. Mathews, the author