Francisco walked at a brisk pace towards the city, he wanted to be as far away from the village as physically possible, for he could not bear to hear any more accusations from the townspeople. How they had turned so fast on him still surprised him, but there was no use thinking about that too much. All that he knew was that Sam had been very kind to him, giving him the address of his sister's apartment in the city. Sam was a good person, he was the best tailor in town, a couple years older than Francisco, and had always been very kind to him, even going so far as to give him the address of his sister's house in the City. After the villagers started shouting for his arrest, accusing him of demon worship and who knows how many unsavory things it was only Sam and his husband James who were willing to listen to him. In fact, they let Francisco stay with them for the night, as the owner of the bakery had fired him and kicked him out of the room, he had atop the store, barely giving him enough time to gather his stuff before he was forced to leave.

The morning after, once things had calmed down a little with the townspeople, James had suggested that Francisco could ask Sam's sister for lodging and help getting settled up in the city, as she was a very well respected and wealthy musician there. Soon after, Sam had helped him leave the village unnoticed, providing him with food for his journey, and even some money for lodging and booking passage on a wagon heading towards the city. Now, he found himself walking on the dirt road that Sam had pointed out in his map, wondering how things had gotten this bad.

He had been living in that town for at least a couple of years, ever since he had left his home, when he was around sixteen, to travel the world and pursue writing. He came from a family of bakers, so it was really quite lucky that he was able to get the education that he did. It was only because the town's librarian had been a renowned scholar in her past, and now tutored the town's children for free, that he even learnt to read and write. Irene was the librarian's name, she was one of the first people that seemed to understand him for who he really was, and saw great promise in him as a writer, taking him under her wing as his mentor. That wasn't the only thing that Irene had done for him really, she introduced him to so many different people from different walks of life through the stories she had written during her life.

There was a story in particular that had seemed to awaken something inside him, it was a piece of fiction, a myth she had heard in her travels. It told the tale of a musician of many talents, who had lived during the time of the gods, searching for songs to write and tales to tell, slowly gathering a group of faithful friends from across the land. This musician lived the freest life one could hope for, free of guilt, helping those that she came across, and traveling wherever he wanted. A life one could only hear of within a myth, taking down crooked monarchs, freeing people from enslavements by wicked wizards and making a name for herself alongside those he held dear. All these exciting stories about this musician enthralled Francisco, but there was an aspect of them that held his attention more than anything. The musician, despite always being the same person, was sometimes referred to as a woman, sometimes as a man, sometimes as neither and sometimes as both. This idea made something blossom in young Francisco's mind, and it made him so curious that he ended up asking Irene about it.

"Well, didn't I tell you that the musician lived free?" she had said, "Why would they ever choose to constrain themself to one thing, their gender, their identity was never written in a book or etched in stone. No, it was carried by the wind, painted in the sky, flowing in the rivers they swam across each day. A life like that was something I could only ever hope for, but still I tried, and I searched, and I travelled, and in the end I found what I have known, and believe me, I have never been happier."

Something changed in Francisco that day, but something else, fear, shame, expectations he would never know, stamped that feeling down, made him bury it, believing it would only ever exist in the pages of fantasies he would never read. Still, Francisco continued studying, his interest in writing growing stronger the more he learnt about the world through the librarian's stories. Soon, he told his parents that he did not actually want to be a baker, like his older sister who was slated to inherit the family bakery, or his older brother that was preparing to go study pastry making in the city. Instead, he told them, he wanted to be a writer, to travel the world like the many stories he had read, and to write about all that he could find. He was expecting some level of resistance, so it really surprised him when his mother and father where both extremely supportive of this dream of his.

It was his mother in fact, who had suggested that he head to Hilltop's Rest, to start off his journey there, as it was a town that many travelers passed on the way to one of the main cities of the continent. His father suggested that he could finish learning the basics of baking so that he could work under a baker there to make a living while he did his writing. Thus, for the winter months before travel was possible, and even a little into the spring, he focused on learning as much about writing as he could from the librarian, and about baking from his parents. During that time, especially when he would write, fantasizing about his future travels, the part that he had long since decided to stamp down, started to stir once again.

He became increasingly troubled by his existence as a man, trying his best to distance himself from it as discretely as possible, yet he could not fully embrace these feelings, scared as he was of where they would lead him. Finally, a couple of days after spring harvest had come and gone, with the ruckus that the festival brought to the town settling down, it was time for Francisco to be off. From the room he had once shared with his older brother he gathered his most prized possessions: the fountain pen that Irene had gifted him long ago; the notebook he had bound himself from scraps of leather; a couple of different colored inks; and a small wooden flute he had bought for himself long ago. He also gathered some clothing and put it all in a travelling pack, carefully wrapping the inks in paper and then putting them inside little leather bags to hopefully prevent them from breaking and spilling out over everything. Then, with his bag now packed, he headed over to the library, wishing to say goodbye to Irene, hoping that it wouldn't be the last time he would see her. When he got to the library Irene was already waiting for him with a small package wrapped in crimson paper in her hands.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" said Irene as she saw him approaching "Nervous?"

"A little" replied Francisco, "but mostly excited I think".

"That's good, the weather seems fair, you shouldn't have trouble getting passage across the river I don't think "

"The river crossing was the least of my worries really" replied Francisco with a slight chuckle.

"I would imagine. Have you said your goodbyes to your family yet?"

"I haven't yet know, I wanted to stop by here first to ask you about something"

"Alright, sure ask me anything you want" replied the librarian.

Francisco breathed in deeply, thinking about how he would word the thought that had been troubling him for the past months now. "Do you remember a while back when you showed me that myth about the traveling musician?" said Francisco, tentatively.

"I do in fact; do you want to take it with you?"

"No, it’s alright I already copied it down a while back. My question is related to something you said back then, when I asked you about the musicians gender."

A look of realization briefly crossed the librarians face, then, she smiled back at Francisco as she nodded her head. "Yes, I remember"

"That's good, back then you told me that you too had searched for a long time just like the musician, and in the end you came across what you have now... And I was wondering if you thought that perhaps something like that could be in the future for me?" Francisco stammered a little after saying those final words "Of course if that isn't a weird question to ask, I'm sorry if it was."

"It’s quite alright, and yes, I have thought, ever since that day, that one day you would seek those answers for yourself. All I can say to you is to listen to yourself, to let yourself feel the way you feel, and trust that you will one day reach a conclusion. When you do, I'll be there to help you, you just have to reach out to me."

"Okay, I will ... thanks" said Francisco, looking down at the ground

"Good, now, here you go" said Irene as she gave him the crimson package. "Open this once you feel ready to accept who you are"

"Thank you, I’ll think on it"

"You don't have to thank me for it, I just hope it will serve you well, now make sure you get going, you don't want it to start getting dark before you make it the river, do you?"

"Thank you so much, I'll write!" said Francisco, as he walked out the door, putting the red gift into his bag, thinking only of the journey to come.

"Bye bye" said Irene, as she waved and then turned back to her reading.

Francisco continued walking on the dirt road, heading away from what had been his home for the past years, and even further away from the place where he was born. In that moment he felt quite alone, despite Sam, his husband and their daughter, as well as his entire family all who loved and appreciated him. He didn't feel like they quite knew who he was, like he was lying to all of them. He pushed those thoughts aside, instead concentrating on his walking and on the poem, he had started writing a little while ago. Soon, the sun started to set, he had made it about 20 kilometers away from the village, not the best pace but he wasn't very used to walking, and often had to look at the map to get his bearings and avoid getting lost. He stopped and looked at his map, searching for a nearby roadside inn or something of the sort where he could stop for the night.

He found one about 2 kilometers west of where he was, so he made it there, walking at a constant pace, hoping it wouldn't become dark before he could reach it. As he walked there, the wind seemed to pick up speed, whistling across the trees that lined the sides of the path, and scattering dirt and dust into the air. The wind got so bad that Francisco decided to stop for a second in between the trees, so he sat on a stone near a tree that was big enough to shelter him from most of the wind. The wind was still too strong to do any writing without his papers getting blown around, so he instead took out a piece of wood and a small knife that Sam had been teaching him how to whittle with. He waited for a while for the wind to abate, when a sound he was all too familiar with reached his ears. An airy whisper started to take form within the cacophony of sounds the wind was causing. At first, it was completely indistinguishable from the wind, but slowly it became clearer that it was a name. A name that somehow, Francisco was completely unable to understand.

It had first happened a year into his stay in Hilltop's Rest, Francisco had just finished a very long warm summer workday, working the oven to make sure there was enough bread for the 6pm dinner time rush. So, he took a small hike like he usually did once he was done with work, walking through the town plaza, past the well on the outskirts of town and a little way into the pine forest that stretched far into the distance. There, he followed the markings he had made on trees to the small nearby clearing where he had set up a makeshift, open-air writing space. He took out his writing supplies from the small, waterproof drawer-desk combo that the town’s carpenter had sold to him for cheap because no one seemed to find a use for it. Then, he dragged the large stone he usually used to sit on near the desk and began writing.

Despite his best efforts, he could not make much progress in the current story he was writing, a retelling of an old myth the town’s religious leader had told him. The persistent summer heat did not help his concentration, so when the wind suddenly started to pick up and the air seemed to get colder around him, he welcomed it dearly. Soon, the wind became much too strong, however, the pages of his notebook moved by the wind far too much for him to continue his concentration. Before he could get up to leave, however, the voice started whispering to him, just like what he heard now in the dusty path on the way to the inn. Unintelligible at first, but soon clearly sounding like a name, a desperate call for a name he could not understand, despite it being said in a language he spoke. That time, he had been quite scared of the voice, so he immediately gathered his stuff and ran all the way back to the bakery, much to the surprise of the baker, who usually expected him to show up much later than that.

Now, however, as he sat in between the trees hearing the howling of the wind, he did not fear the voice any longer. He had heard it far too many times in the past years for him to fear it anymore, even less now that the incident in the village had occurred. He had grown tired, tired of hiding away from the voice, the voice that had led him to start investigating the occult, the voice that had made him develop an interest in witchcraft in the hopes of understanding what it was. He was angry at the voice, at himself for not understanding what it said, for letting it drive him to such lengths that the people of the village began to fear him. He was sad and lonely; he had been walking for far too long now. So, he did something that he had never tried before, he tried listening to what the voice had to say. He focused on the sound it made as it glided upon the wind across the treetops.

He tried to understand the name that it so desperately wanted him to hear. He thought back upon his time in the village, slowly becoming himself more and more, free from the expectations of the people that used to know him before. Yet, all that growth and change, it had been for nothing, as the voice had grown more and more insistent, more demanding of his attention, appearing in the wind every time he found himself alone. It drove him away from the people he had started to grow fond of, it drove him to hide away in his room for day’s at a time, doing nothing but reading about myths, legends and ancient magic. He neglected his duties, shied away from any human contact to the point that he would stop working the shop, choosing instead to hide away in the back of the bakery, working in the kitchen and the oven, only talking to Sam and his husband whenever they came by for their bread. It all came to a head when a traveling merchant came into town, selling the strangest, most fantastical wares one could imagine. She was a very reserved, quiet woman whenever she wasn’t trying to sell her stock, and would usually hide away in her cart, sometimes not opening shop for days at a time. When Francisco was at his most desperate, it was her that he approached, looking for any answer on how he could solve his plight.

Unfortunately for him, she was more than ready to provide him with knowledge, and more than that, a solution. She told him that he was being haunted by a ghost, one that most likely had become drawn to him after he had started going to the clearing in the forest. Francisco, desperate as he was, did not question her assertion, instead begging her for a solution, which she provided. An amulet, she had given him, one that would be able to cast out the ghost haunting him if he put it up to the sun in the middle of the clearing during a bright cloudless day. Desperate as he was, he believed her, and as soon as a cloudless day came along, he excused himself with the baker, saying that he had to send a letter to his family, and would be back shortly. As he ran out into the forest, he faintly started hearing the voice in the wind yet again, furthering his resolution to cast out the spirit once and for all. He reached the clearing soon after, he quickly took out the amulet from his bag, held it up to the sky, and then everything went black. He passed out for a moment, only to awaken soon after to find the forest around him ablaze.

The amulet seemed to have caused a fire somehow, a fire that now spread rapidly from tree to tree, dangerously close to the town’s very flammable wooden houses. Suddenly, Francisco remembers the desk where he had been storing all of his most prized writings, he found it, charred, with all but his most prized notebook burnt to an unrecoverable state. It was but a week ago that this had happened, the fire spread to the houses and had to be put out by the combined efforts of the entire town. By then, as Francisco was coming back alone from the forest, the merchant was long gone, and the town’s people, seeing him with the amulet still in his hand, accused him of witchcraft, and of attempting to sacrifice the town in some strange ritual. All of this now played out in Francisco’s mind yet again, as he listened intently to the voice in the wind. How could he had let himself be tricked so easily, and now, nothing had changed, the voice was back to haunting him, and there was nothing he could do about it. He breathed in deeply, thinking back further to his time studying with Irene, to the stories she had told him, and finally to that final conversation they had before he left.

He thought of the box, still unopened in his bag, and of the myth of the musician. How could he not be like them, why couldn’t he come to terms with himself like they had. It had been quite a long time now, since he had read that myth, a long time to live denying himself. It was then that he finally understood what the voice in the wind was saying. It was something so very simple that she should have heard it for what it was long before. A name, new yet familiar to her, one that rang true far more than any she had previously thought of. Flora was the name she heard in the wind that day, a name she chose for herself, a name that she had known for a while, but had never took the time to look at straight on.

Thus, when she finally got to the City, beaming in her true self more than ever, yet tired from the long journey, she made her way to where Sam had said her sister lived. When she knocked on the door, fearful, yet excited at the possibility of a new beginning, she was greeted by an unexpected familiar face. It was Irene, smiling down at her from the doorway,
“come on in”, she said, “I’m glad you finally made it here, Flora”.