Angel and Pneuma did not answer my question at first. They both looked down at the floor of the car. Angel turned to look out the window behind him as if ignoring my question. Was my question that out there? A healing angel can heal an ailing President? Right? 

Pneuma broke the silence. “Madame President, I’m not doubting Dr. Althea’s capabilities to provide healing, but…the procedure is intense. It’s not like a typical blood transfusion, you know? You’re gonna really need to want it. If you really want Dr. Althea to assist in your healing, we can arrange a meeting for her to to meet with you and explain the procedure.”

“What is her process that bad?” I chuckled nervously. 

“Not…bad. Just intense.” 

I felt the car turn into a narrow windy road. I fell silent with them as I was taken by the vast open grassy field. The view was…breathtaking. “Angel! Pneuma! The Sea!” 

“Yes,” Angel smiled. “One of the best parts of Ruha is that you have excellent views of the Sea and the black sandy beaches.” 

The car rolled to a stop near a small solitary trailer that stood a few hundred feet away from a sea of windmills. As Frank helped me out of the SUV, I could see a vast ocean a few dozen miles away in the distance and to the far right of us, Mt. Harri continued to rise up. It hit me that where we stood was a stretch of plateau that should create the perfect updraft from the sea and the mountain. Curious, I thought to myself. No wind…

A slender and tall man with curly, fiery red hair and matching freckles bounded out of the trailer and headed our way. He wore brown tweed trousers, a plain white tshirt, and a goofy, innocuous smile. He looked to be no older than 18 years old.  “Madame President! Everyone!” He laughed then bowed and offered the three finger salute. “Avel Portur! So glad you could make it here! I just got the call from Mr. Voltaire right before you came! Please excuse how I’m dressed.” 

I looked down at the gym clothes I was wearing and made an awkward shrug. “No, I should be the one appologizing. Please excuse the way I’m dressed. Thanks for having us.” 

“Anytime, Madame President! Mr. Voltaire mentioned something about how you’re checking into our little power problem here?” 

I nodded and shielded my eyes. The sun was really beating down on us at this spot. “Yes,” I said. “This looks like the perfect spot for wind. Why aren’t the turbines turning?” I gestured to the sea of frozen giant, white windmills on grassy plateau. 

Avel pulled out a white towel and mopped the sweat from his burnt red forehead. I shook my head. He definitely did not look like he was made for the sun. “It’s this weather.” He gestured at the sky. “It’s got all my wind farms down actually.” 

“Oh, there’s more than one?”

“We have many across Ruha. Not so many in Alma and one or two in Sherah. But Ruha has the best wind, not just because of the mountain and the location of the sea, but because we have the wind angels.” 

“Wind angels?” I looked at Angel and Pneuma who were both removing their blazers due to the heat. 

“Right, Madame President,” Pneuma interjected. “Remember the wind angels? They blow wind.” 

I pursed my lips for minute while I tried to remember something. Nothing. I looked back at them for help. Angel came to my assistance. 

“Remember how we shared that angels spend an incredible amount of time breathing? They spend just about as many moments of the day working on their breath that you would do thinking random thoughts about anything. Some angels are particularly good at breathing so well, they get employed for it.” Angel made an exaggerated inhale and an even more dramatic exhale. “Put me in a contest with one of these angels in a breathing contest with any one of us and they would win every time. In fact, we have breath sports like this one in Ruha. Wind angels can inhale for hours and their exhales can last for days. They’re that good at it.” 

I laughed at Angel’s demonstration. “Wind angels must have amazing lung capacity.” 

“Oh they do, Madame President!” said Avel in excitement. “I may be the manager of this here farm, but I’m really an apprentice of one of them. I’m working on being the best breather in all of Sherah, so we can have some representation in the Island Olympics. No Sheronite has yet made the podium in breathwork.” 

“Wait, you’re a Sheronite?” I asked inquisitively. “You look to be the same height of most angels I know.” I pointed to Angel. Who let out a “Hey!”

“That I am, Madame President! One of the few Sheronites that can live and work without issues in Ruha,” he beamed proudly. 

“Sheronites have issues being in Ruha?” I asked. 

Avel shifted to one leg and scratched his head. “Well…most Sheronites can really only enjoy Ruha’s beach and maybe come up about this far up the mountain. This plateau is a little higher than Alma’s plateau, so they can handle that. The city of Ruha sits at about 7 times higher than where Alma is. And then the top of the mountain is 3 times higher than that. Most Sheronites can’t enjoy Ruha without oxygen tanks. You know they sell those a little up the way by the way if you have to head up there after this?” 

“So the air’s that thin up there?” 

“Oh yeah. It’s definitely an adjustment. We usually tell people to take their time going up the mountain to adjust to the altitude and avoid altitude sickness, you know? That’s why from here forward there’s so many rest stops and overlooks along the main road, and then the main road stops at Ruha. You’re gonna have to climb by foot the rest of the way to the top of the mountain if you want to see the world from there.” He chuckled. “I wanna be one of the few Sheronites to make it to the top and make my tribe proud! I also want to be the first one to make it without an oxygen tank. That’s why I work on this wind farm, to explore Ruha and work on getting my lungs as good as an angel’s!” He raised both fists in the air and took a deep long breath, followed by an even longer exhale. 

“Avel, that sounds like an amazing dream. What tribe are you from again? I might be traveling there soon and I’d love to tell them how well you’re doing.” 

“I’m from the Ilmedous tribe and my family is part of the Aelous Clan. Our tribe is famous for the musicians, singers and politicians they produce, but I want to make my tribe famous for more than that. You know? Something a little different. I used to just be a delivery boy for my tribe, but when Mr. Voltaire saw me practicing breathwork one day when he was installing a solar panel for our village, he asked if I wanted a job working on one of Sherah’s wind farms with the wind angels. And that was that. I now manage an entire wind farm on my own. From delivery boy to professional breath athlete. From Sherah. Can you imagine that?” His broad smile faltered. 

“And I can get closer to that goal as soon as my coach and his crew get well. They’re sick right now. That’s why there’s no wind.” He sighed. 

I leaned against the SUV, realized it was too hot and jolted back up again. “Yeah. That’s the problem. The wind angels make sure that there’s always wind flowing through right where the windmills are despite the weather, and on paper it should work, except, for some reason, the weather has been entirely too hot and the angel have been getting sun sickness and heat stroke. All of the wind farms in Sherah and Alma have temporarily shut down until they can get better. 

“Occassionally, we’ll get a miraculous updraft from the sea or a random storm rolls through, which allows me to keep this wind farm open, but most days, the turbines are like this. Still.  I have enough breath right now to maybe move one turbine. But just one of my wind angels when they’re healthy can move all of them. Their breath is so forceful we have to sit them on one of those smaller uninhabited islands off the coast of this one to give them the space they need to not blow any of us away.” 

“Wait…you can move a turbine? With your breath?” 

“Oh yeah… That’s what the breathwork sport is. It’s all about how many turbines someone can turn. Follow me. I’ll show you.” 

We followed Avel about 100 yards to the nearest turbine. He walked up to it, rested his hand on the turbine with the deepest respect, then turned about face and walked several paces away from it. Once he was at his desired distance, he sat on the yellowing grass facing the turbines, closed his eyes and began deep slow breaths. In with the nostrils. Out with the mouth. The inhales became slower as the exhales became more forceful.  Eventually, he pulled in the desired amount of air he wanted, formed his mouth into a pucker and blew with such direct force at the turbine that it…turned! It turned about three rotations before slowing back down again.

We all clapped and cheered for him. Avel blushed and ran back up to the group. “Not my best, but you get the idea. My coach says I gotta at least keep one of these spinning for an hour before I can even consider competing with normal angels. Definitely not ready for wind angels yet,” he gasped, out of breath.  

“Anyway, one thing wind angels have a hard time doing their jobs in is cloudless sunny weather that never lets up.  Especially when the temperature climbs incredibly high. Oh, there’s rankings among wind angels too. So some wind angels are so good at blowing things, they spend their time in the sky blowing clouds and making sure these clouds rain in the spots they’re supposed to rain in. These are called global wind angels, because they kind of just float all over the world blowing in the direction they’re supposed to blow in, of course. 

“My job as a manager of a wind farm is to coordinate when a global wind angel is coming and in what direction they’re coming in.  I then position my wind farm angels in the same direction and they help to catch part of the global wind angel’s breath and redirect some of it toward the turbines. The turbines of course swivel in whatever direction the wind is blowing and oila we have consistent electricity!”

Angel and Pneuma nodded as if they already knew how this process worked. I was floored. I didn’t know it took so much coordination. 

“Anyway,” Avel continued. “It all works gloriously…when our wind angels aren’t so sick. It’s like an epidemic this sun sickness and heat stroke. Most of them are in the State Hospital right now.” Avel pointed up at Ruha City in the mountain above. “It’s so bad right now that we have only a few global angels to coordinate with and a handful of overworked wind angels. Don’t get me wrong. They can blow the turbines themselves, but for the amount of turbines this country has…it’s all too much for just a few angels to do on their own. You know? And I’d step in if I could, but you see where my breathwork is at. So I just do the coordinating work for now and keep my radio open to hear when another global angel is passing by so we get those miraculous storms and updrafts to add to our diminishing supply of stored energy.” 

I sat with the news of this and looked around at all of the still turbines. There had to be 100 or so turbines here alone. I looked at Angel and Pneuma who kept their silence. Frank and his team were off at a distance scanning the area for potential threats. 

“What can I do, Avel?” I asked with as much heartfelt concern as I could muster. 

Avel lifted his downcast gaze and looked toward the sky. Then he shook his head and sighed once more. “Look, Madame President. I don’t really know… I’d say, ‘Let’s buy another wind farm’ , but I know our country’s in major financial straits and you’d need more wind angels for that. You could see if other wind angels from other countries are willing to come out and help, but I’m not sure if they’ll come down with the same sickness as the other wind angels.” 

He ran his large hands through his hair and looked up at Mt. Harri. “See the top of the mountain? It’s so hot here even Mt. Harri has lost most of its snow. People come here for the winter sports all year long and then a day at the beach afterward. The ice sheets up there have nearly melted. And the wind angels draw in the cold air from the ice sheets to help them maintain very long exhales on the turbines. If the air’s too hot, it’s hard to catch it all, you know? It kind of all just ‘floats’ away from them.” 

He let his hands drop in defeat. “If anything, maybe you can find out why the weather’s been so hot lately? Our nation needs wind desperately and the wind angels defintely want to offer their services. So I think it would help if we all knew why it’s been so hot here.” 

I rested my hand on Avel’s shoulder and looked up at his sky blue eyes. “I think that’s something I can do with my team. We all would like to know why it’s been so hot here lately.” 

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