“
Once, Kae had carried thousands of words in her hand. As a spirit of the wind, she had reveled in the power of it—to cradle things that were both fragile and sharp—and it had always been a delight when she chose to release them. To feel the timbres and textures of those many voices, from deep to airy, from melodious to rough-hewn. Once, she had let gossip and news melt from her fingers and unspool across the hills of Cadence, watching how humankind reacted when they caught the words either like hail or thistledown.
”
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