Author’s note: Writing again and just wanted to get some feedback. There’s more to come!

Summary: "Just because you could hear things, doesn’t mean they were meant to be heard."
- Join Keiko Tanaka as she struggles to overcome writers block imposed by a nameless character plaguing her subconscious until she finally gives in and grants the suffering character her own name.

Sounds In The Wind

Just because you could hear things, doesn’t mean they were meant to be heard.

It was only in the lurking shadows that the figure could be seen. Neither black nor white, the creaminess of the skin was hidden by the rough branches that’d tormented it along the way. She’d cried out mercilessly, but the wind continued to prevail.

Nothing could stop the harsh nature that marred her unmarked flesh. Sweet and innocent as the virginal autumn before the winter crept upon the unsuspecting ground. Frozen and then shattered in time.

This girl could only cry and pray that someone would take notice of her, yet there was no one there to save her from her own fate.

The destiny of Keiko Tanaka.

Chapter 1

Lowering the tape recorder from her lips, Keiko sighed at length and allowed her long lashes to flutter closed. It was nearing the early hours of the morning and while the young woman had a grueling day of work ahead of her, the familiar story relentlessly floated through her mind. It was times like these in which she wished she’d never been interested in writing. I need a character name, she once again told herself as she switched off the handheld winding machine and dropped it beside her on the bed.

Within a few hours her alarm would sound and she would be forced to depart from the sleep that had just settled upon her. For months she had been struggling with a new plot and a new character to start her latest novel. However, it didn’t matter how many books of names she went through and how many times she searched the internet, no name seemed to fit the story better than her own. Keiko Tanaka. The meaning, ‘adored one’, somehow fit the desperate woman who ran from an unwritten enemy and an unwritten past. Having chosen to start the novel with such a desperate and descriptive opening, Keiko found it difficult to learn the back-story on her character.

Ms. Tanaka wasn’t one for plots and she’d become well-known enough from her one and only other novel, Silence From Afar, that in her interview she attested to allowing the characters to write themselves.

“But how do you know how it will end?”

“I’m as surprised as my readers.”

However, the crying woman who hid herself in the shadows was starting to become an obsession of hers. I need a character name. Who was this woman and what was she running from? Where did she work, who were her friends, and who was this man that betrayed her?

When such a thought hit her, Keiko easily reached for the tape recorder again and mumbled her thoughts groggily into it. A man that betrayed her. Why? Love affair? C rime of passion? Before such thoughts could sink in, Keiko was asleep and her alarm sounded for the start of her real day’s work; one in which Keiko Tanaka was nothing more than a character in her own story.