The Storm That Spoke

The sky was an iron gray, brooding with unspoken secrets. Tall trees, their branches like raised arms in protest, swayed gently beneath the thick clouds. Somewhere in the distance, thunder grumbled—not loud, not yet angry, but like a warning whisper.

Thirteen-year-old Hina stood alone on her rooftop in a small town nestled among the hills. Her schoolbooks lay forgotten inside. Today, the weather was calling. Not just in the usual way—it was whispering to her, beckoning her to listen.

Ever since her mother had passed away two years ago, Hina had developed a strange sensitivity to storms. Her father said it was nonsense, a result of too many sleepless nights. But Hina knew better. The clouds spoke. Not in words, but in emotions. Each storm was different. Some were sad, some furious, and some…some were lost.

Today’s storm felt different. It was filled with longing.

As lightning forked across the sky, she felt it—a pull in her chest. A sensation of being needed. The clouds churned, and the winds shifted. With every gust, she felt whispers tickling her ears, voices without language, but heavy with feeling.

She closed her eyes.

And then, in the dark folds of the sky, she saw a vision—not with her eyes, but within her mind. A boy, about her age, trapped beneath a collapsed wall in a distant village. Mud slides. Rain. Crying. No one could hear him—but the storm could.

The storm was trying to help.

Hina rushed inside and scribbled a quick note for her father, then sprinted to the village’s emergency office. She was half-soaked by the time she arrived, babbling about a boy named Daniyal and a mudslide near Gulban Hill.

The rescue workers looked puzzled—how could she know? But the chief, an old man with kind eyes, remembered her mother.

“Let’s check,” he said quietly. “Just in case.”

Three hours later, the boy was found. Bruised, but alive. Just as Hina had said.

Afterward, the townspeople spoke of the strange storm, the girl who listened, and the miracle at Gulban Hill. They started to believe what Hina had always known:

Storms speak. You just have to know how to listen.

And on cloudy days, when the winds rustled through the trees and thunder whispered across the horizon, Hina would climb to her rooftop—not out of fear, but to hear what the sky had to say next.