When it's warm and balmy, jewel-blue skies and warm breezes, he goes about his business, efficient and calm and courteous to all and sundry. Nick is the quintessential business man, polished and professional, clad in pinstripe, fountain pens and firm handshakes. On sunny days, he negotiates deal after stunning deal with others, shrewd steel-trap mind behind eyes like the open sky. Steady hands over the polished mahogany of a boardroom table or the polished steel of a golf club.

Today, it's Sunday and not at all sunny. The sky is overcast but there is no rain. The weather is defiant, more angry than sad, and it's days like this that he remembers.

Nick leaves his immaculate penthouse apartment, locks the door. Takes the lift down to the first floor and steps outside. The wind howls and rages around him, leaves flying off of trees, branches rattling. His hair whips into his face, tangles like angry speech. A day five years ago. An airport in a strange town, a delayed flight. A woman with a defiantly beautiful face and leaf-green eyes full of storms without tears.

He remembers his tie flapping in the wind, and holding the door open for a young woman with chestnut hair and a battered suitcase. A conversation in front of the moving display of flight times, carrying over to the food court. His flight was delayed three hours, now a red-eye, and she... she was just looking for herself, blown wherever the wind took her.

She was twenty years old, alone in the world. She'd never known her parents, never felt unconditional love. She'd never gone to college, splurged money on a manicure, had her chair pulled out for her by a guy. Odd jobs and trimmed nails and a dusky pink blouse that had definitely seen better days. Bartender and cashier and laundry-woman and street-corner musician. She reminded him of a daisy growing between the cracks of the city sidewalk, pale and solitary and unpretentious and upright. A soul that had yet to find itself, fragile, but never broken.

Three hours, a meal, a drink, a conversation about anything and everything and nothing as the wind howled around them, audible even through double-paned glass. He'd insisted on buying, and she'd glared at him at first. And then the generically pleasant voice of the flight attendant came on the intercom, announcing that his flight was boarding. She'd given him a smile that had transformed her entire face, and just a little dazed, he'd walked onto his plane, sat down in business class, and buckled up with only a vague idea of what he was doing.

It was only after the flight took off amidst turbulence that he realized that he didn't even know her full name.

The wind continues now to shriek around him, fierce and forlorn, and Nick watches a styrofoam cup that missed a nearby trash can lift off the ground, white and barrel-round like an airplane, and fly away into the night. Five years and three hours and one moment. Time lapsed and a conversation about nothing important and a smile that made a lone girl's face the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life.

A piece of sand flies into his face and his eyes water. And so he closes them, swipes half-heartedly with the back of his hand, and relives... If he listens closely enough, gives in to a moment of fancy, he can almost hear her voice in the wind.

He can almost imagine that the wind carried lost souls to their destinations.