Prologue
It is cold and quiet in the high places of the world, whereto even the strongest birds cannot climb. In these regions, it is as if the Earth below is a child's playing rug. When clouds move over the spectacle below, it is as if a new world has revealed itself: a world for wind giants who need nothing more than the heavens above and the white cloth of clouds below. This is no place for small, mortal beings. It is too large for them, too windy and too cold. Too lonely. They belong on the surface and thus, they are drawn there inexorably.
A strange ball of lightning appeared in this land of giants. With fiery blue lashes, it illuminated the clouds far below, only dimly visible in the soft starlight. The lightning flashes intensified when, after perhaps twenty seconds, it disappeared with a blinding flash of white-hot light. Suddenly, a naked man appeared from where the lightning sphere had been. Silently, he fell, head over head, tilting his neck in what might be disorientation, but no fear showed on his face. After several minutes, he was swallowed up by the black clouds, waiting for him like a giant black mattress. Then, all trace of this extraordinary event had vanished, as though it had all been a strange hallucination, and the land belonged only to the cold winds again.
Seconds later, the naked man dropped from the underside of the cloud covering. Here, cold rain was being swept around in harsh gusts of wind. The man waved around his arms to stabilize his fall and peered into the darkness below. If he was afraid to crash into the ground, it did not show in his composure. Instead, he seemed to assess the lay of the land calmly. He continued to scan the ground until it seemed to shoot up at him. Then, he maneuvered himself into a fetus position, protecting his head with both his arms, and crashed into a shallow stream with an enormous clap that sent a nearby herd of reindeer running. Somewhere far off into the distance, a scared feline screamed. The world was silenced for a few minutes. Then, insects started to chirp and all was normal again.