A Wind-Walker is very slight, about as tall as a Human, and its skin is like polished glass, clear or faintly tinted pale blue, silver, or white, so that the sky shows through it. Its hair is like flowing silk, long and always streaming in some wind. It has no feet: its legs taper away to nothing, and it glides on the air a hand’s breadth above whatever is beneath it. Its eyes are wide and bright and see in all directions. It never stops moving, turning, drifting, darting. It speaks quickly, in a light, whistling voice, and often interrupts. It smells of snow and open sky.

They live throughout the Unbound Gale, among its floating islands, swirling vortices, and mountains of compressed wind, and never settle in one place for long.

They are explorers and messengers. For them the universe is open space to be crossed, and speed, agility, and the freedom to go anywhere are what they value. They are restless and energetic, and they see visitors as heavy or grounded. A Wind-Walker will carry a message, and will usually have told it to three others on the way.

They do not breathe air; they are the air. They draw their strength from motion and kinetic energy, and they live while the wind blows. They glide on the currents faster than any bird.

They are said to be born out of a gust, and they live while the wind blows. A Wind-Walker that stops moving fades; those that hang still in mid-air are the Stillness.

Travellers come to the Gale for inspiration or to escape confinement, and a Wind-Walker is the swiftest guide, if it can be made to stay. Their danger is the plane’s: a traveller who tries to stop may become one of the Stillness, frozen in mid-air.

Travellers who come back through high peaks, open plains, and places of great height, the Gale’s gates, tell of glass-skinned messengers on the wind. Mountain peoples on Caeldon tell of a voice that passes on the wind with news before anyone could have brought it; some of those voices may be Wind-Walkers. Teachers of Gale Magic hold them up as the art’s ideal of freedom.