Dinah scared

The whistling wind filtered through the seams of Dinah's window, blew through the light curtains and billowed them, lifting them to the ceiling. The whistling became a rattling sound that woke the girl.

Dinah was a brave little girl who slept alone. That is, she slept in her own room, but before she fell asleep she made sure her dolls were within reach. Sometimes Dinah would wake up in the wee hours of the morning, then she would squeeze Tedy the bear in her arms.

Outside, the wind speed increased and the high-pitched whistling sound of earlier gradually became a shrill sound that joined the creaking of the window hinges and the rattling of the curtains on the roof. Dinah began to get nervous. The roar of the wind always made her imagine catastrophes.

Dinah guessed that outside the wind was mercilessly hitting all the windows in the neighborhood and all the curtains were hitting all the roofs. In her mind she heard a deafening sound that grew and grew. She saw the trees struggling against the wind and felt fear for the tender leaves, flowers and fruits. She looked at the ground. The street was covered with the multicolored objects that the wind was blowing out of the windows, stuffed animals, pillows, books, blankets .....

The spectacle was joined by household goods, chairs that floated, sheets that unfolded in the air and danced to the sound of the gusts of wind, a meeting of tablecloths with sheets, towels with tea towels, fathers' shirts with mothers' dresses.

Dinah's eyes widened as she squeezed Tedy in her arms. It was then that the normally open bedroom doors began to slam shut, one after the other. Dinah was convinced she couldn't move from the bed.

Mom and Dad had told her many times that if she ever got lost, in a shopping mall, in a stadium, in an airport, or if something incomprehensible happened to her, to stay as close as possible to where she was because they would always look for her and find her.

Dinah used to ask herself precise questions: How will they find me if one day I start walking and end up getting lost? Can the world end?

This question always came to her mind: Can the world end? Dinah was tempted to get out of bed and look out of the window. If she had done so, she would have realized that the sounds she was hearing were only the product of a windstorm. That heavy downpours were beginning to fall on the street and people were taking out their umbrellas to defy the weather. Perhaps she would have laughed at the antics of the wind, lifting women's skirts, carrying off hats, inverting the tops of umbrellas.

But Dinah preferred to stay in her bed hugging Tedy. In her mind, cars were flying through the air, climbing the black clouds and falling like bombs on the fields. The wind was lifting the waters of the country's rivers and seas, and it kept blowing, blowing to other continents. On those continents there would be many frightened children hugging their stuffed animals and all the streets of the planet would be carpeted with all the objects that the wind blew out of the windows of the houses.

The flying objects collided with each other producing millions of clicks. Dinah imagined the wind becoming a typhoon entering all the grottoes of the earth pushing, pushing, pushing towards the center of the planet and imagined the earth inflating more and more, like its curtains.

Then Dinah glimpsed a loud crackling sound coming from the center of the earth and the planet exploding into many parts. In one of those parts was her, floating in space, in her bed clinging to Tedy and wondering if mom and dad would find her in the vastness of the universe.

Dinah hesitated, her throat became a lump and her eyes began to glow. Then she couldn't hold it in any longer and screamed at the top of her lungs. "Daddy, Mommy!"

Daddy and Mommy quickly arrived, looked at their little girl's frightened expression and said in chorus.

"It's okay, Dina, it's just the wind!

Dinah trusted her parents. She said nothing.

"Go back to sleep," Dad told her as he wrapped her in her blanket.

Dina clung to Papa's hand and asked, her voice cracking, if she could sleep with them.

Papa lifted her in his arms and carried her to the big bed.

There, with her parents on either side of her, Dinah sighed deeply and fell asleep.