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Gusts (aka Woo Woo Woo)
"Is it ever windy out today!"
"What?"
"Windy!" He gulped an "Out!", but he wasn't quite sure whether or not he swallowed it before it had a chance to voice itself as the wind shoved back across him from the ridge edge. He assumed she probably didn't hear that last bit, but probably got the import. Besides, if she didn't hear the first part it wasn't like she was going to understand what the hell he was trying to say by yelling "Out!" at her.
That might annoy her, and he didn't necessarily want that. At least not consciously.
He sometimes feared he subconsciously wanted to annoy her-- he wasn't quite sure why, it was a subconscious thing, he figured, so anything went, really. And it really wasn't worth thinking about too much, unless it was just in passing, to keep awares that he might be doing things intentionally, just on a level he didn't know anything about. He found that having at least considered the possibility that he might have intended to annoy, even if it was on unintentional on the conscious level, he was prepared in the event that she confronted him, and at least knew what she was rowing with him about, in the event that she was annoyed with whatever it was he just did. (Retribution always came quick in these cases, he found, his annoying habits didn't stand long-term contemplation too well.)
And he also found occasionally stopping to query the subconscious level for a bit about his possible ulterior motives helped him weather the first few gales of the rather quick-tempered storm that met any of the aforementioned annoying habits, should they prove sufficiently annoying. It wasn't generally until she'd regained something of her composure that he realised she was provoked by the annoying thing he had potentially been doing, at which point they could converse about it in a more dignified manner, without quite so much shouting. This slow response almost cost him an eye once (and during the few minutes he spent on the ground he thought, hazily, about what, exactly, the exchange rate between an annoyance and an eye had gotten to that it was no longer a straight swap for eyes, not exactly in those words, but close enough, considering he was lying very very still on the tarmac holding the back of his head and his right eye, alternating firm and gentle pressure on both sore spots, neither form of pressure doing much in the way of stopping the edges of his vision casting a gentle golden glow over the whole of his sight), but overall the mechanism had proved beneficial more often than it had proved harmful.
As she turned back, whether to check he was still there or to turn her face from the gusts of wind rushing in from the sea and off and around the hills, he got a bright idea. Well, not an incredibly bright idea, but he was prone to exaggeration.
He smiled and waved at her, and began flailing his arms as if he were being blown away by a particularly brisk wind. He figured it was a bright idea because he was always searching for ways to work mime into his daily routine, and this presented an opportunity. It wasn't that he was obsessed with mime or anything, it was just a thought that he had as he flailed his arms to mime being blown by a very stiff wind, indeed. As has been noted, he was prone to exaggeration, which stretched to include how long he had mused upon the use of mime in an everyday context.
Unfortunately, his flailing arms, which he'd intended to be comical at first became somewhat more urgent as the wind did, indeed, catch him and begin pushing him inexorably towards the hill edge, which he might, on a less windy day, stand proudly and survey the picturesque scene of swell and rocky strand below on a calmer day.
"Urp!" he said, into the wind, though he had a feeling it sounded remarkably similar to his earlier shout which may or may not have gone unheard, if possibly a with a little more passion on his part, or as much passion as could be mustered when the wind took most things straight out of his mouth and over the ridge of the hill behind him and down somewhere to the blackish beach.
His arms felt very free swinging wildly about and flapping as his jacket caught various corners of the wind like a bird that's just not learned how to relax and let go and fly with it, man, which was perhaps lucky for himself, as this same wild swinging yanked his coat over, which jerked like a kite, skidded him across the slate-stone path on his heels, whipped his hair back away from his face, and pushed his face back, bringing up his heels off the slate-stone and over his head, which was mildly alarming, having his feet go above his head, an episode which ended, also alarmingly, which is a bit like a double negative, with his head back over his heels at some point, though he couldn't quite name the exact moment, if he'd been asked, until some minutes later, when he hung sort of out over the edge of the ridge with a generous amount of flesh impaled in some fashion or another in the bushes that grew natively on these hills and he began to collect his thoughts (the entire sequence somewhat like what you'd imagine would happen to a bird, if you put it in a swimming pool, he would tell people later, he thought, though he wasn't quite sure how to continue that analogy without mentioning getting stuck in a bush, which wasn't too likely, he had to admit, if you were setting your story in a swimming pool).
She, luckily, didn't have a camera on her.
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