Origin

Once upon a time, beneath the vast, star-filled sky of Cairo, Egypt, a little girl named Ororo Munroe opened her eyes for the very first time.

Her mother, N'Dare, was a princess from Kenya, with a laugh warm as the savanna at noon. Her father, David Munroe, was a kind American photographer who could find beauty in any corner of the world. In their small apartment in Cairo, the three of them were happy — the happiest little family you can imagine, with spiced tea in the evenings and stories before bed and a mother who braided Ororo's dark hair with gentle, practiced hands.

But when Ororo was six years old, both her parents were gone. Just like that. And Ororo was alone.

She was six years old and alone in a city of millions.

For a while she was very frightened. Of course she was. Any child would be. She sat in doorways and watched the Cairo streets fill up and empty again, and she did not know what to do next.

But Ororo was not only frightened. She was also brave. And brave and frightened can live in the same chest at the very same time.

A man named Achmed el-Gibar found her in the marketplace and taught her how to survive. He showed her how to move quietly through a crowd, how to read a face from twenty paces, how to trust her quick hands and quick feet. Ororo learned every lesson he taught her. She darted through the bazaars like a swallow, light and clever and careful.

And she noticed something strange.

Whenever she was running and the wind picked up behind her — she went a little faster than she should have. Whenever she was sad and the sky was clear — a single cloud would appear, just above her, like a soft grey shadow keeping her company. She said nothing about it. She filed it away in a quiet corner of her heart.

When Ororo was a teenager, her legs began to carry her south. She did not plan it. She simply walked — past the last buildings of Cairo, into the Sahara Desert, through heat and silence and endless golden sand — for days and days and days, until the sand gave way to tall grass and wide sky and the smell of rain on warm earth.

She had reached the Serengeti.

She stood in that great open plain and felt something loosen inside her chest, the way a door swings open after being stuck shut for years. She looked at the sky. She lifted her hands, very slowly.

The clouds came.

The rain fell.

The wind wrapped around her like a welcome.

She rose up off the ground. She could fly. She could actually fly.

The people of a nearby village came out of their homes and watched, and they were not afraid. They pressed their hands together and bowed their heads. They gave her a name. Goddess.

Ororo stayed on the Serengeti for many years. She watered the dry land. She sent the storms away from the fragile crops. She kept the peace between the sky and the earth. She was content, and she was good at it, and the Serengeti felt more like home than anywhere else ever had.

And then one afternoon a man arrived in a wheelchair, with kind eyes and a patient smile.

"My name is Charles Xavier," he said. "And I have been looking for you for a long time."

He told her she was a mutant — that her power was real, and inherited, and nothing to be afraid of. He told her she was not alone. He said there were others at his school in Westchester, New York: a young man named Cyclops who fired beams of energy from his eyes, a woman named Jean Grey who could move things with her mind, a fierce and loyal man called Wolverine who had the sharpest senses and the sharpest claws in the world.

Ororo was quiet for a long moment. She listened to the wind in the tall grass. She looked at the wide Serengeti sky she had loved for so many years.

Then she took a deep breath and said yes.

She flew north over rivers and mountains and oceans, and she arrived at the Xavier Institute in Westchester just as the evening light turned the windows gold. She chose a name for herself that night, standing on the roof with the cool New York air around her: Storm.

Not because she was frightening. Because she was free.

And from that night on, whenever the sky crackled and the wind sang and a white-haired woman soared between the clouds, people below stopped what they were doing and looked up with a smile.

Storm was watching over them.

And all was well.