Chapter 6. Storm.

  The night was restless. Just after 12 o'clock, when I was already asleep, there was a violent thunderstorm. I woke up. Muffled thunderclaps formed somewhere behind the hills, and then, rolling down them, increased their strength and, reaching my house, exploded like cannon shots, turning into a deafening roar. The panes in the old window frames of the house rattled with fear at every roar. The wind from the sea violently swayed the olive trees, and the sharp ends of their branches, like cat claws, scraped ominously against the windowpane of my bedroom. I lay on my back and pulled the blanket over me, leaving only my head exposed. Unable to control the storm, I watched as each flash of lightning illuminated the room with a steely electric light. The storm grew stronger and stronger. The lightning seemed too frequent for a normal thunderstorm, and the thunder didn't subside, but instead became more and more sinister.
With each rumble, my heart froze, and there was a tingling sensation in the palms of my hands.
   I couldn't say I'd ever been afraid of thunderstorms, but this fierce storm had made me feel really uncomfortable at one point. I remembered the words of old men Stephonos from the grocery store, and I had the thought that in a way he was right. Suddenly, in my vivid imagination, I had a bird's-eye view of what my little house looked like outside in this terrible weather. It seemed to me so lonely, so helpless, so forgotten and detached from the rest of the world. I felt sorry for it, as if it were a living thing. But is it possible to pity a house as if it were an abandoned kitten? Or maybe at that moment, that house was myself, a scared and vulnerable person who felt a painful loneliness in my soul, a consequence of the untouchable personal freedom I had always longed for and treasured. In that instant, the realization that I was here all alone, miles from the nearest settlement, made me uncomfortable. I didn't move or breathe, listening to the eerie roar of the sky. It began to rain. Its large drops fell on the tiles, beating a nervous, increasing rhythm.

   Then I heard a sharp sound: “Bam-bam-bam-bam.” I flinched in suddenness. Fear instantly pierced me, paralyzing me for a split second.
One side of the wooden shutters in the bedroom, picked up by the wind, snapped off the hook that secured it to the wall of the house outside. The strong gusts of wind caused it to bang frantically against the stone wall. Thunder, howling wind, rain, and the jerky slamming of shutters created the sounds of utter chaos in my bedroom.
   Unable to stand the noise, which was getting on my nerves, I plucked up the courage and decided to go outside and close the shutters. I fumbled for my plush robe, which was on the chair beside the bed. I threw it on carelessly, and without turning on the light, I crossed the dark living room.

  As soon as I opened the front door, I was hit in the face by a sharp gust of wind mixed with wet rain.
I stepped out onto the veranda, glanced toward the sea, and suddenly the sight that came into view made me stop and freeze - amidst the inky gloom of the clouds, blinding, thin, sharp lightning flashed, curved like branches of thorns. Their fleeting flashes left for a moment a cold trail of silver light that brightly illuminated the peaks of Mount Olympus. In this light it was possible to distinguish how the clouds were rapidly changing their shape, creating ominous silhouettes on the mountains, as if Zeus himself, seized by rage, cursed the world for the fact that the names of the Olympic gods had long disappeared from human lips, remaining only a legend on the dusty pages of ancient books. The sea itself seemed to be boiling, and the waves roared against the shore, scraping the sand restlessly.

As if a ghost I stood on the veranda in a white robe without moving and almost without breathing, mesmerized watching this spectacle, which seemed to be the Gods themselves demonstrating for me. The thunderstorm rumbled like a majestic symphony, and I was only a silent witness to this ancient performance. Time seemed to slow down.
Watching this unrestraint of nature, suddenly forgetting about my fear I was absorbed in thoughts of eternity.
It all reminded me of how fragile and fleeting human life is before the power of nature.

The rain filled the air with the scent of petrichor and mingled with the salt that wafted from the shore. I was both fascinated by the unbridled power of the elements and at the same time frustrated and frightened by their ruthlessness and, to tell the truth, their complete indifference to human beings. What can we do at such moments: we can only bow down before the greatness of the elements and obey them.
“Ah, how brief is our life against the eternity of the universe!
We on this earth are only like fleeting reflections of falling stars, vanishing before anyone can see them.” I thought. No, there was no disappointment in my thoughts, not at all, every moment of life seemed to me a marvelous and precious gift for people. It was unexpected to me how my lowly human fear was replaced by an all-consuming humility and love for the beauty of this moment.

Another sharp clang of the shutters reminded me why I had left the house. Girding my robe tighter, I walked quickly down the porch steps and around the corner of the house. The cold rain came down hard on my face. I ran to the bedroom window, grabbed the sash with both hands and pulled it tightly against the hook on the wall. The darkness and the rain streaming down my face prevented me from doing it quickly. Standing in the dark under the downpour I desperately tried to put the sash on the hook, as suddenly I felt a strange otherworldly presence at my back.... I turned around. And in a brief moment of blinding lightning light, I saw a seagull sitting on the wicket at the entrance as if nothing had happened. “A seagull? At night, in this bad weather? What the hell is that?” I thought perplexedly. It sat perfectly motionless, as if defying the laws of physics did not sway at all from the gusts of wind. But the strangest thing was that she wasn't looking around, she was staring at me with her translucent glass eyes. 

Her snow-white plumage lifted in the wind, but she remained perfectly motionless. She was like a white marble statue, not a living thing, but something lost between worlds.
My gaze froze on her, and I couldn't look away. “Is she watching me?” - the thought flashed through my mind, but I immediately tried to chase it away. Goosebumps ran down my skin....
She was staring at me so intently that her gaze seemed to penetrate me, trying to tell me something. But what?
“What are you doing here?” I said quietly, and at the same moment I wondered why I had spoken to the bird at all. The seagull didn't budge, but at that moment I could have sworn there was a faint glimmer in its eyes, as if it were responding to my words. I recoiled in sudden reaction, taking a step back. My heart thudded so hard that its pounding began to echo in my throat. The rain running down my face seemed less real than this strange moment. It was as if time had frozen. Coping with this daze I shouted out
“Away, stupid bird” and sharply swung my arms upward, as if to chase away not so much her, but the fear that bound me.
This strange seagull did not even flinch and looked at me motionless for a few seconds. A few more silent moments passed before it suddenly spread its wings wide and, in one swift movement, flew off, disappearing into the gray shroud of rain as if it had never been there.
Soaking wet, shivering with cold and fear, I struggled to put the sash back on the hook and returned to the house.

   After changing into dry clothes, I collapsed onto the bed, covering myself with a warm blanket that quickly began to chase away the shivers. But even in the warmth, my mind couldn't get away from what had happened. There was only one question swirling around in my head, “God, what was that? Maybe I dreamed it all? No, I saw her! She was real. I could clearly see the crystal raindrops rolling down her feathers. No doubt she was there. But if the wind was literally blowing me off my feet, what was the force that made her stay immovable? And this bird was looking at me like she knew me. The endless web of questions was increasingly entangling me in riddles.

   As I warmed up under the thick blanket, sleep began to gradually consume me, intertwining the impressions of this terrible night with ghostly fantasies, plunging me into a semi-conscious state. The sound of the rain seemed quieter and quieter.... the anxiety was slowly leaving me. But there was something that left me with a strange feeling, or rather a premonition, that told me clearly that this land held many secrets that no one had yet been able to discover.

Read Chapter 7 ➔