Nuvolario - Short Story by Carla Maria Kovsca

 

Nuvolario

Short Story

by

 Carla Maria Kovsca

 

Ariol looked around, puzzled, his feet were swollen, even if he hadn’t walked far. Probably he had been in the water too long, exploring the coast and now, was getting tired. Unfortunately, he hadn’t yet recognized the place that the old man had described to him.

Pale sun was warming the leaves of the trees in the woods and a veil of  light was diffusing on the ocean surface giving it an unusual aspect, dyed in green and lilac like a nostalgic mountain lake after much rain.

His feet caressed the  fields and the woods of  heather and laurel; he swung his head  and shoulders joking with redbreast robins, he also splashed water with large dance movements at some gulls that were flying towards the rocks.  Surprised, but not frightened, they veered off,  even though  they couldn’t avoid the shy young giant’s powerful sneeze; his merry  but rather disordered  movements, were making it difficult for him to keep his balance, and so they hailed each other with an improbable good bye.

For an instant the sun enlightened his face. Ariol smiled and yawned, wrapped in an overpowering sense of sleepiness, he rolled on the hills and upon the smooth slopes, stroking the soft musk  ground, removing  the hardest rocks, to make a place where he could lie down, without any kind of thinking.  He covered his  light shoulders with grass turfs and wrapped  his flanks with the  warm vapour of dyed ochre and violet, that he created swiftly while he walked, keeping them around the waist and knees. Ariol puffed gracefully and blew over his palms to warm them; now he would like to dry his soaking wet hands, used before in the vain attempt to find the magic place, searching with his fingers through every little grotto and into ponds full of herons; he kicked his feet in  the air, took off his feathered hat that the young Nairomi had given  him and very softly he fell down on the side of the  unknown mountain.

While he was savouring the warm smell blowing from the nearby bay and was breathing the tepid sun that had appeared again among the clouds, he remembered a particular thing that he had forgotten scouting the cost: to search the purple flowers that were giving off an unmistakable  sea breeze fragrance.

Then he slept. He dreamt of places never seen. At intervals he seemed to see the friend’s features who some days before had disappeared in the upside down forest, leaving him alone.

He felt deeply the impossibility to discover the secret of the underground lake and to find the mysterious stone of golden timbres enclosed in it. He had imaged that from the stone soft vapour  spheres, like velvet, rolled out, wrapping the island with singing mists.

In the past he had  dreamt that the whole island rose up to the sky like a flying carpet  and he confusedly heard murmuring and ocean melodies  that gave rise to  an irresistible  desire to walk flying on the ocean  surface.

But now, he preferred to forget and to be driven adrift by the winds losing the residual consistency of sea by which he might fly ever more transparently,  over the mountain tops caressing all the stars during the night, repeating at himself: “Please, let me dance on the mountain!”

҈

A young girl appeared,  swirling around the gulf, she was swimming in azure foam like an eddy on the ocean depth.

She twirled in a deep vortex, like a heavy twisting rope, swirled by water that lifted the whirlpool rashly. A deafening  hollow rumble was heard and it was flung to the atmosphere from the heart of the ground. Water walls turned in all directions like  comets with vibrating knots and slapping the air and the sky. A winged mantle, made by  rock sheets and  hills and mountains flanks  arose; water and land became entangled, steeped in green depths of fish and  soaked pebbles, droplets  and myriads of sea waterfalls.

In a flash, as invisible bellows throbbed in the swirl’s  epicentre, the excited movement  became quiet, the sky dyed itself with a wonderful pink and cerulean blue; the  leafage hair and the face of the aquatic creature, vaulting,  dived in the bay again and again.

Bianca hid her body, made of water and woodland, still full of wet sparkling green and fleshy grass, in the bay,  where the ocean looked to the East.

All the birds that were thrown far  by  the vortex  showed themselves again, at the clearer  horizon, crying in exultant joy, with unremitting  shrills. 

An ineffable smile lay on the magic creature’s  face  and she stood with her clear brow and a bright gaze over  the sea  immensity, beyond the horizon line, at time visible, at time invisible, hidden by an impalpable cotton wool  mist.

҈

A strange  silence awoke Ariol and his turgid heart began to beat  like an insistent rapid wave, he felt full of energy and too tense to stand still.  A far echo of vibrating rhythmic melodies moved his floating body,  inspiring an exceptional electric charge.

He pirouetted around the bay and the mountain tops on which he had rested, now, like a troubled   knight riding his steed with passion, he was moved by an irresistible vigour; his  head was shaken by silvery resonances that talked to him with insistent whispers, so that he felt excited by a growing tension.

His thoughts came in gusts as if  a wind had  stunned him, but, at the same time, he believed he was reaching  his goal: the discovery of the underground lake and the music that came from it.

Suspended in parallel to the transparent surface of the water, he discovered that he was being watched by a wonderful creature, whose body, partly emerged from the billows.

He saw a large pool, in grey and white stone in which the curly-haired head of the young woman lay.  Her heir was   stretched out in the water sparkling  like an  ice comet  sunk in the ocean, a  murmured melody rebounded up and down on the water surface, at that moment quiet,  grabbing the attention of the restless  young giant.

The mysterious   sea creature had one of her verdant  flank covered by an endless number of silvery fish; she lay on the pool’s  depth, the other flank emerged roundish out of the billows, near the island. The sun reflected the rose coloured scales  and the impalpable mantle of winged fins that were beating the rhythm of the waves, breaking on the bay.  Flocks of birds came out of the woods of the hills, to look down, to watch the extraordinary spectacle: in unison they ascended up to the sky fluttering their wings and soon they returned  to the thick foliage rustling,  whistling   a bird-call never heard before.

The sea Queen visage appeared  to the astonished glance  of Ariol who was running faster and faster lifted by the wind. With an increasing impulse  he tried to dive into the water to reach  the splendid creature that was moving majestically  in the transparent sea: her bluish green eyes issued a fluorescent  light  and from them little multicoloured  bubbles gurgled, scattering, emerging from the sea.

The young giant moved forward in an adventurous embrace towards the sea creature, he wanted to dance graceful twirls to fascinate her heart and to throw himself into the water, so, he went up to the highest peak of the island and began to dance on the mountain ridge  with spiral movements.

Ariol  articulated every step with  regular intervals on the ridge of the mountain, so that he provoked falls of earth and rocks, falling gradually away, towards the extreme limit of the island, and where his foot touched the ground, springs and streams appeared and pink clouds lingered over the open mouths of the earth. The ground was gaping to hear the song which was arising incessantly from the ocean.

Smootiee…flush  rimpell  imglicanginrrr… ipaliam    crrr…ffrr…tresch rimunrleannnmvam…ram, riam…torglitiam…swuonn…mztiiiifhirii…ashvatimm…

He felt a beautiful delight  with his dance so that, as wavy knight, Ariol began to roll to the foaming shore, laughing as if ravished by frenetic tickling;  he dived into the waves to touch the rustling sea Queen.

Suddenly the impalpable body of the winged young giant was transformed in dark blue crystals and the sea Queen  fastened him around her waist like a belt of precious stones. The Queen moved, rolling out  the bay  and emerged from the pool murmuring the rhythm of  sweet melodies.

 

҈҈҈

Ariol was stifled by the  ice-bound belt that enchained him: his rings of steam were hardly able to keep in life  their vibrations; though  so compressed,  he felt again a great energy in his heart, he concentrated his  strength.  Ariol sprang  his power producing  a swirling rhythm in the crystals, that began to revolve like orbiting planets escaping to the stellar space.

The Queen and Ariol prisoner, came near to a rock  grotto, dark as anthracite, a black clotted abyss with  slushy mud that was sinking under them.

There was no more time, everything was becoming motionless and dismal, Ariol needed fresh air and lightness, he was off limits of survive; Ariol lost his head and began to breath in with all his strength into the smallest vibrant atoms of his body, stretched in the long spirals of the gemmate prison.

The beautiful Queen fluttered her fins resolutely towards the abyss, raising with her tail a sky-blue water patch; Ariol became crazy with desperation and he rose up to save himself.

By an unexpected miracle the belt broke into myriads of splinters. The tender flowing body of the mysterious  creature was hurt repeatedly by Ariol’s insistent jumps,  whose dramatic movements  vibrated  to find the way out towards the sky.

There was  a fire of rocks and hot sands that became  thicker  and  heavier coming into contact with water. An enormous bubble and very hot steams rose from the dark sounding, moved by swirls produced by Ariol’s incandescent body and by the sea Queen’s  wet flabby volume: her body was hauled up generating a rumble, similar to a titanic belch.

A huge bluish and vermilion  wave rose up,  mixed  with   black rock debris  that sounding weirdly like a whole  fleet of  tight sails in the oceanic wind.

The enormous flow exploded  out in all directions, freeing fire and light steam  up high, toward the azure canopy of heaven.

The young giant  was  finally  out of danger, but his body  was like a vanished  smoky taper, grey and dirty. Immediately  a foaming wave drove him  higher up  into contact with light winds from hills, so that  the imprudent  knight,  once again found his breath; his limbs, exhausted by his escape, had alleviated and Ariol flourished.

Frothing water arches  rolled  on the seashore, which now, resembled like as chocolate – barley cream.  They broke up magnificently against  the sharp rocks.   

Ariol composed himself again with elegant swirls, even if nothing had happened. While lights and shadows were joking together, he turned his smooth neck to the East.

A fresh melody came in  the breeze. Bianca was there, between clear rock crystals and ocean brightness, surrounded by the wood smell that wound round her long head of hair.

The charm had been broken. Ariol felt more alive than before: now he saw a new horizon to explore.

Carla Maria Kovsca, wrote Nuvolario  in 2012, some months after her second trip in the Azores Archipelago on Faial island, also called “the sailors island”.

She likes to call it “light novel”. It represents through imagines and language the new emerging life of the writer. Nuvolario gave her the impulse, truly spontaneous, to tell the birth of the Capelinos volcano happened from 27 September 1957 till the end of 1958.

She ascribes to Nuvolario  the quality of her myth-biography that rolled out of her pen without effort in a dream with open eyes. It’s a joyful tribute to her love for volcanos and islands , sprinkled all around our  planet.

Carla Maria has recently published with Lothlorien Poetry Journal  some of her poems during 2022.

This light novel would express the concept of human life  as part of a wider nature and universe. Human beings have to discover new horizon of freedom embracing patient and passionate relationships.