The current flowed beneath her surfboard like electricity surging into a plug-socket. The waves were powerful; so too was the sun, sitting high up in the sky, beaming down upon her, casting a shadowy silhouette of her beautiful figure on the water’s surface. Dressed in long flowing robes of white linen, her lover and soulmate strolled barefoot upon the hot sandy beach, his salty, dirty-blonde hair brushing against his strong shoulders with each long stride he took. She herself surfed in the nude, wearing only a friendship-bracelet around her ankle, gifted to her many years ago and bought in a wooden shack in Bali from a native holy man. She sat on her surfboard with grace and perfect poise, her excellent balance the result of a lifetime of exercise and an exceptionally strong core; her stomach toned, her abdominal muscles highly defined, like a monolithic marble statue of an ancient Greek Goddess.
A semi-wild donkey hee-hawed in the distance, affectionately named Constantine by the locals who fed him apples and carrots in the evenings, when their daily harvest was completed. Her surfboard was expertly crafted by hand, a pale egg-shell colour, almost beige, exceptionally buoyant and sleek, so much so that, as she caught an in-coming wave, one could see from the coast her surfboard gliding through, even bouncing off, the rushing water below. Parked further in from the beach, on the roadside, was her open-top jeep, which she drove around the island, often wearing a slinky red bikini and faded denim shorts with scraggly strands of fabric tickling her golden sun-kissed thighs.
At night she sat upon the balcony of her rural home on the outskirts of the local town, which she shared with her lover; a beautiful abode which he built by hand with his father, an exceptional craftsman. As the stars blazed in the night sky, she strummed an old wooden ukulele and sang songs of religious praise. Her eyes were light blue, like a shallow pool of water, though they contained within them such infinite-seeming depth of emotion, that many shied away from eye-contact, once her piercing gaze locked in on theirs during conversation.
Wrapped around the many trunks and branches of the fruit trees in her orchard were outdoor fairy lights that lit up her garden with hazy orange light. Often she walked barefoot through the orchard and picked fresh fruit to graze on as she sat and meditated or read under a fragrant tree, her eyes closed, her mind swooning in sublime peacefulness, her ears pricked to hear the sounds of birds rustling in the leaves or squirrels snoring on sagging branches. The grass in her garden was tall, often damp with morning dew, the soil fertile and soft, unlike the sand dunes by which her favourite surfing beach was located, which were hot and arid, few shrubs or plants growing there due primarily to the dry conditions.
Her lover, whose interests included horticulture and arable farming, noticed this distinction on his beach walk, perceiving the inhospitable environmental conditions of the shoreline as noticeably hostile to plant life and flora. His soul was tranquil, like a placid lake in the mountains of Switzerland, or a quaint English pond in which tadpoles swam and frogs casually hopped from one lily pad to another. Many little fish swam in the ocean beneath her surfboard, as she waited to ride the frothy white crest of an incoming wave. Upon the submerged rocks of the headland on the far left hand side of the beach, there were many spiky black sea urchins and technicolour camouflaged octopus lurking in the nooks and crannies of the underwater labyrinth of stone. Occasionally she saw native spearfishermen snorkelling in the area at dawn during her morning swim, before the waves were tall enough to surf.
In the evenings, as the dusk light covered the coastline in golden-hued light like a snuggly blanket, she and her lover would often frequent local fish restaurants on the old-style harbour front in matching stylish white jeans and vintage navy blue shirts of cotton or silk fabric. Their love was tender and passionate. They spoke to one another in soft hushed tones, their voices both as smooth as silk and as expressive as a violin. At night they held one another as gently as a mother cradles her new-born infant child. They spoke one another’s love language with native fluency, like a master pianist tinkling the ivory keys of a Steinway grand piano in a majestic renaissance-style concert hall in Prague or Florence. This was their life and it was beautiful.
Short Story by Stamos Mardou