Moonglade II

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AXhemajli
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Moonglade II

Post by AXhemajli »

2017
The wind coming from the south is very strong. Bert tries to walk towards his destination, but the wind gets even stronger. He keeps on walking against the wind. Suddenly the sun hides and the sky is full of black clouds. It is the middle of the day but it gets dark. There are thunders and storms at the same time. He finally gets in the parking lot and hurriedly enters his car. The flashes of lightning are the strongest ones he had ever seen forming an interesting mosaic up in the sky as if they are having a party up there.

Bert’s car shakes by the strong wind, which makes an interesting whistling tune. He wants to drive but sees that this is impossible. He can see nothing. The wipers are moving continuously, wiping the rain from the windows. The car shakes again. He hears something hitting it. The wipers stop moving and his car turns off. He tries to figure out what is going on without success. Then he hears another weird noise hitting his car again. It seems someone or something is fighting. He wondered what that thing could be. He remembered that since the day a black raven had touched him in his head his attitude towards a lot of things had changed completely.

He tried to open the door but a strong hand pushed him inside, took a man’s body and flew away.

When he got outside, he saw that the door car of his right arm had thousands scratches forming a silver light. It was still raining. He remembered he had an umbrella in his car and got in.

While getting out of his car and taking his white umbrella he had taken in a conference back in Croatia, while trying to open it, a man, more or less with the same looks as his, appears.

-Hello, Pitter Pan.

-Sarcastic as always, huh?

-As always?

-I’ve been watching your back for so many years since you were a child. In weather like this, you must stay inside and never get out any more. I don’t want you to get hurt.

-Sorry, I can’t help it. I am a pluviophile.

-I wish you’d become ataraxic. That is the only way you can use the powers you have within you.

- Ataraxic?!

-Yes, and you will have to break up with your girlfriend. She is absorbing a lot of your energy. I know you love her, but are you sure she loves you back? As far as I can recall, she told you that loving someone and being in love with someone are two different things. And don’t forget what waits for you at home.

-I believe her. And I don’t want to use my powers, besides, I have no powers. Remember that it was you who made me give them up. Why should I care to use them now? And no, I will not break up with her.

-Mutatis mutandis! But I never asked you to give up on your powers. That was your own decision, so don’t blame me for that. You wanted to be normal and see where your normal life is leading you.

-I gave up Latin a long time ago. It’s a dead language.

-But we are fully alive. If you will not break up with her, I will make her break up with you. She doesn’t enjoy being lied, doesn’t she?

-Everybody lies, but nobody likes to be lied.

-You were being lied since the beginning. Remember how you stare her and how does she stare you back and even how she avoids staring you directly into your eyes. Why does her hand go directly to her face each time you ask her a question or when she makes any statements? Why does she cover her mouth? Isn’t that a clear sign she doesn’t believe herself in what she says? Her indifference towards you is clear; she partially and continuously shrugs her arm. You should have kept the distance with her and care for your own prestige. You cared too much for her and you crossed your own limits…. You… you do not understand what are you capable of doing. Here are the keys and the address where you have to stay.

-What the hell is going on? For how long am I going to live like this? Why do I have to do what others ask me to do? What about me? What about my wishes, my feelings?

- I know that things might be orphic for you right now, but I have always protected you. Trust me. There is a way to win your powers back: the first step is to become a sophrosyne. Time to use your knowledge has come. Be who you truly are! Be what you really want to be!

-A sophrosyne? Why do you use words a few people will ever understand?

-Well, let’s say I am asking you to learn to control yourself.

-I don’t understand.

-The world you know is a small place brother, but the Universe is endless.

He touches his arm. -Trust me! - And flies away.

He closes his white umbrella and gets inside the restaurant nearby. He sits pensively on his usual table, trying to recall his childhood. He differed from other children and had that kind of powers everyone would have liked to have.

The waiter brings him the usual coffee saying, -Goodness, what awful weather we had. I thought this would be the apocalypse, the end of the world. Sorry if the coffee is cold, the lights went off too.
Seeing he is deeply thinking, the waiter says nothing and goes back to his work.

He continues thinking of his childhood. The residence where he used to live had a large yard and an immense veranda on the second floor. It was the terrace from where he had collapsed because he had not a single thing to eat. His parents’ home was a typical stone mansion; near the balcony, there were white massive stones. When he had fallen, he had hit his head in one of them and blood had covered his face. He remembered his brother sending him to a doctor in the capital city, and that was the first time both of them saw the hospital and the city.

Since that day, he turned into a quiet child. He didn’t go continue to go out with other children, was closed in himself and thanks to his uncle’s library he fell in love with books becoming a bookworm. When they bought the first TV, which was black and white, he started to watch lots of movies and learned English, German, Italian, and French just by watching TV. But his uncle’s library was the most exciting world he had found, and he continued to read books one after the other. They were historical books, encyclopedias, psychology books, all kinds of novels and a dozen dictionaries teaching him millions of new ways of thinking and doing things. Others thought him of being weird and did not even go to call him to play, but something fascinated him in his own world, using his own imagination. His older sister was frequently afraid of him, but she liked the idea that someone could even open and close the shelves in their living room without touching them. Eventually, she thought he might be from another world and was not her brother. She asked herself: where the hell did he come from?

When he grew up and became a teenager, he used to train martial arts with his older brother. He was his first instructor, but soon he overcame his skills. He loved walking in the fields and became a werifesteriar. Sometimes he spent almost the whole day investigating, discovering, or training in the forests nearby. They had a river in the borders of two villages which had the same name, but the river most of the time was dry. To make it useful, he used beavers’ skills and in no time the river became a place where young people went to swim and play all summer.

He relived his eighteenth birthday when the days were full of heavy snow and to travel to school, he had to walk over thirteen kilometers in one direction. The bus was still going to town but because of his big brother, he could not use it. And the people who owned the bus were suspicious. People believed they were spies. His brothers and even his older sister, were all engaged in the KLA, soldiers fighting for the freedom of their country. From all, he seemed to like the pen and figured out it could be as helpful as a weapon or even more. Occasionally he drove his friend’s car, but he didn’t have a driving license. He didn’t worry about it as he knew that if they caught him, it was the last thing they would ask him for.

His girlfriend, a young and a beautiful girl, a year older than him and a little taller always worried that something bad might happen to him. She studied medicine and wanted to be a nurse, while he was studying in the gymnasium but because of the situation and difficulties students faced to travel into the capital city, they taught the students of the medical school in their town. They were together for over one year and their relationship was so strong. You could tell that even by young people who had them as an example and mentioned them all the time. He had this kind strange way of humor with words from old people, wise men, and books that even his teachers were in trouble and wished often he wouldn’t talk.

After what had happened in Qirez, Likoshan and in Prekaz, the war was inevitable. So they both joined the KLA. Everyone abroad used to call them rebels. This was not strange to him as he knew that the ones who control the media and had experience doing war propaganda would try to excuse themselves from their own actions. They both loved to save peoples’ lives. When the war was more intense, they had to separate. He carried wounded people in his shoulders and sent them to the mountains of Berisha in the village of Divjake in an improvised hospital.

The waiter approaches again and asks him if he would like anything else. Bert nods his head and now shifts his thoughts, wondering if he should start his metanoia.

He gets out and sees that the storm has stopped. Enters his car and while driving, he constantly repeats the same song again and again. It is the song ‘Spectre’ by Alan Walker. He still wonders if this is his true home and if the people he is living with are his real family, remembering again his sister who once told him: You are not from this world.

And the song continues:
Is this the place I call home?
To find what I’ve become
Walk along the path unknown.
We live, we love, we lie
Deep in the dark I don’t need the light
There’s a ghost inside me.
It all belongs to the other side
We live, we love, we lie.


**
Now, being up in the mountains, Bert tries to find a place where he could stay all alone, undisturbed by human beings. He somehow feels guilty for what had already happened. But yet he cannot understand. He cannot understand his brother; his girlfriend, his family back home… he realized that even if a novel would ever be written for him, he could not remain as he hoped until the end-, a positive character-if there was a real positive character. Nobody knew, not even him that in the real world there was someone else behaving as if it was him.

He gets out of his car and heads towards the top of the mountain. While walking, he has strange visions and feels unbearable pain in his head. He was wondering why he always kept seeing the speckled raven flying over his head and each time the raven touched him and hit him, the pain became even stronger.

He had been touched by a black raven for the first time while he was coming back home from the forest nearby. At first, he thought that it was a common raven and nothing bad would happen, but then more and more ravens gathered making thirty-three different sounds at the same time. He had never heard something like that before and their kraa-kraa sounds were scary. It was then that the crows were headed towards him and his head was hit by their beaks and feet. He never understood why did this happen, but later on he found that in his religion crows were allowed to be killed as were kites, mice and mad dogs. This was one of the many secrets he hid from everyone.

When he got on the top, the world seemed tiny in his eyes. He sat and saw that the night was near. He had left all his learning and teachings behind and lived a normal life because he wanted to be and behave like the rest of the world. And it was this decision that changed his life. Little did he know that he had accepted his total enslavement through everything happening in his environment, without asking or questioning anything or anyone, although he had a mountain of questions; he had let the outside world control not just him but even his thinking.

to be continued.....
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