Sentilia

I had not really paid attention to where we were before he got me back on the boat. We were in a small bay, on the coast of an island, which he told me was an ancient volcano covered in a forest and surrounded by a beach. It was a deserted island, so we were all alone, miles away from the main island.

I hoped he knew what he was doing... So alone... it seemed to have some effect on my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was excitement or fright.

I looked up at K. He was taking down the sails, but when he saw me, he stared back with a curious expression. I got up. His eyes were intense, glued to my face. And I could see his chest moving as he took in deep breaths. His voice was huskier than usual when he spoke. “Are we going in or what?”

“S-sure,” was my answer. I took off my lifejacket so I could strip down to my bathing suit. I unbuttoned the pink blouse, and as soon as I was done with the last button, his hands were on my waist, where a part of my skin was uncovered. He slowly pulled me towards him. I didn’t know how to react, so I didn’t, I just let him pull me closer. He whispered my name as he put his hands each side of my neck, and let them glide down, on my shoulders, down my arms, until my blouse fell off.

I had no idea what to think, or what to do, actually I couldn’t really think. I didn’t know if it felt right or wrong. All I knew what that I felt all kinds of new emotions boiling inside. My body felt limp, and my head was spinning. Without thinking, I put my hands on his chest, meaning to push him away. I was terrified deep down—terrified this was wrong, terrified of what it would mean—and I didn’t want this to go any further. If I hadn’t been able to stop him before, now I really had too.

But the fact that I feebly pressed my hands on his chest seemed to have the opposite effect on him. His breath came in raging gasps, and he leaned in. I couldn’t do anything to stop him now.

Gift from nature, or extremely strange coincidence, I couldn’t choose, but another whirl of wind came from the opposite side of the boat just in time, swinging the boom—K hadn’t had the time to tie it up—fiercely at us again. The hit didn’t hurt as much as the first one. K had absorbed most of the shock. But I still lost my balance and fell into the water—luckily catching my lifejacket by mistake as I went. K barely moved. I felt a surge of relief invade me, as we were separated now, and I looked up at him, awkwardly putting my vest back on.

He was still frozen in place. His face was a firm mask of frustration. I didn’t want this to ruin our day. But I didn’t want to say anything, afraid of making it worse. I decided to take my shorts off, first of all; I didn’t want to go back in the boat. I shimmied them down to my ankles, and caught them underwater with one hand. I threw them towards the boat, counting on my average aiming skills. They were well on their way to falling right next to K, but the wind caught them and K got them directly in the face.

“Oops!” For a moment, I was scared of what would his reaction be. But after a split second, he started laughing, so I relaxed and sighed.

It seemed to have woken him up; he took the time to tie the boom, took off his clothes, and threw me a pair of big goggles. I put them on; he snickered under his breath at my sight, and put his on too. K looked clumsy with his mask on, his eyes looked as big as golf balls and his lips looked a tad inflated. I laughed while he dove under water. After a moment however, I started getting anxious; he wasn’t coming up. I started paddling crazily, and he automatically came back up.

“What’s the problem, are you alright?”

“I thought you had drowned!” I pushed the water towards his face.

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I was just exploring the coral reef. You know, that’s why you have your mask on. Take a look!” I sighed, but I did was he said.

I could see everything. The brightly colored reef, the swarming of fluorescent fish: amazing. I couldn’t stop looking. I took short breaths before plunging my head back into the water. After a few moments, however, I felt a little dizzy.

K was looking in the opposite direction of our small bay and, after focusing in the same direction, I could see far away what he was seeing. There was a tiny grey triangle cutting through the water, coming straight towards us. I looked closer, and could now see about 5 others. K started swimming anxiously towards me, eyeing the fast-moving triangles. I immediately felt the danger spread through me. Not only was I not in my element and couldn’t swim, but I’d never seen K nervous or scared until now.

He was almost at touching distance when he stopped and said: “Oh, ok!” he let out a deep breath, “they’re just dolphins.”

“And, what are ‘dolphins’?” I said with a fearful voice. I wasn’t totally relieved yet.

“You’ve never seen...Gosh, what do they teach you over there?” I figured it was a rhetorical question.

"What are they Kleio?” My voice was getting louder as they were getting closer. He was in perfect control of himself again.

“Have you ever seen a fish before?”

“Yes.” I had, “In my plate.”

He looked at me and shook his head in disbelief.

“Oh...wait...” I just remembered an animation I had seen when I was really young. It was in an underwater game I used to play once in a while. “Is it grey, and does it have a long mouth?” The souvenir was really far and I felt silly describing it, but K nodded happily and said: “Exactly! They kind of look like sharks, but the difference in their temper is...substantial,” he said, frowning and smiling at the same time. “Let’s just say sharks are more prone to bite. But the really dangerous ones don’t come here normally, the water is too warm, and they don’t usually travel in packs so I had a feeling they were dolphins. Also, the dorsal fin on a shark is triangular,” he formed the shape with his hands, “and dolphins have a more streamlined and curved fin. They also swim quite differently...” I wasn’t listening to Kleio’s educational session anymore. The dolphins were surrounding us, and my eyes widened immensely when I noticed how big they were. But I trusted K, and when he put his head underwater, I did the same.

The creatures were magnificent. They swam through water with great speed and agility. They looked so happy, smiling, and peaceful. I could never again believe that they would hurt me. My fear had completely vanished, and when the nearest dolphin passed closed to me, my hand involuntarily stroked its body. It felt incredible; it was so smooth and silky. I noticed K passing me, waving with one hand, and hanging onto a dolphin’s back with the other. My head jerked out of the water, just in time to see a few dolphins jumping out of the water, making the funniest high-pitched sounds. K appeared beside me, and encouraged me to try riding one of the dolphins. He added: “As soon as you have to breathe, though, you let go. Same thing goes when you see that the dolphin is going too far. I can’t swim fast enough to save you if something happens.”

“Okay!” I squealed. This was the worst idea ever. I could think of a hundred different scenarios where this ended badly, but I was too excited to think about it for more than a minute.

I submerged myself the most that I could with my lifejacket, and waited for a dolphin to come my way. Finally, after a few minutes of impatiently waiting, a rather small one passed by me, and I hung onto its back. How wonderful! It was cutting through the water at a great speed; I was hanging on tight with both hands. It went swirling passed K, and over the coral reef. It was the most incredible thing I had ever done.

It wasn’t long, unfortunately, before I needed to breathe. I let it go and watched it swim away.

K was waiting close to me; the dolphin had swum in circles around K, as if it knew. I gazed intensely into his eyes. “Kleio, that was definitively the most amazing thing I have ever done! Thank you so much for bringing me here.” My eyes were full of tears; I was overwhelmed by all the new experiences I’d had today. K was amused, almost mocking, but I didn’t care. It was like I was in a different world. Which it was, sort of. It was a dream, of course, but it felt so real; if I had never wanted to wake up, the feeling was now multiplied.

“I’m very glad you enjoyed it, sweetie. The point was to make you happy. At least I got that right.” He smiled and started swimming playfully, almost as the dolphins did. Much less gracefully, though. I laughed.

I could’ve spent hours watching him swim around; he looked so happy, he was clearly in his element. After a few minutes, however, the tide had pushed me far enough that I started feeling uncomfortable, and K had to swim quite a while to get to me. He took my hand and started towing me towards the shore.

“We came in with the tide and we can’t get out of the reef before slack tide. We have about 3 hours to go. You could go take a walk on the beach, there are plenty of pretty seashells.” After taking in my clueless expression, he added, “But you wouldn’t care right? You’ve never seen a seashell before.” He smiled before continuing, “Well, you can still go walk around, I’m going to go fish for spiny lobsters. I’ll probably come and meet you on the beach, but if I don’t, be sure to be back by 5. We have to be here at the exact moment to catch the proper tide.” He turned around and swam back to the boat. He threw something at me and I ducked: “Hey! What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s a watch, Max, take it!” K answered.

I looked down at the brown and chrome watch; it was exactly like the ones at the museum’s market. Some people liked to wear them as a reminder of our past, even if they were pretty useless. We just had to look at one of our monitors, or ask the computer what time it was to know. Although, looking closely at this watch, it wasn’t indicating the time: “K! What am I supposed to do with this thing? It doesn’t tell time!” It was just a show of numbers and needles. The watches I had seen were all digital.

“It’s simple. The small needle indicates the hour and the big one, the minutes. Calculate 5 minutes between each number.” And without another word, he turned around and disappeared somewhere on the boat.

K hadn’t even taught me how to swim. Where I was now, though, I could touch the bottom with my toes. Anyways, why swim when dolphins can do it for you? I smiled.

I got to the shore and started walking alongside the beach. What he had said was true; there were many beautiful seashells. It’s true that I’d never seen one, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what they were. There was one kind that I kept seeing, that I found really interesting. It was a beautiful pearl white; it looked like a pair of wings. I picked one up. It felt so fragile in my hands, so delicate. That’s how I felt here. Like I didn’t know anything, like I could break so easily, like danger was constantly surrounding me. The fact that Kleio was always around me, protecting me, didn’t help my fragility. Then again, I knew I needed to get stronger for him to stop wanting to protect me.

I kept on walking, wandering, lost in thought, until I couldn’t even see the boat anymore. The feeling of the warm breeze on my face, the sound of the ocean, just being alone on the island, really felt amazingly peaceful and soothing. This was Utopia.

As I walked, I started stumbling upon more and more driftwood, and the edge of the water was getting closer to the edge of the forest. So I spotted a large rock that stood out from the forest’s barrier and sat on it. I meditated there for a moment.

I looked at the watch and I calculated that it was now 3:30 p.m., so I knew I would soon have to start walking back.

I wanted to stay just a moment longer, but something interrupted my peace. I could feel something behind me, in the forest, my hair raised on my skin. I knew nothing was really behind me; K had told me it was a deserted island. But I couldn’t return to my previous calm state, I was getting edgy. I couldn’t hear anything, but I could somehow sense it. There was no reason to panic, but I still got up and turned to face any potential danger, a reflex I never knew I had.

A disappointed K was half-hidden behind a tree: “How did you know I was there? I was barely even moving, let alone making a sound!” He seemed frustrated with himself.

I huffed in relief.

“Why didn’t you just come by the beach?” I slapped him on the shoulder as he tried to jerk away.

“I was trying to scare you, to make you jump. I would have done a better job if you had waited until I was right behind you. Then you would have really freaked out!” He snickered darkly.

“Very funny, K.” I looked at him, disapproving. Not feeling so mature myself, I let it go.

“Fine Max. I’m sorry. Let me do this again.” And before I could say anything, he was gone again. What was he up to now?

For a moment I felt jittery. I had felt so much safer when he was beside me; I didn’t really care if he had tried to scare me, all I wanted was for him to come back again. Which he did.

I saw him coming out of the forest, onto the beach, about a hundred yards away. He started jogging and waving towards me: “Hey, Max! I’m here!”

I couldn’t help but laugh even though it was completely ridiculous.

His stature was impressive as he jogged. He was muscular and tall, but I couldn’t find him the least bit frightening. He halted next to me and landed a peck on my cheek. “C’mon.” I hadn’t noticed the towel he held in his hands until he draped it over my shoulders, putting his arm over them too. The sun was getting covered, and it was started to get chilly, so I was grateful for having his body heat to warm me a little. We walked back to the boat, and K asked me to hold on to his shoulders while he swam with one arm, and held the towel above water with the other. It seemed like it was a shorter swim to get to the boat than earlier in the day. As if the boat was somehow closer to the shore. Maybe it was just that K was a fast swimmer.

We would be windward coming back, so we would have to tack against the wind. Since I was still partially wet —the wind was blowing pretty hard and the sun was completely gone now — K had to lend me some warmer, dry clothes he kept onboard. I was bundled up in his too-big sweater and sweatpants. And although I felt ridiculous, K had given me the biggest smile when he had seen me with the ludicrous attire. At least I was comfortable and cozy.

A whirl of wind came into the cabin, shutting the door loudly, and I jumped. K took me into his arms and I just stayed there for a moment because his body heat—and his arms around me—felt really good. After a moment, I let go, and when I saw the look on his face I calmly said: “Let’s go back outside.” He nodded and let me go first.

Back on deck, K started walking around, checking things I had no idea were for what, and glancing up at the sky nervously. “There’s a storm coming our way, Max. I’m gonna have to rig the storm sail, it’s going to get real windy. Can you prepare dinner in the meantime? We’ll need our strengths...” He started walking around again.

“K?” he hadn’t heard me. Or he was too occupied to listen. “Kleio!”

“What?” he retorted.

“K, I can’t cook, remember?”

He looked at me for a moment, his eyes empty, his thoughts somewhere else, and nodded, “It’s fine, we don’t have time to eat anyway.” My brows furrowed.

K finished up what he was doing, and we were ready to leave. I put my lifejacket back on; we motored out and set the sail.

Things were not too bad, I thought. But K looked agitated, and it rubbed off on me. The wind was picking up, after all. It was against us, so it would take much longer to go back.

“I suggest that you take a rest in the cabin, this may be long. And I will need you in your best shape, later.” But I wasn’t tired, and his stressful mood just made me more alert. “I don’t think I will, I’m not tired.”

“Max, please, humour me. I’ll feel better if you do.” His face was hard.

“Fine.” I would if it could calm him. But the truth was that I didn’t want to go to sleep and risk waking up. Although, if a storm was really coming, this probably was a good time to wake up.

I slowly descended into the cabin. It wasn’t very big, but there was still a bathroom, a bedroom and a kitchen. Everything was at least half the size of what it was supposed to be: the sinks, the cupboards, the screens, even the bed. It was a single bed, and there was little space between the bed and the ceiling of the cabin; I didn’t really feel comfortable. So I lay down on the very edge of the bed and tried to rest a little.

From where I was now, the scene seemed so peaceful. There were no gushing winds or troubled waters. There was just the rocking of the boat and the soothing sound of the waves whooshing against the cockpit.