4: Atonement

He had exhausted himself from roaming the earth. Had seen the sun, had felt its soft warmth in the fragrant lavender covered fields, and its violent scorn in the empty dessert sands. He preferred the cold. He had felt the spring of lively green springtime grass and the weakness of fallen autumn leaves as they broke beneath his feet. He had travelled through sea, land and sky and had tasted the world’s taste. He had heard the harmonies of a thousand voices and had come to hear the song of the heavens and the sea’s laments at the daily rebirth of the glorious coconut moon.

Indeed this blue roan horse had loved all that his senses where capable of mustering. He found love in all that surrounded him, and had given his love willingly, openly, expecting nothing in return except for the hope of one day meeting someone like him, someone who would be willing to give it all, share it all.

Aye, but he had grown weary. Even hope can weigh heavily.



He had loved too much, too far out, had fully listened to his nature and given himself away piece by piece. And, though he had like no other creature grown in heart and in spirit, he had ultimately detached himself from his self in the process. He had lost the ability to be at one with his own existence since he no longer understood his own reason for being. Confused, saddened and lonely he lay forgotten within his own heart and whenever he turned to look inwards he could find only a diminishing scrap of the love he had been born with. Nurtured as he was of the world’s wondrous fruits he was starved of the most essential of all foods: the reciprocated love of another being akin to his race.

And so, empty as he was, full of love and loveless still, he joined the sea in eternal union, leaving his beloved prairies and moist woodlands behind, leaving the butterflies who so often came to rest upon him as well as the delights that his own body afforded him. All that he knew, all he had loved he gladly gave up for a chance at filling the void that for so long had troubled him. After all, what good is the greatest heart if it can’t be filled with the greatest love? Never again would he feel lonely, never would he feel unwanted or misunderstood as he walked into the sea that night under the light of the starry sky and the jealous watchful look of the moon, disposing of his tired limbs and his magnificent coat as he fused with the cold dark waters of the sea in a tender embrace. In that very moment he became a mystical creature by his own will. The only true Seahorse.


His heart shook momentarily as he felt the flood rushing in. In one swift moment it erased its warmth and though initially it made him shiver he soon found himself renewed, different, but alive again. Stripped of his body he was now only the water and foam of the crashing waves, still white, still blue, his heart now as big as the sea itself. And in his new state he found a new sense of purpose and felt complete for the sea had given him his unreserved affection, consequently setting off the Seahorse’s estranged love, now restored and apparently whole, like a tidal wave across the depths of the oceans.
In this act and from then onwards he became part of the life force of the sea’s creatures.

It made him happy to be able to feel free again, free from the constraining weights of his former loneliness. He felt as though he had recovered his own essence and he rejoiced in being able to feel, project and share his love once more, riding afternoon waves alongside mischievous dolphins, finding peace in the cold artic by the quiet polar bears and even playing with humans by the beach, occasionally throwing them around like a wild horse at the rodeo.

Happy as he had become with his newfound partner and the joy it provided through his unconditional affection still he could not shake the thought of that almost illusionary love. I remember him in his earthly body questioning himself if this being could be only a figment of his imagination and nothing more, a mere mirage destined to remain just an apparition. But even now, having renounced to his former physique, being bound to another, his hope of finding it, of finding her would never die. He would seek her close to land, strolling by the edge of every continent’s sandy shores or by crashing into the highest of their rocky cliffs. And if he should one day find her, impossible as it could seem, he would find the way to undo his tying bond to the sea. Just as he had merged with it, he would surface from it triumphantly to join her beloved, finally truly whole: The Seahorse and his love.

3: The Sea’s lost love.

She had a softly spoken voice; the kind that possesses a rare feature, it seemed to kiss each object that it touched as it gently glided by. She spoke in lullabies and colours even without having to utter a single sound, and could talk to the most timid to the fiercest of beings, earthly or otherwise.


It was thus that I realised that whoever had said the Moon was made out of cheese had probably either been in love with a mouse or somebody Swiss – why mice are supposed to prefer cheese has always been a little beyond me – or perhaps had had a tongue filled with raging taste buds occupied by a deeply rooted obsession with diary.
I had come to this conclusion since she knew Mr. Rabbit in person, after all they shared the same sky, and who’d better know about the moon than him, seeing as he spent most his evenings on its surface, except for those nights when it’s cloudy when I am sure he pops over to its other side in order to join a somewhat sketchy looking purple relative of his, whom I suspect is its resident, for a bit of a chat, some dark chocolate biscuits and a spot of strong coffee.


I have yet to meet him myself though strangely I feel like he somehow knows me. Perhaps we met when I was smaller before the fog in my eyes dispersed itself, when I belonged only to the clouds. I’m sure I must have visited him before; else I don’t quite know why I keep looking up at his moon. Nevertheless, as I mentioned before I have it on good authority that the Moon is not really made of cheese but that in fact it’s made of the most wonderful coconut. Precious as it is the wild Sea still foolishly raises its waves to the sky seeking to seize it for itself or at least catch a touch of its sweet fragrance in the cold night breeze when no one is looking. Consumed by its splendour it aimlessly calls the Moon to itself by projecting a faded image of its beloved, eternally hoping for one day to merge with it the way a wafer merges with the contents of a cup of cocoa by the hand of a sweet old lady, feeling its warm inviting touch melt its essence away into a new greater whole.

Could it be that in the past they shared the same plain and that they themselves met? And that the Sea’s stream of anxious tears for an impossible love turned its sweetness and its clarity into vast salty darkness? Could it be that Mr. Rabbit, moved by seeing the Sea’s desolation, chose to leave his home behind to keep the Moon everlasting company as she parted towards the heavens? And that the Moon itself before parting gave up her immaculate gleam as she adoringly let pieces of herself fall hoping for one to land at sea so it could always treasure a part of her? Sadly none must have made it or else I’m certain that with those pieces the Sea would have created a creature so white and so pure to propagate throughout its entirety in order to fill the void left by the Moon, nurturing it like a father would his offspring, to manifest to the rest of the world the beauty and sincerity of its feelings and to show the Moon its devotion whenever it looked down upon his surface.

And so her offerings, with the warm touch of the sands, must have turned into the coconut giving palms that live by the sea, which cry their fruits still containing her essence close to the breaking oceans who tenderly reach out to them, stroking them reminiscently as if they were the moon itself.

2: She never fell.

I had wondered how it could be possible to talk to such a luminous being without leaving me sightless or be able to maintain certain composure as whenever I got close to her I could feel her brightness go through me, lighting me up, leaving no nick or cranny left in which to hide myself in, leaving me bare and vulnerable to her. It was like as if she had been born with the keys to my every lock and when around her all my locks at once would start to tremble with emotion wondering if they could be opened to reveal that which for so long lay locked away, and which in fact they themselves had forgotten what it was they actually guarded.


By this time I had been in the dark for quite a while and at the risk of losing myself entirely, of dissolving my blackness in her radiance, I could find nothing left but to leap into her heavens of light. Such was the strength of her magnetism – intense yet never imposing – and my will to join it.

For me it was all beyond reason; her presence evoked in me a feeling of peace and awe beyond merely the territory of the heart. I cherished the tiniest moments spent by her side; a glance at her eyes could leave me absent, taking a part of me to a plain far removed from earth or sky, somewhere were both our daemons could shyly be with each other. There, time often seemed to change its pattern; like a sunset sometimes passing by too quickly, other times slow like the wait for dawn. And it felt right, even if it were only an illusion. It was beautiful to be there in those moments, by her glow, even if at a distance. It felt good to leave my darkness behind, even when after the light had gone it sometimes fell heavier upon me.


And so like a charcoal heading towards the core of a fire, fearing getting burned but wanting nonetheless to get close to its heart to not only become part of the blaze but more so hoping to unite with it to create an even brighter splendour, I strived to get closer to her until one day I finally got a glimpse of her true nature.
Her glow though brilliant was gentle and cool.


She was in fact not a being of fire but a being of light, whose incandescence stemmed from sources other than simple wood or oxygen. Formed from deepest affection, the strongest passion, and the rarest stardust her glow was nurtured by freedom and love. A star born into human form, her essence was evident only to those who could see past the blinding attraction of her physical beauty.
She had not fallen from the sky, not by mistake nor punishment, though she shared their gorgeous brightness and purity, was mystical and radiant but also troubled by human nature. Bruised, broken and burned life had gone ahead and begun teaching her the brutal frailty and aesthetic of our bodies, the confusion and wonder of our minds, the aches and vastness of our hearts and what it meant to combine them all into the complexity of her unique spirit. And yet somehow these tough earthly lessons were unable to dull her instead making her all the more beautiful as they fused with her heavenly soul, changing her glow from a crisp white-blue to an inimitable lavish purple, a colour so pure in its brilliance and spellbinding as the smell of lavender after the dew that one could not only see it during the sunniest of April days but which reached beyond one’s skin into one’s all.


And it made the stars above shimmer brighter; some did so in admiration whilst others in envy attempted to outshine her. So, luminous as they all were they were unable to match her sparkle, but like the sea does the moon, they reflected her image across their entire kingdom, further out than the confines of our mortal sight, thus turning the entire night time sky into her own constellation. It must have been so for whenever I looked towards the darkened heavens I could see nothing but her. It was her all around.

1: “Risks are worth taking. Mistakes are worth making.” Said the wise tea

He had been standing there for a while now, possibly for a few months. He had arrived with a friend sometime when the sun’s hottest from a foreign land and I had, or so I had thought, listened to what he had to say and kept him close by, because I knew I would eventually once again need to hear his wise, unselfish council.
But like an ancient statue, his meaning forgotten though still intact, he stood there for months, watching me sometimes forget and sometimes struggle to uphold what I had once deemed as a sign of reassurance for that necessary change to come, of finally shedding this old skin which every now and then still insists in making its presence be felt and which so hinders and threatens the pursuit of happiness.
And so the days passed by until the time came where circumstances would have his latent aura become present once more.

I had seen “it” - for at first it was somehow beyond me to even fully grasp a notion of her face - walking down the narrow stretch a few times, wondering what this “it” actually was that as the days went by kept drawing ever more to my attention. To this day I am still trying to understand its nature, past the beauty of those eyes alive with dreams and wonder, this nature which like a mysterious yet benign fog leads you to be lost and that prevents me from engraving her face in my mind leaving me only with a faint memory of her scent, and a blurry but unmistakable imprint of her beautiful intangible self.

So it was that slowly, through coincidence or fate, she burned some of her essence onto mine and the decision had to be taken whether to follow my heart’s intended footsteps or whether to listen to the voice of that vague and partial yet effective ancient universal figure that like a mighty marble monument sits in his court within all men.

It was then that he awoke, and without saying a word or making the slightest move, he fell into my eyes, briefly revealing his wisdom as though he had been constantly by my side, knowing that it was the precise moment. Quietly, calmly, he spoke into my soul with a gentle but assertive tone setting my inner voice ablaze with content, unleashing in a fleeting moment a warm glow that invaded me.

In that very instant I knew that no matter however many bruises I could stand to attain, something extremely pure, unique and beautiful beyond description would come of it. I knew, because in that very moment when it was born the presence of its mere origin shattered the marble figure’s imposing throne. And the promise of something that great was worth risking everything.

From then on I no longer lived in the same plain. It was and still is all unchartered territory, filled with uncertainty and surprises, a lovely place where magic and reality coincide.

Where we go remains to be seen.

But I’m glad to be here.

And it all started with a bit of tea.