Вадим Иванович Кучеренко
In Year of Active Sun
– I am myself.
– And you have never wanted to know all that?
– No. Why?
– Oh, you are right. Why should one know all that? I wanted to know – and it has brought me just sorrow and alienation from the rest of the world. We were both born by the same mysterious energy. You are the same child of nature as I am, but you are happy and I am not. Probably, nature was mother to you, and stepmother to me…
A parrot flew into the hut, saying good morning to everyone. It was followed by the first morning sunrays, penetrating into the hut through the roof. The girl patted the parrot tenderly, opened the window and got the bird out of it, saying to someone:
–
Farewell!
Without looking back she came out of the hut. She was leaving at dawn, as she promised. The boy realized it too late, that she would never come back. He came out of the hut and hurried to the shore where he saw a raft with a waiving sail dashing through the wind and ocean. The raft was so far away by the moment, that it looked like a tiny dot on the horizon, where the ocean was touching the sky. And there was not such a voice in the whole world, which could reach her now.
The boy was standing on the shore staring, either at the ocean depth, or at the abyss of his loneliness, suddenly revealed in front of him. When he awoke from his thoughts, the horizon was clear. A lonely seagull was drawing some unknown signs on the water with its wings. The tiny footsteps on the sand leading to the ocean have disappeared, washed away by the waves.
– Haven’t you helped her to set a mast with your own hands? – the boy asked himself.
– You’ve made a sail for her out of the cover of your air balloon. And now you will never be able to fly away from this nice island. Isn’t it exactly that you wanted so much?
He kept asking himself, but didn’t answer, not being sure in anything now. He spent the whole day on the shore, persuading himself that he just likes looking at the ocean. In fact, he hopelessly believed, that she would come back. That night was the first time, when he didn’t look at the sky. The same as the following nights either.
The summer with its short nights and sunset glows was coming to an end. The days were getting shorter, while the ocean was getting wild with its steep waves. The birds were flying over the island hurrying to south, the green trees and bushes have acquired yellow shades. The autumn was coming.
The winter has come with its severe storms and hurricanes. Blasts of wind were blowing away the palm leaves from the hut’s roof and throwing some silly parrots, trying to fly, faraway at the ocean. All leaving creatures were hiding somewhere, waiting for the storms to come over.
