It was dusk, and I was swimming enjoying the pull and tug of the heavy waves that seemed to support both the air and me. It was a lovely, secure tide and I appreciated it, aware of the other kind--the one that breaks on this, the windiest beach in Andalusia, rolling the stones and rattling the shore.
I wasn’t too far out, just past the rocks that supported the lighthouse and punctuated the shoreline. I had relaxed into a time-suspended bubble that lifted and fell on the whim of the moon-driven tide, when suddenly, a magnificent sea trout breached the water and jumped into the air beside me. My eyes followed its motion as it shot upward, propelled as if its elongated body had gained purchase from some static point and had been fired like a cannonball. This fellow was aiming for the moon, tracing a Sinatra curve, and in that minute, around me, the air stilled, and the world halted its chatter as its shadow moved against the colors of the deep, and I waited.
The last of the soft, golden Mediterranean light caught the water droplets that the trout shook off, and as it danced, shaking and weaving its body through the fabric of the evening, they created globe-like effects that shimmered in the air and raced back down; each shooting towards the waves like a string of gradient-lit pods. They made plopping marks as they sank, perhaps in preparation for a landing as its white belly glowed against the dark outlined marks tracing its trajectory through the air.
It must have been a couple of feet long--plump and substantial: A fine fellow.
Mentally, I cheered it on. 'You go, escape the hunters, for there’s no dinner table grand enough, no cutlery fine enough, no linen white enough to capture your style.' And as I watched him turn and plunge back down, I heard a low, piercing 'cow-cow-caw’ as a gull swooped from the nearby rocks. I didn’t wait for the outcome; instead, I drifted off on the wave, and in my mind’s eye, I followed the light-filled orbs that plotted a new energetic path through the sea.
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