Travelogue

“Pull over here”

She did as he said. The heat had them both a little testy and a couple of hours on the road with signs she couldn’t read and traffic that seemed entirely indifferent – no defiant – of anything proposed by common sense as well as the highway code she desperately wanted to believe still existed in this place had her nerves more than a little frayed. She’d known Greece would be like that, but hadn’t realised how much it would get to her when she was in the midst of it herself. Still, it had been quite an amazing drive so far and she was glad they’d decided to go for it.

They’d chosen the soft top four-wheeler at the rental lot driven by a sense of adventure and rationale that suggested that wind in the hair and face would be a whole lot nicer than sitting enclosed in a small hatchback with the struggling air-con trying to beat the sweltering heat of the afternoon sun. What they hadn’t realised was that the with the top off the very sporty looking blue Suzuki there was no shelter from the hot sun beating down on them, and even when they’d manage to go at considerable speeds they couldn’t escape it.

The place they’d come to was outside the map they’d gotten the day before in the small village shop close to the hotel. They hadn’t intended to go this far today but she sensed that he had some kind of destination in mind, which he had yet to reveal to her. Right now, it was all the same to her though. She was just glad to be able to push the door open and stretch her legs a bit.

“Get us something to drink, would you?”

It wasn’t a question but she was already halfway around the car as it were. The cooler in the back still stacked several full bottles, some whose contents were still partly frozen in the middle. They had plenty to choose from, yet she didn’t bother asking what he wanted. Old habits die hard and even in this heat she had had no luck pushing the water she herself favoured. Instead she picked out a fresh bottle of iced tea for him, and grabbed a half-finished same of water for herself and closed the lid carefully before looking for him. Focused on retrieving the drinks she hadn’t paid notice to what he was doing and when she couldn’t find him lounging in the shades of the huge maple trees under which they’d parked she looked further.

In the end she found him, leaning against the knotted and winding stem of an olive tree. Once she’d heard a tale about how the trees had come to be that way. Zeus had come to Earth disguised as a wayward traveller and found hospitality and kindness with a married elderly couple when all others had turned him away. The couple had convinced him there was still some good left in mankind and decided to reward the couple for their deed by granting them a wish. It turned out that – when the time came – they wanted to die together. They’d been together all their lives and were very happy though they didn’t have much at all. They were very much in love still even after all these years of life and marriage, and so their only wish was that neither be alone when the time came for one of them to go. So they wanted to die together.

Zeus granted them their wish and on the day when one of them was close to the end, they called out to him to fulfil his promise. He came and asked them to stand, embracing one another and when they did, turned them into an olive tree. That’s why the stems are so wound and entangled. It actually consists of several stems slung together, like the old couple. She smiled quietly to herself appreciating that as she walked up the slight slope and offered the bottle to him.

This was a story that came about while I was on vacation in Greece. I had my 10″ notebook with me, plenty of time to write and no reason not to … so I sat and let the story flow. It turned into quite a story – many more pages than I have posted here – and I got to a point where I felt like it was fading in favour of my own directions. That’s when I stopped. I don’t know if I will ever come back to finish it, but I definitely enjoyed the time I have already spent with it.