In a stilt house near a golden beach, the bloodcurdling screams of a woman are heard.
Women hastily emerge from the other houses, suspended above the salty foam, bringing with them fresh water in small wooden bowls.
A young woman is pushing and screaming with such force that her life seems to be on the line and that isn’t entirely wrong. It would simply be a euphemism. It’s her life…and the life of her little girl.
Finally, an elderly woman is holding a small baby upside down. The baby is not crying or screaming. The stilt house is filled by chilling, deafening silence.
A second. Two seconds. Ten seconds pass by.
In her mother's eyes, the faint light of Hope is snuffed out. Despair lights up in its place. From her lips, in a language that came before any other, a desperate prayer is whispered.
“Don't drown… my child. Please, don't drown...”
Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds pass by.
The stilt house empties. A man runs in.
He’s wearing a stoic expression, concealing a shattered heart as he embraces his beloved.
Fifty seconds. A minute passes by…
Then…
A cough breaks the silence. It’s punctuated by a sob. Another one comes after that. And finally follows a torrential cry and a heart-breaking scream after the child releases her lungs and, for the first time, takes in the air of this ancient world. And, for the first time, she can hear the words of a being much like herself.
“No one is more fortunate than you, my child…except for me...”
Her ancient family would name her with a warmly auspicious string of sounds, now lost to time. To someone that will come thousands of years after that very moment, her name would simply be “Fortunata”.
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On the rocks of a golden beach, a dark-skinned and black-haired little girl throws herself into the water to try and catch some small fish. Her fishing technique is quite peculiar. It could be called hugging the waves. Not really the most effective. Her father stands a few steps away from her, a splendid harpoon resting on his shoulder and a large fish, scales vibrant red, impaled on the tip made of bone. A meal worthy of the gods (who, as of this very moment, have not yet landed on this earth) awaits Fortunata's family. Her eyes look up to her father as the grandest of heroes.
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A dark-skinned girl with braided black hair wields a harpoon on a small catamaran. The sea has been generous today and Fortunata thanks it with her hands folded and her gaze fixed on the horizon, where sea and sky are the same thing. And for that young woman… maybe they are. Perhaps the point can be reached where the blue above and the blue below meet. Perhaps something beautiful awaits there.
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A young woman with sunburnt skin and salty hair is sitting on a small, wrecked raft without a sail. The young girl has in front of her a wooden stick sharpened by desperate nails. A wooden stick that was once the grandest of harpoons. Her eyes, filled with tears that don't stop flowing, are resting on the sea surrounding her.
A cruel, monstrous sea, calm after days of fury. The waves that devoured its heroic fellow tribesmen and the most splendid boats that a human hand had ever managed to create until then… it now appeared sated and sleeping.
A pair of peeled hands clasp together and a pair of bloodshot eyes squint on the infinitely distant horizon, under the merciless rays of the sun. A throat scratched by thirst and incessant screaming now implores with barely audible despair.
“I don't want to drown… please… anyone who can hear me… anything… I offer you my life… I don't want to drown…”
An hour. Two hours pass by.
Her eyes close. Her hands loosen. Sleep overtakes her.
Suddenly, something enters Fortunata's evanescent reality. Pain. Enough pain to tear her away from the outstretching darkness of her last dream. Her eyes open up again. This time what welcomes her back to the waking world is not the kind and wise visage of her mother... but the sharp one of a strange, imposing white Bird with a greyish, toothed beak. In its jaws it holds a deceased fish, its generous prey. Its eyes betray a deep intelligence. For an instant, to her thirst-stricken mind, it seems like they glow with a strange blue light.
The winged Beast throws the fish into the air.
Struck by the last lights of the sunset, the scales of that fish turn red.
It's swallowed in a single bite… before Its wings take off.
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A woman named Fortunata wields a pointed wooden stick. A wooden fragment torn from a raft is tied to it, imitating the crude shape of an oar. The woman fights with all her strength against the resistance of the water, her improvised instrument propelling her further and further away from her marine grave and closer and closer to wherever that strange Bird flew. It can't be far away, it's the thought that inundates her mind. It’s this thought that fills her eyes with fury and her tired muscles with renewed strength.
Maybe her eyes, clouded as they were, had cheated her…
And yet it seemed like small spots were appearing above the horizon.
Small stilt-shaped spots, placed where the blue below meets the blue above.
It seemed like her eyes, after all, hadn't betrayed her.
Red-scaled fishes, after all, never stray too far from the beach.