The man and the woman rode on a scooter. The summer air was mild. The day had been so hot that even now, as the sun was about to settle, the head wind was slightly warm. The road was winding down from the island’s mountains. Sparse ash trees cast their long shadows across from time to time. The faint smell of the sea and the sound of cicadae filled the air and Auloniads were watching them jealously from their invisible hides.
They were probably in their early thirties. The woman was slender. Her long, perfect neck complemented by her black hair’s pageboy cut.
She wore a tight black short sleeved shirt with an algae-like white pattern imprint and a beautiful green skirt which looked a bit like layers of ripped papyrus, when viewed from a distance. The man was tall and slender too. He wore tight white linen trousers with red stripes and a loose long sleeved shirt with vertical bands of different shades of blue and a wide open collar.
His neck-long blond hair, twisting and fluttering from the air stream, brushed against the woman’s forehead. The woman squeezed the man tight and he could feel her heart beating against his back. The man smiled. So did the woman, but the man could not see her face. He felt her heart smiling though.
The man tipped the scooter left and right as he was maneuvering though the serpentines of the road leading down from the mountains to the coast where white Greek houses started dotting the landscape like pebbles someone had placed there with great care.
As they approached another turn the man slowed down and stopped the scooter. The sun was just about to touch the horizon. They both got off the bike.
The woman leaned her back against the man’s chest. The man put his arms around her shoulders and the woman held tight to his forearms with her slim hands. Other couples had stopped their bikes too and stood a few meters away. All watching the sun.
The man kissed the woman on her neck and a little shiver ran through both of their bodies. He knew there would never be this moment again so he tried to memorize it as that he could return to it, some time in the future, when his heart may be heavy.
They watched the big red ball of Helios sink into the Aegean sea, like it had done for æons — long before the man and woman had been formed from the dust of the stars and as it would, long after their bodies would have withered away.
When the sun had fully sunk and the last tip of bright orange had shrunk away they got back onto the scooter. The man started the engine and they continued down the road towards the village in the distance, at the shore.
— A holiday memory taken from the island of Naxos, Greece, late summer 2006
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