Visions of Blue: Book I in the Visions Trilogy

by Inia Jardine

  ‘What’s the matter Lilia my love?’

  ‘Oh Jonah I say through the sobs; I have just received the sad tiding of a very dear friend’s sudden passing back in South Africa. You know, you would have liked Clive. He had an infectious laugh like yours. You could hear him for miles and nobody could NOT laugh with him when he laughed. I loved that about him as I love it about you.’

  ‘I am sorry for your loss Lilia, was this Clive a friend with special privileges?’

  ‘No Big J, not at all. I knew his wife very well too. He was a guy I met through work and just a dear, dear friend, always with his beloved border collie, Max, side by side. He lived for that dog, Max went everywhere with him, even to meetings with his bank manager!’

  He holds me close and absorbs some of my heartache. I am reminded of that age old saying ‘Shared joy is double joy, but shared grief is halved grief.’

  'Do you want to go back for the funeral Lilia?'

  'No Jonah, I can't bear it. Too many memories. I will just send a donation to the local animal shelter in his name.' During times like these my heart breaks for the few friends and the country I left behind. I made a clean break and did not keep contact with anyone. If I could only have seen him one more time, shared a laugh and a drink with him. But that is what you give up when you immigrate to another country.

  For the rest of the evening I am teary and nostalgic but Jonah just takes it in his stride. He cuddles me a lot and makes sweet love to me until I fall into a restorative sleep.

  9

  Jonah and I have started to upgrade the locale around the ancient meteor crater where we made love, to enable us to share a portion of our extraordinarily unique Xanadu with others. We will do it in an unobtrusive and environmentally friendly way. A short hiking trail leads to the beautiful waterfall where our guests will be able to enjoy a packed lunch.

  It is unfortunate that we were forced to erect a fence around the visitor area and charge a small entrance fee to see the crater. We did this only to discourage memento seekers and folks who want to deface the place. A couple of young men came to visit a few weeks ago and dug out some crystallised rock in the chalk layer, against all our rules and regulations. They rushed off before we could identify or catch up with them.

  After erecting the few strands of electrified fencing we now at least have a form of control over who visits the site as we feel it is of scientific and historical value. Although now enclosed the environmentally sensitive barrier still allows for wildlife to roam through their natural corridors.

  Jonah loves to chat to the camera wielding geo-tourists when he is not working, as he knows most of the international languages. The visitors are in turn always enthralled by this dark, well-spoken Jamaican in Britain. We have rudimentary day facilities for visiting guests and have started work on a small extension to the house – just two B&B guest rooms for a bit of additional income. The footprint of our home is very small in relation to the land, and it will not intrude on our privacy at all. The guest rooms face toward the hills whereas we live inside the courtyard style home.

  I decided to pace myself on my book on slavery, as I am still trying to find a novel but respectful point of view to write from. It will not be enough to just say that slavery is bad and lots of people died. It is too depressing and nobody would want to read it. It has to be interesting too. In the meanwhile, I keep busy with my gardening as well as looking after the tourists who come to view ‘our’ crater.

  Since being publicised on the Castle website, tourists cannot seem to get enough of the place. They take photos & wander around in this alien environment and then take the picnic baskets I prepare for them to enjoy in the adjoining waterfall paradise. I would have liked our waterfall to stay private but it is too beautiful to hide. Sometimes you have to share the joy a little.

  Jonah built a rustic pergola in our garden, the top of which we covered with canvas to be waterproof. When weather allows, this is where I usually put out several pillows & picnic blankets with the Xanadu logo on it, a lovely pair of chameleons. I imported the fabric from Jamaica and have used it everywhere to remind us of Jonah's roots. I am proud of it and working on Jonah to be proud of it as well. He is still a little undecided about what to share of his past and what to best keep to himself.

  I have displayed a few different fossils and rocks here, together with shells from Jamaica.

  As a child in South Africa I used to collect shells and interesting rocks from places the family visited and had a huge collection by the time I left home. My favourites were quartzes like rose quartz and tigers’ eye, flaky mica, beryl, even a geode with amethyst inside, malachite and blue corundum almost like my Jonah’s eyes. The sandstone and lime stone with fossilised plants and animals fascinated me, the granite, ‘fool’s gold’ – pyrite, schist...all riveting stuff.

  My rocks unfortunately ended up in various rock gardens and water features scattered through all the places I lived in. Rocks are not conducive to being carted along every time you move. Some of the shells I brought with though, in a special small display case my Dad made for me. This is a chance to restart my collection and build it up again.

  One area of rock formation in the crater is of special interest to us, and we are thinking of getting a Specialist Geologist, Dr Perna, in. He is affiliated with Jonah’s University and is a genius on all things fossil and meteorite. He will do an analytical report on rocks in the crater. Neither of us can identify the exact type of rock and have not seen anything like it before.

  The ancient but charming Dr Perna arrive a few days later and we have a look around. He has skin like leather from being outdoors in all temperatures and climates, wispy white hair and a skeletal frame which makes him the absolute perfect caricature of a geologist.

  He looks very similar to my Geology lecturer of many years ago, Dr Zeight (a kind old man - we called him Zeitgeist). He has with him a small bottle of acid to test the rocks, a magnet and several plastic containers for samples. I carry the small, carefully packed analytical instrument and we set off. I have to be the guide as unfortunately Jonah has to be at the University today.

  ‘These rock formations are very peculiar Mrs Hibbert. I cannot remember ever seeing anything similar during my long career. They seem to have the characteristics of a type of rock formed by an excessive amount of pressure. It is comparable with the carbon to diamond development - but not over aeons, instead over a relatively short period of time.’

  He drips acid on a piece from a tiny little bottle.

  ‘See how the acid reacts with it? This black rock fizzles when it shouldn’t have, and the spotty grey one does not fizzle and it should have! The chalk formation around it just dissolves.’

  I don’t mind that he calls me Mrs Hibbert, I quite like it.

  ‘I remember that trick from my Geology years at University Doc! We loved dripping acid on rocks to see how they react. It is the silica VS calcium content that causes the reaction isn’t it?’

  ‘Something like that my dear, something like that.’

  He is being a bit evasive and I can see that he tolerates my presence only because it is ‘my’ land. He does look fairly agitated and leaves within half an hour with a few samples.

  ‘You will let us know what you find in your detailed testing Doc?’

  ‘Yes, of course but don’t hold your breath, it may just be your garden variety chalk formation with some quartz and a few obsidian veins from a meteoric impact. There are a few common varieties of marine and related fossils. Peculiar, but nothing to write home about at this stage.’

  That’s good news to me as it puts the whole defacing/theft mystery into perspective, those trespassers must have just been young vandals, nothing more. Looking for mementos, fossils to sell.

  I am actually glad that it does not seem like something special as I want peace and quiet to reign here. I don't want crowds looking for diamonds or worse, oil spewing out of the rock like in Texas! A few fossils would be great. Oh shoot, I forgot t
o show him the small pieces of blue glass I found. I will show him next time he comes around.

  Later at home…

  'Jonah?'

  'Present and accounted for.'

  'Silly man, take off your professor hat you are just Jonah now. Is there some way, any natural way there could be pieces of blue tile in our crater?'

  'Remnants from a picnic where lovers fought and broke their plates?'

  'Bloody old lovers if you ask me. I don't want to get excited but do you think it is possible that we may have remains of a villa or something built here during the Roman Empire? I know from reading Asterix and Obelix that there were many Roman settlements in Great Britain.'

  'You astound me Lilia. Taking history lessons from cartoons? Possible yes, probable no. Where did you see these shards and how many of them?'

  'Educational cartoons. I am correct am I not though?'

  'Actually yes, but interesting how you got there. And funny.'

  'Ignoring this facetious comment about my history background, they are not really shards, more like minute little chips. You can barely see the blue but it makes me curious. I was fart-assing around while Dr Perna was looking at the rock formations in the crater today and I found some.'

  'You got me interested enough to go and have a look. Shall we walk my dear or jump on the Ducati?'

  'It's getting a bit late so let's go on the bike.’

  As we arrive at the crater the sun is beginning to set and I frantically scratch around the area where I found a shard earlier. 'Look Jonah, there are more.' We look under bushes and in crevasses and find a few tiny pieces.

  'I will take them to class tomorrow and look at them under the microscope. Let's just keep it quiet for now OK?'

  The next day Jonah phones me from the University. 'Lilia, I think we have something big here. I don't want to ask any historical experts but from what I can see it has to be very old glazed mosaic pieces or shards of coloured rock. They were used to make mosaics in the Roman era. This indicates the ruins of a civilisation, a town, a temple or something big under our feet.

  We have the choice to either have it examined, facing a subsequent deluge of archaeologists, historians and all sorts of fortune seekers, or keep it to ourselves and letting sleeping dogs lie peacefully. Publicizing may mean fame and fortune but loss of all we hold dear. I know what I prefer. What do you think?'

  'Jonah I don't even have to think about it. Let it be. We don't want any intrusive demands on our land.'

  'Agreed Lilia. We keep it to ourselves and subtly plant a bunch of thorny indigenous vegetation in that area.'

  'I'm on it. So glad we agree.'

  And so we conspire to keep the magic of Xanadu mostly to ourselves. Selfish? Maybe. But we choose to share what we want to, and that is our prerogative.

  10

  Jonah and I try to have a special ‘date’ every now and then to stop boredom from setting in where our romantic life is concerned. Tonight we are meeting at the showing of one of my all-time favourite films, the James Cameron Avatar movie, but we are in disguise. No, not masks and fake noses, but different attire to what we usually wear. I have the blue lines of paint and white fluorescent spots in patterns all over my face to resemble the Na'vi tribe.

  I have dressed up in a long blue layered dress with beads and bangles, sandals on my feet and a small dream catcher pendant around my neck. I have had this piece of jewellery for ages because of the belief that good dreams get caught in the web of silver strands. They apparently then flow down the feathers to below and the nightmares pass through the hole in the middle of the web and go away. Mine is made from silver thread and has small crystals hanging from it. I have added a few small guinea fowl feathers which I picked up in South Africa. We had guinea fowl roaming on our land when we lived in a semi-rural area. These birds, although wild, lived freely in my garden and helped with pest control. Their little spotted chicks were so cute and it always broke my heart that not many grew to adulthood.

  I have added a chameleon charm which Jonah bought for me, to the pendant. A clip in my braided hair with similar guinea fowl feathers on completes my outfit.

  Jonah arrives wearing some blue face paint, a feathered headband and a skimpy dark blue outfit. He almost looks like a real Na'vi because of his size. The best looking Na'vi by far.

  ‘They are going to kick you out with that on your head, warrior,’ I tease, ‘nobody behind you will be able to see.’

  ‘Hey Neytiri, women are supposed to be seen and not heard’ he jokes. 'You can be glad I did not bring my Ikran with. Let’s go inside and kiss in the back row’ my ravishing Na'vi.'

  I booked us some seats right at the back for that specific reason, in order to do some 'kissing in the back rows of the movies on a Saturday night with you...’ A great big perk of being in a relationship with someone close to your age is that you know the same old favourite music. That specific song takes me back to my young days.

  The movie is spellbinding and amazingly beautiful, I could watch it over and over and over again. When we leave the cinema I remark to Jonah that I wished we could go and live on another planet like Pandora, where the people still have respect for life and all living creatures. I really think that the world is a very cruel and thoughtless place where it is just everyone for themselves, no matter what the cost to those around you. Where we are though, the little world which we have created for ourselves is just that for me, a Pandora of our own where we can live in peace from the big bad world. We said we would harm none, and live by our convictions.

  ‘I sort of had that idea too but one thing I can promise you, Pandora or not, is that I will always have your best interests at heart. Since I saw you in that outfit, well the feeling is even stronger' Jonah laughs suggestively. I will never get over the way this man desires me constantly. It must be some chemical thing. Maybe I am his unobtanium and he is mine. But we found each other. A chance of a lifetime. I will always appreciate him and treasure him. I will even die for him if I have to, though I hope I never have to prove it. I want to grow old with him by my side, sit on our rocking chairs by the fire and discuss our days.

  It is raining softly outside, wonderful and misty. I have taken the Range Rover and we decide to leave Jonah’s bike at the University as he walked to the movies and I don't feel like driving back alone. As we drive up the long lane through the forest to our house, we see a movement amongst the shrubs to one side. Jonah stops the vehicle and starts to climb out into the mist to investigate.

  ’Jonah if you leave me here alone I will have to kill you!’ I say shivering in the sudden chill that comes into the car. 'What if it's some kind of monster thing that wants to eat you?'

  ‘Okay Lilia, I am sure it is not a creature from Pandora that escaped, it must be a forest creature looking for a snack. It’s fine, I will leave it alone then, as I can see you need my protection...poor weak and helpless female. What happened to my fearless Na'vi?’

  I punch him on the arm. ‘I don’t want you or me to be that snack’ I exclaim and he grabs my arm.

  'Don’t start what you cannot finish my darling’ he whispers huskily. ‘You know that you will lose a wrestling contest with me just like that,’ and he snaps his fingers. 'I have height, weight, and testosterone that you don't have.'

  ‘You wanna bet my darling? I never start what I can't finish.’ I reply flippantly. ‘I have boobs. OK, as soon as the front door is locked behind us you are on.’

  ‘Fraidy cat, fraidy cat Lilia is a fraidy cat...’ he chants all the way to the house.

  As we fall into the house pushing and shoving I am so turned on by him now that I want to rip his pants to shreds.

  ‘Purr for me fraidy cat...’ Jonah demands.

  'Make me.'

  I slide down the couch on my front while he pushes from behind. As I reach the floor he slides on top of me and with his full weight pummels me into the floor.

  ‘Purrr ...can you hear me purr? Give me more of that my big blue warrior' I heat
edly exclaim. Why is it that we always end up like this? It really must be an attraction stronger than protons to electrons. A bond stronger than that between water molecules, and just as essential to life. We just can't seem to leave each other alone.

  Seeing his blueness, I wish again that we were all blue on this earth, no black, white or yellow. So that there would never again be the racial hate that never seems to end. Then the real person behind the blue would be seen, not the blue.