The Aegean——

When, at the break of dawn, his watery eyelid parted and his dreamy gaze met with the crimson radiance broke from the first shimmer of the rising sun and softened by the gauzy drapery, he realized it was nothing but a dream. His senses, numbed with sleeping, gradually instilled back one at a time. The gentle whispers of the ocean slowly grew audible and the morning breeze, admitted from the chasm between the fluttering curtain and the white-marbled windowsill, brushes against the bare skin of his chest. He stirred and blinked, only to find a dozen of nipped fingertips and toes. "Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still?" He cannot tell. The sensation is almost like that his soul has temporarily deserted the post of ministering angel and wandering into the realm that only spirits are allowed, and now, exhausted from its adventure, finally comes back to occupy this material body. With several attempts, he tried to elbow into a sitting position but have all failed. Lying flat on his back, he enclosed his eyes again and, relied solely on the obscure impression remained, restored his dream:

It was in the midst the wilderness, nay, a desert, that he was positioned. The canopy, inlaid with innumerable stars in the fashion of decorating gems, hanged over him. He can detect, in the dull, dry air, the presence of a fragrant, coconutty, it was the scent of her hair. Spinning around, a figure, her figure, tiny and fragile, bathed under the starlight, was standing erect before him. Her skin, supple and smooth, glowed silverly. His hand reached out as to ascertain by touching if she was not a mere shadow but an actual substance. He feels it now, oh, that sweet feeling, her elegance long neck, slope shoulder, silk-like hair and her slim fingers. Upon touching, she enclosed those of his in hers. A shot of warmth flowed through his body like lightning. The muscular hand broke from the custody of the other and entwined the remainder of her into an impermeable embrace…

Was it a dream? An illusion? It must have been yet it couldn't have been. A dream cannot possibly be so real and solid and have scents and tactility as the one he just experienced? He tries to snap the vague fading impression, to wrench it from dissolving, to sear it into his memory eternally and to savor every single morsel of that sweet moment ad infinitum. But vainly, the fantasy evaporated at length and her figure, perished into a whirl of hues, became unrecognizable. Bewildered, and sitting cross-legged in bed, he stared blankly into the rising and falling tide waves and the yonder skyline, which now, shone by a fully risen sun, glittered in gold. Gathering up the white bed sheet around his waist, he stepped off the bed and onto the terrace, barefooted. The blood running in his vein was still boiling at a vaporizing climax, an acute pain, mingled with longing and desperation seized his heart. With his dried out lips, his mumbled into the wind:

"Where are you, Feina?"