"The tightrope walker is an island, remembering the continents and greeting them from afar."
Michaël Ferrier, Memories from Overseas
Lucian's notebook
On the first day of my arrival, the sea lay sleeping, a vast dark beast, when a terrible shudder passed through it. From the deepest reaches of the heavens, a sigh arose—long, hoarse, almost sacrilegious—and the horizon, that hyphen between infinity and the abyss, vanished beneath a weight of shadow.
As the volcano collapsed, the storm arose.
It began with the wind. Not the gentle wind that caresses the dunes, but a grave, ancient breath issuing from the entrails of the world. It no longer merely stirred the waves; it tore them away from themselves, and it filled me with terror. Whirling, it howled and struck like a fallen archangel rebelling, still aflame with the fire of the volcano. It cleaved the void with wings of ash.
One would have thought that the air itself had become wrath, naked power.
As for the sea, it had become nothing but a cry.
Each wave rose like a mountain and collapsed into an abyss. They were no longer sheets of water, but the hunts of titans, sabres of foam brandished by the Invisible. Salt flew through the air like apocalyptic sand, stinging space with an acid bite.
The ocean, that giant with a thousand arms, struggled against nothing, against everything, against God perhaps.
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Lucian travels in the footsteps of Igniatius, the Moon Child, and Pinocchio the Other.
Though the journey is arduous, carrying him through storms and the violent moods of the elements, he also benefits from calms as sudden as they are restorative.
Paradoxically, the more he was confronted with such manifestations, the stronger he became.
Tracing things back to their source, he encountered a small blue dog with whom he entered into conversation, without troubling himself in the least over the fact that such a thing might appear unusual, and without knowing what place the creature might occupy within the story... if indeed there was any place to occupy.
Though the journey is arduous, carrying him through storms and the violent moods of the elements, he also benefits from calms as sudden as they are restorative.
Paradoxically, the more he was confronted with such manifestations, the stronger he became.
Tracing things back to their source, he encountered a small blue dog with whom he entered into conversation, without troubling himself in the least over the fact that such a thing might appear unusual, and without knowing what place the creature might occupy within the story... if indeed there was any place to occupy.
– I would not wish to appear insolent, dear Lucian, said the little blue dog, but as you can plainly see, time is playing against you in these regions. If my eyes do not deceive me, you have already lost your shirt here... after having already lost your coat and your hat... and, most certainly, your way. Which brings me to this question: what else might you lose... and how do you now envision the continuation of your mission... if indeed there is still a mission?
– I am surprised to hear you sound so pessimistic, replied Lucian. You, who, if I am to believe what you yourself have taught me, possess the gift of guidance... and therefore of seeing beyond what, for us, is merely the present.
– Remember, everything changes constantly upon this Terra Archipelago of uncertain contours. Thus what exists today will no longer exist tomorrow... and who can know, with or without a coat, what may yet come to pass?
