When She Unfolded That Melody

Okio sat in her studio overlooking the bay, the sea was still as glass, nothing to disturb it this early in the morning. Crossing the room to the huge sliding glass door Okio pulled it open and stepped out onto the wooden veranda, her hands resting lightly on the wooden railings as she let her eyes roam the world around her.

Slowly her senses began awakening, below her a heavy mauve mist rose from the rocks, seeping into the air with time-worn patience, undulating with slow regular consistency. Off to her right starburst orange and emerald green vapours drifted out of the citrus orchard, the spiky emerald coiling and twisting with and around the calmer orange.

Okio gradually began sashaying across the veranda, her hips swaying sensually, arms over her head, her lips mouthing words as they came to her while she danced. Okio, lost to the unheard music around her, failed to notice the tingling sensations across her skin as she moved.

The rich mist lifted high off the rocks, saturating the wood of the veranda, slipping between the gaps and staining the wood as it passed. Languidly it wrapped itself around the young songwriter discolouring her white pants and her red shirt, a serpent constricting softly.

From the orchard the twin vapours of orange and emerald chased each other around the trees back and forth, intertwining, splitting apart, blending and breaking. All the while streaking towards the oblivious young woman already held, writhing, in place by the mauve fog.

The twins collided with Okio suddenly, sharply. Their jagged edges penetrating the mauve cocoon about her, dancing the length of her body, tainting her, prickling her skin.

Okio turned in the mist’s tight embrace and gazed with sightless eyes at the safe interior of her apartment as she continued to twist and squirm to soundless music. Without warning Okio began dancing once more, the mist still clinging to her while she moved. As she swayed and danced and sang tiny pieces of the vapour gradually solidified and flaked away, fluttering to the decking behind her.

For two hours Okio sang in silence and danced alone on her veranda overlooking the bay until the first rays of the morning light crept across the still waters below. Beads of perspiration ran together, the tickle of sweat danced down her back, down her limbs, her body flushed with exertion yet on and on she danced pushing herself, a spin, a sashay, the swing of her hips, arms over her head.

Finally, as the first rays of the silver morning sun rose over the horizon Okio collapsed exhausted in a heap to the floor, unable to move. Behind her lay scattered the results of her two hour long ritual, sheaf upon sheaf of music and lyrics.

Reaching a trembling hand to the closest one Okio watched as the last lyrics wrote themselves on the page in mauve, orange and emerald. From between the strands of her sweat soaked hair that hung over her face the young song witch smiled at her work.