Alexander Pererva - The Cup of Galfar. Alderosa's Daughter

The forest was moaning in the wind, broken branches were snapping and crashing all around. But the peals of thunder seemed more muffled. Allie scrambled through the thick undergrowth and kept calling her friends. It was all in vain; the only answer was the howl of wind in the trees. Once the girl thought that somebody answered her calls. Allie froze and listened hard; indeed, there was something else out there besides the storm. It was a distant sound, powerful and measured, like the breath of a giant animal. But her friends were still not answering.

Allie didn’t know how long she’d been wandering around the forest. She was completely lost and stumbled along, almost completely exhausted. Finally she tripped over a tree root and fell down onto the wet grass. She was close to fainting. “I can’t go any further”, she thought. “Too bad, I’m gonna get an earache again.”

And then Allie felt the earth move under her. It seemed that its surface was rippled by waves like the sea, and the waves were growing with every second. Allie was scared and tried to get up, but then she felt the ground leap up beneath her. The girl was thrown into the air, and then she fainted.

Allie opened her eyes and closed them again: the golden sun was shining straight in her face. Trying to hide from it, she sat up in bed. Yes, she was on a bed, or, rather, a small wooden settee with a nice carved back. It sat by a window in a spacious sunlit room with the same kind of carved wooden furniture. The window was cracked open, and the lacy curtain was moving slightly in the fresh morning breeze. The golden sunray broke through its delicate pattern and cheerfully danced on the pillow.

“That’s what woke me up”, Allie thought and smiled. She felt peaceful and rested. Looking around, she noticed that her clothes were clean, dry, and neatly folded on a chair near her bed. Allie dressed quickly and went over to the table by the other window. There was a skillet with steaming fried eggs and pink juicy-looking ham. Next to the skillet she saw a big sliced loaf of fresh golden-yellow bread with an appetizingly crunchy crust, a big mug of milk and a bowl of jam. Only then, looking at this bountiful spread and inhaling its divine aromas, Allie realized how starved she was. Unable to wait any longer, she sat down and dug in. She reasoned that since she’d been so well taken care of, then surely the breakfast was meant for her, too.

When she was full, the girl came up to the window, drew the curtain aside and opened the window wide. For a moment she froze in astonishment and delight: the window faced a real garden, but what a garden it was! There were flowers of all shapes and colors right by the window. A little further down, there were short bushy trees, some of them covered in blossoms, others – in young green fruit, and still others bent down their heavy branches laden with ripe fruits. The fruits were of unusual kinds: round, diamond-shaped, flat like a wheel, pear-shaped, and even some that looked like big striped doughnuts.

The garden was filled with such fragrant aromas that Allie felt a little dizzy. She went to the opposite window and stopped, stupefied: it was the land’s end. That is, she could see an empty grassy area with some shrubbery here and there. It ended about two hundred feet away, and there was nothing else beyond it, only a strangely-colored sky.

Just then Allie realized that she’d been hearing the familiar rhythmic breathing she’d first heard the night before. Only now it sounded like the breathing of some big, good-natured creature. The girl was struck by a sudden epiphany. She ran out of the room, down the porch and toward the land’s end. The breathing sounded louder, and the sky came nearer. Then Allie stopped – she couldn’t run any further. Entranced, she was looking at the thing in front of her. Here it was, alive and breathing, huge as the sky. The sea!

“The sea!” Allie yelled in delight and waved her arms to greet it.

She had been at the sea before. Her parents had taken her there twice to treat her ear infections, but she was too little then and didn’t remember much. Most of her knowledge of the sea came from books and movies. And now she was looking at it, up close.

The cliff she was standing on was quite tall, about a hundred feet above the sea level, but its slope was gradual enough to go down without breaking one’s neck. Allie saw a path that went down to the wide beach that stretched along the sea from left to right. The sand of the beach was bright yellow, almost orange. Here and there rusty-red smooth stones peeked out of the sand.

Yellows and oranges dominated the landscape. Th sky was blue only in the west; straight overhead it was yellowish green and turned bright yellow toward the east around the large sun. Right at the horizon it melted into rosy caramel.

Taking a good look, Allie realized something: the sun wasn’t as bright as always, so she could easily gaze directly at it. But it was clearly larger than normal. There was something uncanny, even unearthly about it all.

Nevertheless, the view that stretched before Allie was indeed splendid. The most marvelous thing of all was, naturally, the sea. It was dark navy in the distance, turned delicately azure towards the shore, and right at the shoreline blended together many hues of green, from bright grassy green to an almost transparent bottle-glass green. Gentle waves rolled lazily towards the shore. The golden-orange sun was playing on their glossy backs. They curled up with foamy pinkish white-caps near the beach, then spilled onto the sand with a quiet hissing sound and left wisps of foam all over. It didn’t have time to melt as the new wave brought more foam. This went on contunuously.

Allie couldn’t help herself any longer. She ran down the path and toward the sea, her feet sinking in the sand. The sun, albeit not very bright, was hot, and, although it was still morning, the sand had already heated through. It looked like it was high summer season.

Throwing off her clothes, Allie carefully touched the waves with her toes. The water was warm, and the girl threw her doubts aside and dove into the sea. She played in the pink foamy waves, forgetting about everything else in the world, even about the fact that she only had eight more days to save her Mom and Dad.

When she had played in the water to her heart’s content, Allie found herself a spot on a warm rock. The girl basked in the sun, soaking up its gentle warmth. The waves broke against the rock, and Allie could feel their pleasantly cool spray on her hot skin and taste the salt on her lips. A light breeze was playing with her already dry hair. The sea sparkled in the sun. Allie was taking in the sight of this shimmering emerald-colored marvel and couldn’t get enough of it. It mesmerized her; she forgot about time and felt like she could sit there forever.

Looking at this peaceful sea, Allie had a hard time believing that just a few hours before that awful storm was raging. The very thought of it made Allie shudder. There was only one reminder now: far away at the horizon, where the sky met the sea, she could see a ridge of black stormclouds. They didn’t look scary but rather picturesque at this distance, especially that one spot where the biggest stormclouds towered high above the rest of them. There was a rosy golden halo of sunlight around the clouds, so this stormy mass looked almost dreamlike, and the green and orange lightnings that lit up the clouds from time to time only added to the impression. In the light of one especially bright flash Allie noticed a swarm of black dots in the sky.

“Must be seagulls,” she thought.

Engrossed in this fabulous view, Allie didn’t pay attention to her surroundings. That’s why she didn’t notice when a stranger approached the rock she was sitting on. It was a short stout man dressed in a light-colored loose tunic and matching short trousers. His gray hair hadn’t been cut in a long time and stuck out in wisps. A shaggy curly beard framed his round smiley face. He looked old at first sight, but his smooth tan skin and merry blue eyes under the bushy eyebrows belied the impression.