otters

We saw the otters again! It been two years. What a totally magic sight.

And as it was two years ago I posted the story I wrote about this first encounter. I submitted the story for a show about brief encounters, in town. As they declined I will re-post the story here.

It's fiction. it just happened to be that i, jozien, appeared on one of the pages. just like that, a flash in time, part of a greater story that is not mine.

I am  male, normal guy, 46, i have children, a house, a wife, a job and a red truck

Something happened to me the other day and i have told the story to my younger brother, to an aunt i am close to, and to one other person, i cannot disclose her identity. I did not tell my wife , who i love even more now. The three they all say; man you were in paradise, that is so great, just love it, be happy about it that you have such... a great imagination.  I am not happy, I am scared, something totally changed after that. I didn't tell anyone of those three, that after i did stop my truck and that she drove up in a normal  car, she rolled down her window, she looked like a normal woman, she talked to me. I have no idea what she said. I just stammered,  "i will come here next with my wife." An emphasis on  'my wife', she had to understand i was married, she had to know happily, now the fact that i have met this woman who i dream of betraying my wife with, that was suddenly totally irrelevant. She laughed, "good', she said. I imagined her saying, "good, that is even better, the more fun for me, you and your wife." So i said, "no, no i am fine." and she laughed again rolled up her window and drove up her car disappearing in the blowing snow, swirling up in the wake of her spinning tires.

She is in my dreams, she is in my thoughts every moment of my waking life, i see her around every street corner i turn, i see her in every person walking in the office. No not her, not the 'normal' woman. The other one, the one before. I don't believe in visions, I don't believe in aliens, or whatever crap you can come up with.

Let me start at the beginning.

Sunday afternoon, the wife was nagging and the kids don't really need me, playing their computer games, i decided to go for a drive. The roads bare and the sun came out, i decided to turn into the lake road. My truck lays on the road solid, i love it. Where the traffic has been less and the snow ruts are deep, i shift it into fourwheel drive. I love the power in which it pulls through the snow.The river is starting to freeze up. I get out of the car to see ice floes gathering together. When what seems to be in my head, a beautiful women's voice singing, long melodic sounds, i don't know how to describe it, almost if she is accompanied by musicians. I thought it was in my head, sometime we all have that, hearing a voice talk. But then i look at where the sound appears to come from…..

Now i have seen an otter in the Yukon before,  but rarely. Below me in the water is a whole family of them playing and snorting, Maybe 5 or 6, their skin shiny and dark, their faces full of frozen whiskers, looking like old men. For a moment i forget about the singing, but there it is again. And  then one of the... not an otter.. is more slender, lighter skin, hair long trailing behind in the water... no frozen whiskers.. a female shape.  I  freeze, dare not to move, but follow 'her' with my eyes. One of the otters spots me, dives under, and three  of them swim away.

'She' turns her head and our eyes lock for second. Smoothly as the otters, she dives under too. I search for her to surface somewhere, but don't see it. The otters swim under the ice floes and slowly appear in an opening farther down the river, quieter now, seemingly just fishing.

All together it is a beautiful site, just to see the otters is amazing. The music is gone. I watch them for quite a while, and wonder if i all imagined it. Once more i drive towards the lake and turn again where the snow gets too deep. When i come back  by the river, i drive slow, and through my car window i watch for the otters. They are still there, and then

there she is sitting on the ice below a tree, looking at me.

I step on the gas, and race of.

My heart beating  fast,  driving way too fast. I calm  down and stop the car and that is  where that wretched woman spoke to me.

-to be continued- what happened at home