On accord of the kaput shower we took a walk so that Sunni could wash her hair in the pool underneath the bridge. That was where I first saw him--Børre Viggo.
Now--I don't want you to think that I'm the kind of girl who usually falls for someone at first sight, it was different with Børre Viggo. For once he was a fish. He was just swimming around in the water there in the pool under the bridge, fairly large too and he had a great white patch on his head. I assume he was stuck there in the estuary somehow, he probably came in with a high tide and couldn't get back out again. Right there we made a pact; before we left we would catch Børre Viggo and feed him to Sunni's cats.
Sunni had a summer-job at a nearby fish-farm; every night--sometime after eight--for a week she'd have to go down and feed the stinking little fish, and because I'm such a great friend I came along for company and moral-support. I had a lot of fun scaring the fish while Sunni was working. If nothing else it left us some time for our absurd conversations.
That night there was a full moon. But due to the enormous mountains surrounding us we couldn't see it. I am not a pagan, nor a heathen or a wiccan or whatever it is they call all those strange mystic earth-religions. What I am is an agnostic and a lunatic. Anyway--we had our minds set on worshipping the moon that night, so in stead of sitting around complaining--which you've probably noticed is my usual reaction to stuff--we decided to go find the moon.
There is a road going up the mountain, although it's extremely steep; we went up anyway. We had absolutely no idea where the moon was supposed to rise, but we figured that the higher we got the better our view would be. I am not an athletic person--I like sitting in front of my computer, eating junk food and drinking tea--all the exercise I get is walking up the stairs to the TV-room, and down again to get some more tea. The trip up did not go too smoothly, we both needed to rest a lot, and we just couldn't seem to find the moon. We almost gave up and decided to sit on a rock and wait for the moon to come to us, that was when we saw a soft glow of light behind the next hill. There was just no question; we ran the rest of the way.
It was so perfect. It was so cool. It was so brilliant. It was so cliché.
I'm not kidding--we were standing on a kind of plateau in front of a large marsh, and--honestly--fog swept the ground. And above us; the full moon. I almost felt like howling against it--actually we did howl.
Sunni did her best to raise some trolls, fairies, gnomes and bog-nymphs, but I assume it was their night off, because nothing happened and if there's anybody who can raise bog-nymphs it's Sunni.
We moved out on the swamp a bit--in order to see the moon better--our shoes got rather wet and we didn't see nothing we couldn't have seen just as well from the road. Since I'd only brought one pair of shoes--I'm not one of those girls who bring six dozen shoes with her every time she leaves the house; I've got one pair of Nikes and if those aren't appropriate I go barefoot--I returned to the road while my shoes still weren't too soaked. Sunni continued on to examine some shadow further out on the marsh.
I want it on record that I returned to the road because I don't enjoy having wet feet--not because I'm a coward; because I'm not. As a matter of fact I thrive on danger.
I was just standing there by the road minding my own business, playing a bit with a microscopic flash-light while the fog was getting steadily thicker.
Suddenly I heard some muffled cries of distress. Oh, yes--you guessed it--Sunni managed to get herself stuck in the bog. If I'd just left her there it could have made a nice movie or a depressing book--of cause that's not the kind of person I am.
She was stuck pretty well too, mud up above her knees and shoes soaked with brown water. She came loose easily when I gave her a hand, although she nearly lost a shoe.
My shoes were wet when we got back to the road--Sunni on the other hand was soaked--we weren't quite ready to go home yet though.
Sunni left her shoes and her trousers by the side of the road and we kept walking.
We didn't discover anything new, but we must have looked rather strange if anyone were watching--nobody were.
Introduction