the swallow

every flitting, fleeting thing

I wake to the sound of a distant rumble. Long and low, on and on it goes before tapering into silence: an unfamiliar noise.

Opening the campervan door I glance out, unsure. But there is nothing to see. There is only still air, blue sky, an ocean calm as a pebble.

I make coffee and drink it with my feet dangling out of the van. A bonxie passes in the distance, the battleplane of its body. Eiders bob by.

And then, in the quiet: a flutter.

Air lapping, fast and strong.

A swallow, suddenly on the ground just beneath my feet.

I have never been so close to a swallow; never seen one from above. And the colours, the blue jewel of it in the sun—my god. I am breathless.

I want to tell my partner, still half asleep in bed, but I know the swallow will snatch itself away as soon as I open my mouth. It reminds me of when I was a child, sat on a camping chair in the New Forest at midnight, three members of the family lined up next to me, and I finally saw what we’d been waiting for. A badger.

We had been watching the ridge in front of us for hours. Midge-bitten, frozen, we waited, watched, waited. And then there it was, its big-boned body ambling around right next to my uncle. He had not noticed. He was still gazing at the ridge, the snout of the badger mere inches from his shoe. A single noise and it would startle, run. So I breathed in my whisper; pushed it under my tongue. I still remember the ache of that—of burying my excitement, of pinning frantic limbs still—and the reward of it too, of watching the gorgeous creature plod around, oblivious, for a few more seconds.

I am not so successful this time. The swallow, right here, glistening at my feet, is just too beautiful, too precious. I whisper, swallow, so lightly I barely feel the word tiptoe from my lips. And then: a flash of blue, a flutter, air beating fast and strong—the swallow gone.

Some things cannot be shared.

It is then that the rumble comes again. A strange noise; a noise that makes my muscles tense, my eyes dart to the bright blue horizon.

What is it? my partner says, sitting up.

We decide it must be coming from the next island over, hidden from view behind the headland. There is an oil terminal there, and the noise is something like the low hiss of a flame. Again, it lasts for a while before slipping back to silence.

We climb into our wetsuits, put on our snorkels, wander into the quiet sea.

Beneath, a calm chaos of creatures. With every parting of the kelp there is something new: a fish, inspecting my hovering hand; an eyeball, searching my face from behind a strand of seaweed; an anemone, pulsing its blood-red arms in time with the ocean’s breath.

But, the noise.

I hear it beneath the water, surface to a rumble that knocks at my bones. It is closer, and it is not in the direction of the oil terminal anymore. My partner, too, has surfaced, is looking around. We are uneasy, uncertain. There is something so vulnerable about being in water, adrift, and this noise is thrumming a warning into our bodies, telling us to be alert.

A bank of clouds, far out in the Pentland Firth, threatens distant rain, but that is all. The air is still and warm, the sky mostly clear, the water calm.

Strange, we say, but we bury our unease, slip back underwater.

Barnacles drift in the current. A hermit crab scuttles along the seabed. A small shore crab carefully plucks a periwinkle for breakfast, and another crab, huge, the size of my face, glistens in the same hue of blue as the swallow.

But suddenly there is a darkness, a muting of colour. This scene, so vivid a moment ago, becomes a palette of greys. And then the noise shakes and shudders through me: a clap, a boom, an explosion.

I surface just after my partner and a fork of lightning lights up the bruise-black sky, hits the water. Then comes the thunder, rattling through our bodies. And then it is a scramble, a scatter of flippers, a mad dash for the beach as the storm sprints closer, closer, closer, the lightning following us, chasing our heels onto land.

The air is completely still, but it is so heavy and I can smell ozone, I can smell storm, and we run to the campervan, unpeel our wetsuits, dump them outside and jump in, and just as we close the doors the rain comes; a sheet, a river, deafening and brilliant. The thunder drums at the sky, the lightning forks, and we are laughing, giddy, lost—the morning a tangle of peace and panic.

But the storm does not stay for long.

It passes almost as fast as it came.

And then the sky is blue again; the sun glinting down, winking back up at us from rain-drenched earth. And a swallow, quick as lightning, swoops overhead—

What is there to say except every moment is a flitting, fleeting thing. Swallows and storms. They come, they set us alight, they leave again.

Christoph Nolte via unsplash

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