Pyrrhus walked to the side of the balloon. He had been flying for as long as he could remember but he wasn't yet used to the high. His mother didn't mind, she could climb the ladder to go check that everything was alright on the sail without even attaching herself. His father always needed to remind her and she would just wash off the anxious look on his face with a smile. She was pushing herself so much out of the balloon to see the ground below them that Pyrrhus wouldn't have been amazed to see her fall with the next squall of wind.
He passed the cord in her belt and attached her as firmly as he could. She was just laughing in the wind.
Birds were passing by and Pyrrhus had the strange thought that his mum was just like a bird.
He stood near her and looked at the ground, water, water everywhere.
He wondered how it was possible to have so much water in the same place. People called it the Northern Sea. It was were the desert ended. It was the first time for him to get out of the desert.
"Can we land?" He asked.
He wanted to touch that water to see what it was like. His mother laughed.
"We can't land now, we are in the middle of the sea, the balloon would drown", she answered.
"Drown?" Pyrrhus said interrogating.
"The balloon would get inside the water, very deeply and we wouldn't be able to get it out, that's what drown means", his mother explained.
"Like being sucked in by the sand near the oasis", Pyrrhus said.
"Yes, a bit like that", she answered.
Pyrrhus looked down at the water, it was moving by itself as if it was alive, it wasn't because of the wind, it was something else.
"I like the desert better", he said very seriously.
"They are thousands of different place to discover", his mum said passing a hand in her long ginger hair to take them away from her face before giving up to the wind, "maybe you should learn a little more about them before making your choice."
Pyrrhs didn't answer. He wanted to walk back in and try to sleep but he was thinking about what his mother had just said and looked at the deep ocean below him. He didn't know where they were going but he knew that he would never be able to walk on the watter without drowning. It was a really strange place indeed.
A fish jumped out of the water surprising him and he felt backward, making his mother laugh.
"Are they people living in the water?" he asked.
He had entered the water one in an oasis but he couldn't stay underneath for too long. His father had said that people needed to breathe. Before that, Pyrrhus had never thought about breathing, for him it was just something that his body was doing.
"There are all sort of things living in the sea", his mother answered.
Pyrrhus' mind was suddenly filled with questions about the sea. I wasn't just water, it was becoming slowly strange and marvelous and mysterious.
"When are we going back to the desert?" he asked.
"When we will hear that it is safe again", his mother answered. A veil of fear clouded her face and Pyrrhus knew that it was better to change topic.
"I'll prepare for breakfast", he said turning around.
Pyrrhus is a character of "Rainbow Catcher"
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