Rider In the Storm

Note: Pyrgi is an existing village in Chios, Greece. The walls are indeed covered with geometric patterns. The story however is pure fiction.

Pyrgi had always been different from other villages on our island. While the rest remained pristine white under the Greek sun, our walls tell stories in black and white geometries—diamonds, stars, and ancient symbols that earned us the title "painted village." During dawn or dusk, these patterns seem to shift and dance, as if trying to speak in a language long forgotten.

I first saw him in the depths of August, in that in-between hour when night and day wrestled for dominion. He emerged from the shadows, in those narrow castle streets, like a figure from a dream, carrying nothing but a small leather pouch, his eyes holding secrets from distant lands across the sea. The air around him seemed to shimmer as if reality itself bent slightly in his presence.

They called him Arada, though whether that was his name or title, no one knew. Something was fitting about the name—he seemed to exist in the spaces between things: between night and day, between black and white, between earth and sky. Each dawn, new wonders appeared on our walls—patterns that seemed to breathe with a life of their own, white geometries that caught sunlight like fragments of stars. Nobody encouraged him to continue, but nobody objected, only pure curiosity for this foreigner.

Arada did not interact with locals. He was so absorbed in his task that nothing else touched his aura. His tools moved in mysterious ways, not quite touching the walls, yet leaving behind designs so precise they seemed impossible to create by human hand. Simple lines would be formed magically, perfect and complete, taking up shapes and meanings, like ancient text written by invisible fingers. Each pattern spoke of worlds beyond our knowing, of spaces between what we could see and what we could only imagine.

In those first days, his patterns spoke of joy and discovery. Spirals that appeared to spin if you stared too long, diamonds that seemed to float above the wall's surface, stars that somehow caught and held real starlight until dawn. Children were convinced that the patterns moved when no one was watching, and even the old ones admitted there was something different about these designs—something that went beyond mere artistry. Instinctively they all felt something deeper was hidden within.

The weather matched his serene work—perfect days flowing one into another as if the sky itself approved of his artistry. His patterns grew more intricate with each passing night. Some said if you looked at them in exactly the right way, you could see glimpses of distant lands hidden in their geometry—palm trees, desert sands, mountains no Greek had ever seen.

One night, as the moon hung full above our village, everything drastically changed. Just like every night, I had been watching from my window, trying to learn the secrets of his craft, copying the patterns on a piece of paper. Suddenly, Arada's hand froze mid-pattern, his body tensed, and his aura transformed somehow by an unseen energy. The unfinished pattern on the wall flickered, or perhaps it was my eyes that flickered. For just a brief moment, I could have sworn I saw, through the wall, another place entirely, a distant village where dark clouds loomed and crops withered in parched earth.

When he resumed his work, the patterns flowing from his tools were different—black as night, sharp as thorns, deep as wells that reached the centre of the earth. They seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, creating shapes that suggested hidden depths, untold stories, and mysteries that pulled at the edge of consciousness.

By morning, dark clouds had gathered overhead, mirroring the obsidian geometries now etched into our walls. Arada's patterns had changed altogether now, becoming more aggressive, more complex, and more urgent. Where before they danced, now they seemed to whisper warnings. Some claimed they could hear distant voices in the designs, speaking in languages no islander had ever heard.

"The patterns speak to me of home," Arada told me that evening, his voice heavy with something like grief. "They show me things... changes, disturbances. Something is wrong across the sea, though I cannot yet see what." As he spoke, his tools carved darker patterns, and thunder growled in the distance above our crops. In the deepening dusk, the black designs seemed to pulse with their own inner light, casting shadows that moved against the wind.

Each night brought more black designs, each more mysterious than the last. Some formed labyrinths so complex they made the eyes water; others suggested depths that seemed to reach through the wall into infinite darkness. The decorative patterns were turning into scripts in some ancient tongue, spelling out messages we could almost, but not quite, understand.

Finally, one dawn, as he traced yet another black spiral—this one seeming to spiral not just across the surface but somehow through it—he gasped. "Ah, yes" he whispered. "Now I see." His hand moved in new directions, with a renewed purpose. He started weaving white lines through the darkness he'd created, shedding light on the previous darkness. The colours met but did not blend; in their margins, doorways emerged to other places, windows into distant worlds.

"My sister's village faces drought, people are getting hungry" he explained, his tools continuing their dance. "These figures, these shapes, they've been trying to show me how to assist. I must return home, to Africa." As he spoke, the black and white symbols transformed into waves and started moving quicker pointing to the south, flowing together, in parallel, like twin streams meeting in a sacred place.

That day, the very air seemed to hold its breath, not knowing which way to blow, or if it should blow gently or with vengeance. It was like the time had stopped waiting for Arada to decide. The clouds stood upon the village undecided. The world stood still and silent or so it seemed. Not even the chatty birds disrupted the deep silence. People and creatures, alike, were holding their breath, just because they sensed that something important was happening, not knowing exactly what.

Arada meticulously wove light into the shadows and the engravings he created were neither black nor white but something in between—designs that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions at once, telling stories that changed with each passing moment, with each viewing. By evening, when his work was complete, the walls of Pyrgi held mysteries that would take lifetimes to unravel. The wind picked up its pace again and brought along dark clouds in a cleansing rain. Arada left the next morning, riding the dawn winds like a spirit returning home, amid a storm that erupted abruptly.

But his gift to Pyrgi wasn't only the carvings that still shift and change with the light on our walls. His eternal gift was the understanding that true magic lives in the spaces between—between black and white, between storm and calm, between what is seen and what can only be imagined. Magic exists in antithesis but also in synthesis.

Years have passed, and to this day tourists come to marvel at our decorated walls, asking about their origin and their meaning. We explain the geometry and tradition, of patterns finding their home on Greek walls. But some secrets we keep to ourselves—how the patterns still dance with the weather, how they hold mysteries yet unsolved, and how sometimes, if you look at them in exactly the right way at exactly the right moment, you might catch a glimpse of a rider in the storm, still travelling between worlds, weaving patterns that bridge the spaces between all things.