Myrsky

Myrsky

I stood atop the giant slab of ancient rock that bordered the raging ocean. Today it was blue-grey, rough and choppy, and even though the weatherman had predicted no storm, the locals knew better. It was windy atop the cliff, my clothes were buffeted by a gale that wasn’t out of the ordinary for Myrsky, the town I had lived and breathed for the last… well, for my entire life. 

No one truly knew where the name Myrsky had come from, but many historians speculated that the village was the place where our ancestors had landed, over ten thousand years ago. The first time they had set foot in this country. Our town was famous for being a place where the traditions of the ancestors were preserved nearly perfectly. Hundreds of traditions were ingrained, the people still practising the same rituals they had thousands of years ago.

During our festival and celebrations period, tourists swept the town, partying and taking part in the traditions. Even during the quiet periods a fair few tourists visited - even though there was not a lot going on, it was a small town after all - to gaze at the old buildings and the natural beauty preserved like no other. The small town was nothing more than a few buildings clumped around two central roads, a small speck with a lush overgrowth that started a few hundred metres from the cliff face, the area in between barren. It stretched out like a green sea for kilometers in each direction, only a small road connecting us to everything else. For that reason alone, most people came in by ferry instead of driving for hours through the jungle. 

Aside from its history, our town was known for one other thing; our cliffs. Like the one I was standing on. The bluff was a mere ten metres from the nearest building and it was nothing short of a miracle that the buildings closest to the cliff-face were still standing to brave the storms that attacked our coastline. 

I looked out over the vast ocean, the wind screaming along the top and the waves crashing against the rock nearly a kilometre and a half below. They were the tallest cliffs on record, a fact that we took pride in.

Coming back to myself, interrupting my musings - that was always hard. The cliffs were a place of whimsy, even the tourists who visited understood that. Not that there were many out today. I turned down the roughly hewn path, passing the decrepit old butcher shop that was turned into the tourist information center a few years before I was born. 

It was a short walk back to the little place that I had lived for longer than I could remember, the little walls covered in chipping, colourful paint, holding so many memories that it felt like a roll of film was being flashed in front of my face, memory after memory. 

My favourite came to the front of my mind and a small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

I was a small child. Six, maybe. The biggest storm that had befallen Myrsky for longer than a decade was rumbling overhead and I had sat at the window, listening to the rattles and clunks of the window panes rattling in their frames, the rain hitting the windows and roof as loud as gunfire ringing through my tiny room overlooking the cliffs. I was so lost in the storm I hadn’t even realised I was shaking in fear, nor that my mother was sitting beside me, holding me close and murmuring soft, comforting words.

Eventually, I calmed down and we sat for a while before mother began to speak. She told stories of the people, our ancestors, being attacked by storm after storm, each bigger than the last, as if the land itself was challenging them. Seeing if they were worthy. When they had refused to leave, the storms quietened, enough for them to leave their hasty shelters and build Myrsky.  

Those stories, the ones of times passed and of people long gone, were constants in my childhood. Mother had hundreds of them, so many that she had never had to repeat them. Her and her stories were some of my most precious memories, her lilting voice and stories about a Myrsky different from the one we lived in today. 

Walking to the nearly completely rusted iron gate that made a screeching noise when opened, up the little cobblestone pathway, through the barren patch of dirt we called a front yard, to the storm grey door set into a wall covered in chipping white paint. It was a little weathered, as all buildings in our village were, but it was home. 

The second before I was ensconced in the well-heated home, an icy blast ripped through the village, burrowing into my warm clothing and taking all the heat with it. I dove inside, the door closing with an audible thunk behind me. 

I grinned as - not two seconds after - the skies opened up, dumping litres of water on our windswept village. Good timing for me, not so much for the tourists rushing down the road to their hotels. 

The storm ripped through the little village but it was nothing the town hadn’t seen before, the rain running to drain down the cliffs, lighting always seeming to miss damaging anything, the wind tugging harmlessly at bushes and trees, which were well adapted for this kind of weather. There was not a soul in sight, animal or human. 

Through it all, I sat at the window, watching the chaos, lost in the storm. This time, though, no fear ripped through me. This time, there was no mother to sit beside me, only her memory. 

I loved storms now that I was older. I could now appreciate the marvels of nature, the beauty and power. The clouds were a deep grey and the rain was nearly horizontal but, for the locals, for me, it was home.