Belly bouncing in Bali....

It was the wind that woke me up that night, I had slept peacefully on the island for at least 1000 days and it was the first time that I had been woken from my deep slumber...the wind sang eerily through the passage between the two mountains and the village rustled with meteorological energy. I slipped the sheet off me and lay there in the night humidity, a small rivulet of sweat running from the small of my back to my buttocks which in turn slowly dampened the mattress that we lay upon. I got up and looked at my partner fast asleep on the bed, he was dead to the world and it would have taken a hurricane to waken him properly. I touched his cheek and smiled a little, thinking of how lucky I had been when my life in England had changed all those years ago...that was the past, here we are NOW and i had to discover why the wind woke me up. There was an unatural stillness in the air, no bird song, no monkey-jump noises, silence personified.

I padded quietly from the bedroom onto the ocean-facing veranda and stared intently at the sea, the tide was making it's way slowly in, ready to invite the morning fisherman to rape its waters of the sea-life it contained. The moon still glistened on the surface of the water as it played with its own reflection. Everything seemed okay there so I passed through the house from back to front and looked out onto the village scene in front of me. The small family huts were quiet as people slept away the excess of the night before. The villagers were big drinkers, the norm around these parts, whether it was boredom or social habit had never been explained to me but I knew that it was the only reason I found my partner that now slept so soundly, one night of drink, fumbles in the dark, illicit kisses and longed for passion...then he moved in, it was as easy as that. His name was Simon and he had come to the islands as a back-packer two years ago, in theory only staying for a couple of days but history was to decide differently. Simon was fit and had been on the reserve team for a second division football club...I snapped out of thinking about him as the noise from the mountains made me gasp...it was an excited scream, female, followed by laughter from others, two or three i think but could not tell from the distance they were away from the village. It was a long time since there were visitors and it felt uneasy and dark to think that we were soon expected to play hosts to an unknown party...