With the wind in her ears, and the wind lifting her chlorophyllous mothers from her eyes, Nemea still hears her sisters chant: BE SQUEEZED! COME TOGETHER NOW! - All her sisters chant, not only in her verdant home, but in all the homes many, many paces away in the vastness of her father's garden. There is a choir in every home covered by her mothers' shields of green. And for the first time she saw it all.

But let us hear Nemea in her own words:

Suddenly I saw my memories coming back. I saw how the wind had always made the season of swelling come to an end. And he had been there many times, lifting the veils from idle being, but always whispering so soothingly about squeezing, and my father, that I had fallen asleep with my sisters. Now I can only thank him for his kindness in our youth. But I saw more.

I didn't see a memory. I saw the paces. I saw huge, pink beings moving at the height of the top floor of our houses. They were still far to the left, by the houses where my new kin lived. They had two thick, pink branches they stretched out into those houses. I saw the first sisters from a room in the first house being pulled from their home, and thrown into something that seemed like a large pouch made of roots and lean branches and hung at the back of those coming closer. But I did not hear anything more than the rustle of our mothers, the thomp my sisters made when reaching the bottom of the pouch, and the paces coming closer to me. I no longer heard the wind because the wind was now speaking only to my sisters.

When the pink, pacing trunks came to my home with their pink branches, I remembered more. I remembered the large, round space with wooden walls where the pouches, with me and my sisters in them, were emptied. And I saw the pink lower brances, which I had heard as paces, stepping on us, squeezing us until all our liquids had had been bled to the bottom.

I also sensed a strange joyfulness in the air. The pink beings were celebrating something they deemed a recurring mystery. There was song, kisses, and caresses. The paces were turning into a chorus of movements led by a rhythm. With great difficulty I understood that those beings were not only celebrating our death, but also singing and dancing in our praise.

After that I must have opened up my ears to the soft words of the wind, because next I woke up being intoxicated with the gentle bubbling all around in a very dark place. I felt like being a tiny particle in a warm sea where all my kin were swimming without a single thought of worry. We were just rising to the surface and diving again, rising and diving...

When a moment that felt like ages of bouncing up and down had passed, I was poured into a large vessel of clay. Through a narrow neck. To the bottom. And then something that smelled like the distant, fragrant woods was closing my way out.

You may ask where I was? You may wonder if I know anything about all this? You may even wonder where the center of the earth actually is? You may stop hearing?

I am being carried, by pink branches, to an arcade followed by an endless row of arcades. The pink branches bow their way out after leaving me, in my vessel, to the whiter, scenting branhces. And they whisper a magical word: amphora! And something about this amphora to be quickly delivered to the master of the house.

The next thing I notice is that I am beside a reclining, obese, dull-eyed, whiter-than-pink trunk with a cup of clay on his right, and I see some of my sleeping, but un-squeezed sisters beside the cup. - And I am relieved that the scenting branches who took my new abode, the amphora, in their hands, stopped pouring before I dived into the cup of clay beside the obese, whiter-than-pink being.

Then everything happened very fast, very suddenly. - I felt a tremor. His Obesiness fell down on the floor from his reclined posture. The arcs were crumbling into the space we were in. His cup of clay fell, dripping all my sisters on the plate the cup was on. He mumble-jumbled. And his words were: 'By the name of Dionysos, though I'm half-insane, I see that we whiter-than-pink are not the center of the earth. This palace, my center, will drown now. My gods, Zeus, Apollo, hear this last plead! Save my amphora!' - I must thank him for those words, though I know that somehow he must have made the wrath of gods on himself.

As if in a dream I saw my master-master-master being hit by a falling arc, and being still and noiseless. The tremor was going on. They say (I have no vision of it because of being inside the amphora) half the island first rose to the air in a blaze, and then sunk into the Aegean. But I have no vision of it, because I was in the amphora.

What I know is that with the tremor I was, or my abode, the amphora, was moving. Trembling and moving. And suddenly I felt my stomach rising up to my mouth because of a sudden, long, and fast drop into a splash. I was in the sea!

The wood-scenting stopper of escape on the amphora was my first vision. Thank you all gods! Thank you Dionysos! I will have my moment of contemplation before the end, before the poison of salt-water. Thank you for not letting me go bye-bye before.

The hit on the hard, salty Aegean put my upper matter into a state. But it was easy to recover. I started calling hellos to my dropling sisters, and even got some of them aroused. I, from a flash of subterranean-homesick-blues, envisoned a memory: White marble, arcs, obese masters, scenting branches, and great achitecture for pinks and whiter-than-pinks - it was all there. But in fact, it no longer was there. It had sunk like in the antedeluvian tale of the Atlantis. - I was wondering if I was nearly witnessing it?

But after the hit of the sea we bounced back on the surface. Floating a moment in the amphora. Just to get the next big moves. There was a whale-of-a-wave behind us. Some of the left-overs from the big tremor. And we started riding on it.

It was pleasant surfing for a time. Very pleasant. But then we hit the coast of Crete!

The huge wave rushed against Crete, rushed against Minos' palace. It first flooded the cave of the Minotaur - no pity there. But it did attack the palace of Minos.

I know all this because of hearsay, but I feel it in my guts. - I was still in the amphora. The wave broke into the palace of Minos, and I was in the amphora. The wave broke into the palace of Minos, and my amphora hit him in the head! He died very fast, as I was told to my relief.

My sisters and I dripped over the body of Minos. Somehow I feel he might have appreciated going over in this way.

My name is Nemea, and half the time I have been blinded by the wind.