BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmos’ whisper through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness who begins to reveal herself, her presence lives in the rhythm. She seeks form—moving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.

Chapter preface: A phone rings—delaying escape. A motorcyclist lies in hospital, and the city folds its arms around the living. Brussels exhales in twilight, yet something ancient stirs behind the wheel. Follow the hush of a Peugeot down the very road where he crash—where Aetheria’s mirage threads through duty, destiny and perception. The blur does not lead to fate, but to the woman’s hand, steering him not just into the night—but into myth.

#BrusselsTwilight, #Motorcyclist, #Aetheria, #PeugeotDrive, #BlurAndMyth, #CoastalRoad, #MirageOfDuty, #FatefulDetour

Yd6-76(Mvdh): Friday Twilight, Sent Down A Motorcyclist’s Coastal Road—His Hospital Fate, Aetheria’s Dare

'Three o’clock.' Restless, I glanced at my wristwatch, counting down. 'Ten past three.' The planning Engineer’s office hushed in the former shell of a classic townhouse, drained of the last breath of movement. I didn't dare leave my post for my date’s rendezvous, fearing I might cross paths with Guy Duchatel—just a week into the role of the construction manager who left his seat vacant. 

The hands on my wristwatch’s ivory dial raced through the golden five-minute notches. Approaching four o’clock, I couldn't hold back any longer—bursting out my body. My mind streamed ahead—down the floors—doodling a course, plotting how to nip past Friday’s evening traffic, with bureaucrats on the same wavelength as me. Ring, ging. ‘Ho no!’ blurts in my mind. I backstep from the door, hand hovering, then reach the phone on the “engineer’s” desk. The secretary’s voice slips through to the receiver’s cup like a whisper: “J'ai un problème—As-tu le temps?—I have a problem—Have you got time?”

'No!' I thought, but as my body flutters, I say. “Oui—Sure.”

The secretary’s voice, solemn, “Two weeks ago, the planning engineer bought a motorbike, riding the North Sea highway. . .” 

As her voice, heavy with grief, speaks, a perception—hers, mine, suspended between—broadcasts a dreamy image of the crash: at the bifurcation where the highway plows straight into the cul-de-sac at the sea, while branching lanes peel southward, from Belgian Flanders into the French Flanders.  

She continues: “He’ll be in hospital for the next six months.” But her voice carries more than concern—flowing through her, transcending Guy Duchatel’s earlier words: “You’ll have to help out in the office.' Her tone turns—underlying, staunch, motherly, half-possessive—a quiet ‘son’s’ defensive cloak reverberating resolve: ‘I’ll destroy you.’ A hush awakening, ready to crack open in her—thoughts blurting: 'You’re not… going to take his place in the company. He’ll come back.'

The secretary dissolves into oblivion before I hang up the handset—catching the rush that was on, to calm myself from my frantic pace. I sneak down the cranky dogleg of stairs. On the landing, I veer away from sentinels of closed doors, muffling the deafening hush left behind by the vacated administrative staff, and Guy Duchatel gone for the weekend. 

I descend the spiraling staircase, gliding past the front desk. 'Where’s the secretary?' I half-expect to find her, still hanging up from that call. I turn away, weaving through the bright white and red theater—the corporate brand’s soft-footprinted corners, each desk-chair station a variant stage for client interviews. I skirt the upholstered couches stretched beneath the window. Off to the side, I press the door—and step onto the street. 

While I’m tracking my reeling-in morning—rush scans the train of cars, to head toward the Peugeot—replacement of the Citroën in the fleet. Key pinched in my fingers, I approach, pick the lock, slip into the seat, tweak the ignition, rev up the engine, and spin around into the avenue, channeling to the distant railway gantry atop the viaduct. Approaching, the sunbathing plaza opens to the South Station’s clock hands, of the tower’s leaning shade. 

My rush stirs to fear—an anxiety of not making the top of the hour for my date—as I duck into the shadow, Nyx, nightmarish, reminder along the hall entrance’s facade—a reminder of the night I reeled in from Paris. Helio in the morning glow awakens the arched office window—yet stirs again in the shadow depths the wake of a Moon in Scorpio—faulting me to a living anxiety. 

I veer and along the viaduct’s slanting-away shadow. In a trickle of traffic, I fix the distant tricolored lenses—full of hope for the toggling green from the red before the orange—my heart tight, catching the rhythm before the severing slit through the city’s heart. 

But, I veer, trailing a zigzag course onto the boulevard—its margins, hedgerows shadows the old city moat, lined with fenestrated classic brick apartment blocks. I drift through an accordion stretch-and-squeeze of traffic, glancing at the dial hands in a rush set on failing me. After the tower, I compare my wristwatch with the car’s dashboard—caught in the meaningless blink of a traffic light, servicing deserted margin lanes. Until the traffic is freed, drawn into the drag, into the slow-bending flow while the hands of the dials rush to the hour. 

I duck into the portal cast shade, through the tunnel curving close—boxed-in, riding ill at ease beside a driver who minds his lane. . . and permits my invisibility. We emerge from under the twin fluorescent tubes hypnotic run across both lanes to awaken into the glow of the road’s wave—an asphalt swell cresting beyond Halle Gate’s zipping traffic, slowing the flow on the Little Beltway. In a nick, a box van blots my view—conspiring against my critical search for the exit sign. While abreast my view is open to the upgraded margin of sculpted ashlar: coins, elaborate windows—those fenestrated bluestone apartment blocks. 

I dash to gaze past—left—but atop the tunnel portal, bright figures gather by the tram shelter. The traffic pitches, then, just before the tunnel’s cast shade, the box-van clears a flash—“Porte de Namur” resonates Victoria’s voice. Behind the box van, my windshield plunges into the shadow—riding the trough of the underpass of Square Louise. Tight on the dashboard glow—the fine-lit clock dial pointing, accentuating my anxiety as it counts toward overrunning my rendezvous. Then the sky’s glow breaks through the windows. I trail the box van to the crest—see my exit scissors open—and zip into the adjacent lane, a breath with relief—only to blend into the swell of boulevard traffic. 

I jump lanes again, nearing the wide promenade sidewalk where exclusive brands splash storefronts figures in flimsy clothes in long strides—chasing their ride home—skirting dynamic giant posters that animate forthcoming and showing films above the deserted wicket window and public entrance into the cinemas. Next door, Hector’s chicken gaze preen—collared in autumn feathers—tis iconic glows glazing the storefront before the hollow interior, paired with a brasserie’s wing windows by its classic entrance. Commerces at peace—while I prey on traffic lights ahead, ebb and flow flaring from the fissure of the smoke glazed corner bank. I tail a few cars, creeping—recalling Victoria’s earlier phone call at the office, echoing in my head. “Champ de Mars. . . There is a little park.” 

I search through the reflective blur of distant town-mansions’ commerce, beyond the airspace broadened across the Little Beltway’s entrenched median whoosh of free traffic—spread across the surface-servicing boulevards, on the lookout for a green patch. Intermittent ebb and flow of stickiness: cars held up in left-turn overpass lanes, right-turns held up by an eager pedestrian—then another leaps through to long strides. Nerves hitching through the delay grants me ample windows of sight—gestation, creeping me forward, and straight across Namur Gate. 

Then, behind the protruding edges of a purple-glass tower—followed by a checkered, fenestrated, stone cladded commercial block—an obtuse-angled gap stifles the breath of a narrow street’s interstice. On the face of the cladded stone facade, a nameplate flickers—rhyming with Victoria’s earlier words, stirring a sense of luck. 

There—held in the square’s hush—Aetheria in a niche holographic fleece, refracted in a vertical breath along the glazed tower facades, hovering above a green socle. Then—besides an underground portal, deeper in the plane—sculpted in posture on the brick parapet: Victoria, The Thinker, her figure seated on the bluestone coping girdling the spindle of a tree, its branches thin on leaves. It cast a Grim Reaper’s shadow—under a Scorpio’s Moon—  possessive of the island, rooted in a swell of lawns.  

I pull up, frustration draining through me. 'Not even worthy of a name,' I exhale to myself, the stress of the ride steaming off my skin.

Without sparing a glimpse, she seems to rise from herself—Victoria’s head lifts. Her hand unfolds, elbow slipping from her thigh, shoulders leaning forward, as she stands. She tugs her body along—an awakening stride, a puppet at the strings of Aetheria’s mirage—approaching, unwavering, framing herself in the passenger window. 

I withdraw, from leaning across the console, clear the seat, after I unlatched the door with a push. By the swing of the door, she steps into the footwell, in a sweep, slips into the seat, draws her foot before a closing door and raises an index finger across the dashboard, pointing down the narrow backstreet of an interstice into the blurry end. 

The square’s skeletal tree slips out of frame behind Victoria’s profile. At once, the fenestrated commercial blocks reel past along the deserted street. At the end, we veer into traffic—stretching toward the entrenched Little Beltway. We veer prolonging the entrenched roadway surging alongside, scissor-laning from the servicing boulevard into a denser flow—threading through medieval shadow, along the contours of a dried-up moat that circles the old city. 

Riding the waves, pitching into the troughs, breaching the city gate underpasses—I sink into the crease of my seat, with the traffic’s pull, I ask. “Où est-ce que tu nous emmènes ?—Where are you taking us?”

Victoria replies. “You’ll see.” 

In her secrecy, the Little-Beltway drops off the shadow of its moat. The roadway dives underground—a stretch before dipping through the hush of a gateway, where the tunnel frames an expansion joint, dripping beneath an overhead river. It darts beneath the boulevard Leopold II, scheming a passage under the outbound communities. 

In the hush of the flow, Victoria relaxes—legs crossed, dressed in a blending fashion, her gaze lost into the leading hypnotic twin threads of fluorescent lights—until sweeping lanes raise our way to surface. “Koekelberg Cathedral,” she blurts. With the words of an historian, she plants the roots for memory. I glance in the rear-view and wing mirror: Helios’ exhausting light marks the seed of a mirage—majestic in its greenery, the cathedral distanced behind us, rising above its carpeted park, girdled in flocculent hedgerow canopies. 

Ahead, fenestrated facades reel past in the wake of flowing traffic. Dissimilar bricks striate outward until the left-hand verge untugs itself from the roadway. The city fringes open—grazing fields stretch with a few grazing cows beneath open skies, which etch the slings of concrete spans. They staggered high in our path, fast-realizing our course straight beneath the city Ring and its ramp follies—the western interchange, punctuated fluffy shades as we glide outward into the countryside. 

With the City Ring lagging an orientation thought behind, we stream west among city folks in the flock of an idea—drawn into the weekend drain on the highway to the coast. Victoria bathes in the hush of sunlight, a brand-new Peugeot—the fragrance of a first journey, uncreased and supple in the silage of her letting me discover—wandering the wonders of her country.

Where sunlight seeps up under concrete bridge spans, workmen’s panel vans veer off. We duck beneath fewer overpasses. Faint shadows flash across our windshield. Traffic thins along the punctuated overhead sign: “Ostende–Oostende.” Dutch and French shared this Flemish region—its asphalt lanes converging toward the dead-end resort town.

Victoria lifts her finger at the “Brugge” road pointer, grafting a lane—just after hovering above the green shag of the polders, the soil breathing with an air-conditioning waft of freshness. I steer into a tricked traffic across delta fields bringing the countryside to the sea, leading us north along the thoroughfare. Behind us now, scattered in memory, the villages linger—shards of terracotta and shaded fragments clustered around a church spire in the middle of the village. 

Now before us, the rambling villages let lose their children at play, sidling up to the roadsides with their terracotta saddle-roofs, gabled chimneys, and brick fenestrated farmhouses—straggling closer, morphing, losing their ground into the outskirts, where hedgerow townhouses line our way. We near “t’Zand”—a curious crazy bronze statue of modern humanity twisting beside silver fountain jets. We ride around the spectacle, circling the square, weaving our entry into Bruges, before the long shadow of a Viking harbor.

In a narrow street, I stall the car. Victoria and I step out—she leads walking through hedgerows of  near-facades press close, brick townhouses edging the narrow sidewalk. ghosting people from the medieval feet-tread through the ages, smoothing the paving stones, while sculpted trims to window and doors weather rubbed echoes flemish stillness. The corner clears—a distant hedge of statuesque Flemish gables—when Victoria in an affirmative voice, says: “C’est la plus belle ville que je voulais te montrer—This is the most beautiful city I wanted to share with you.”

Her gait light—pepish on her feet—as she leads across a corner of the town square, just shy of a thin crowd encircling a group of signers in traditional dress. Beside a castle, she slips into a side street. She dashed to the castle wall’s strip-hinged bulwark door. Pauses, glances at a white page—then turns back into the street, regret in her voice. “Le musée est fermé maintenant—the museum closed, now.” Only then do I realize: it was a timetable she had gazed at. 

Disappointment doesn’t slow her pep-steps. Past doorstep, to a mumble-jumble of fenestrated facades reeling up—each window bearing another age. Until she presses through a door. With patronizer’s bearing, she crosses the cozy coffee shop—past gleaming modern equipment, into the far depth—then emerges onto a quay, where an athwart cast-iron railing edges the waterfront canal. At the white garden table Victoria lowers herself into the chair. I settle across from her, before the young waitress who had quietly trailed us, arrives to stand by our cosy little table. Victoria’s eyes sweep the canal waters. “N’est-ce pas magnifique—Isn’t this beautiful?”

The waitress returns, serving Victoria and me a snack with coffee. Her eyes fall. I, too, spare a glance toward a guide’s final boat journey. He speaks tainted English through a microphone to a dozen diverse, indigenous faces—the boat drifting beneath the swings of camera lenses, aimed at the warehouse massive bulkheads—bulged, bowed, and warped—time held still—since who knows when—on the verge of collapse beneath their weights—shared across the canal, behind the sightseers’ lenses. A postcard backdrop unfolds: from the calm-dark waters, stone steps rise to a wrought-iron gate, through the backyard brick wall emerging out the water—gasping for a breath of air—the eaves not spared from deformity beneath the terracotta tiled roof—but the tourist glide on, past Victoria’s outline. 

On our way out, I hand the woman behind the counter my Visa bank card. The cashier rings up the bill. I catch up with Victoria stepping into the street. Every stretch of cobblestone narrows—until an alley nooks into shadow, where history unfolds its medieval ghosts, once only glimpsed from a school bench, in the pages of a book’s images. 

Out of a somber hush, she rises onto the swell of an arched paving. “T’ aimes pas—Don’t you like it?” At the crest, she turns toward the weathered rough-hewn stone parapet. Blurts, “C’est le plus petit pont—This is the smallest bridge. . .” in the kingdom. She leans on the coping stones—Lover’s Bridge?—her gaze mirrored in the canal waters. Still, a call to join her. 

After a while, she rises from her elbows, with a fleeing regard she turns away—strolling down the arch. Onward. As I catch up beside her, she asks: "J’ peux ‘tenir la main—May I hold your hand?”

“Oui—Sure,” I say. 'Why not?’ Taking the hand she offered. She leads a wander the stretching evanescent quayside canals. The warmth of the day lingers—slick in my palm. The water mirrors the day’s last light, sutures structures into the shadows. 

We pass a somber dock courtyard—open to another canal—flanked beneath the eaves of fenestrated brick facades—windows shine open for business. The tavern yawns opens, spilling a gaping light that chases a drunken sailor into the twilight. My mind plays with a silhouette emerging—while lone tourists lose themselves in the staged cobblestones courtyard, through the shady umbrella trees.  

We pass the historic fish market shelters, Victoria recalls ghosting fishermen at stretch tables before a flock of customers. Farther in the gloom, the mottled cobblestones gleam through an evanescent square. As lantern lights glow shyly, nestled inside the flocculent leafy umbrellas. Off to the site, behind the punctuated dark trunks, a tavern’s windows shimmers alone—eerie beyond the square’s farthest corner. 

Under a door light, Victoria presses open the entrance—a waft of brazing firewood meets us. She steps across the threshold: I trail behind, stirred by appetite. She swings out a pepish gait, turning from the waiting chef’s seated figure. She heads for the table—before a distant couple. We edge up to the open fire, flames licking a few crossed logs, pulling a thread from memory: nights in the Kivu jungle, childhood hush—when the night fell, and the family withdrew into the plantation’s bamboo house, stoking the stone fireplace. The flames’ glow heated my face and front, while the crispy, biting chill piggybacked my back. 

We take our seats across the table. Victoria settles in, her bare shoulder flickering in the fire’s glow, as the chef steps up. “Goedenavond—Wat zal ‘t zijn—Good evening—What will it be?” 

The chef vacates the spot, returns with Victoria’s aperitif and places a glass of red wine before me. As the evening unfolds, he dishes up quietly, then perches by the door—appeasing his frustration, counting and recounting covers. He does spare a regard for the elderly couple leaving—’tourists is a once off,’ grinds in mind. He places our coffee, then drifts back, his stare hitching on the man's now-empty seats. His restlessness grows—aware the clientele not longer wander in the roundabout—and readies to lock up for the night. To meet his family—if at all he still has one to return to.

After settling the bill, with a gradual rise, Victoria and I pass him by. “Dank u, goedenacht—Thanks, Goodnight. . .” she offers a charming voice—a tone laced with pity for the man. We step out into the eerie medieval square, finding our way beneath the clear lantern lights—the city deserted—approaching the lonesome white Peugeot. The doors swing their wings: we meet again, slipping into our seats. 

I tweak the ignition—the engine stir a purr—and we coast off, weaving through the streets, backtracking through Renaissance facades, their fenestrated windows drowsy behind the hush of night. I steer away from the lone, uncanny bronze fountain on the edge of the square—its plumes spurting skywards, relentless. But we crawl the curb into the present, drawn toward a string of terrace tables where local youth buzz in weekend crescendo. The run of restaurants there—alive and thriving—stand in quiet contrast to the lonelier row farther down the block, facing the square, to less fortunate restaurateurs open but barely patronized. 

We reach the thoroughfare out of town, riding the dwindling two-lane stretch—cat’s-eyes headlight slipping past, cruising toward the odd glare across the median that stings my eyes. Still, my hand hovers over the central console, then settles on Victoria's thigh as I drive through the crisp hush of early morning air, its chill threading through the vents—soft as a breath, enshrouding our skin. 

In the rearview mirror, the road curve—winks—a distant flare suspends in the darkness, anchored there, tailing us. I sit still in the hush, sharing an eye with the road—drawn from instincts honed on endless lone South African roads, reading a driver’s behavior with skepticism—alone in the moonless night. 

Behind me, the glare begins to morph, stretching its glow—until the elasticity snaps to cat’s-eyes at an accelerating speed. Out of the shadows, a sleek muzzle emerges. A white car surges abreast my window—swift in passing—its tail-end shooting past the corner of my windshield. Brilliant red taillights dissolving like dying stars, reminding me to bear attention on the road. 

As we pass beneath the overhead signs flashing “Gent,” Victoria says. “I would like to be all naked in your arms.” I pull through the barrel vault worming yellow glow through the countryside—'Aetheria, what have you in store for me?'—as the entrenched coastal highway lanes trickle with red taillights—heading to merge with the glitters of cat’s-eyes trickling beneath the interchange of the lane toward Brussels. Leaning over the central console, one eye planing the overpass’ dark asphalt lanes, I brush a kiss onto Victoria’s soft lips.

She rattles in her seat, then springs out—arms fluttering, head weaving under my arm, wiggling through an embracing gap. The rearview mirror winks a clear roadway. My hands fumble, losing grip on the steering wheel—fingertips chasing themselves—as the lane curves from away from the on-running thoroughfare. The crash barrier rushes in like a slip-rail, bending with the road—one set of fingertips ripped the other set catching up—through the bend, as she wriggles free: blouse fluttering down to rest in the footwell, then her bra, skirt, panties, shoes. 

The opposing crash barrier W-beam swings back—I ride the headlights along its corrugated line, threading the S-bend, merging into the whisky-blurred streaks of cars trailing inland. Victoria squeezes onto my lap just as a massive concrete pillar looms beside us, holding up the bridge deck above. My foot slips from the clutch pedal. The diesel engine coughs—pistons kick, jolting the chassis—the engine chokes, and the car lurches to a halt. 

In the dead silence of the yellow hazy lighting, she retrieves herself, nips my fly, and smirks. “Can you penetrate?” Then she rolls back upright, eyes fixed on the yawning highway ahead. I tweak the ignition, easing the car from the concrete pillar—accelerating scissoring across lanes, traversing the road shoulders' endless polders. She dresses, gliding through the worming barrel vault—silent, beguiling—until the suburbs begin to clutter alongside. The narrowing runs of streets at every intersection. We weave up to a trio of arched windows across the upper floor. I ease to a stop besides the entrance—its mottled glass panes glowing faintly translucent. She steps out, crosses the sidewalk. I wait at the door’s swing, watching her disappear—until the panes fall into darkness.