THE destination | the Rebel & the Seeker

Chapter 5

Dian stared at the slowly moving crowd that already hid the young man...his perfect body, wide shoulders, warmly toned skin, beautiful face with kind eyes and contagiously optimistic mood... "Am I getting crazy...?" Dian suddenly felt startled by his own thoughts.

His mind was strongly opposed to a possibility that he might be bound to something. He thought of himself as a pure definition of his sign...an eternal traveler, always moving, at any cost. How could he possibly be addicted to someone...

Thinking of someone like he could be other's person source of energy...?

It would end up with an escape for sure -  like so many times before.
But...

Despite his conviction, his mind surrendered and Dian's memories walked back in time, recalling the last weeks in which he was probably spelled by the spirit of this place. So he thought.

From the first trip through the hills of the north, Dian knew there was something different on this island. He was not sure what was the strange feeling that some parts of the forests here were radiating. A sensation of a distant past forgotten for centuries, left to grow as the nature pleases, yet there was a recent human touch lurking in the shadows. Trees were grown as in regular intervals, their trunks and branches bent like their dance in the wind was frozen in time. The unique silvergreen color of their slim leaves absorbed the light, making a simple forest a scenery for a fairytale.

It was not until Thanos explained what one would found in each travel guide on the first page.

Dian felt ashamed that he did not read anything about the homeland of his friend yet, but Thanos did not mind at all. He was actually happy about the chance to explain the history of the olive tree "forests" to somebody that did not hear the notoriously known story yet.

"...and that is why Corfu is called the olive tree island," Thanos ended his ode to Corfu after  explaining the history of the "forests" on the island, that are in fact olive tree groves planted centuries ago. Some of the trees are more than 400 years old.
With over four million trees, the whole island forms one large grove, one of the largest olive groves in the world.
The Venetians encouraged the local people with monetary incentive to plant them everywhere possible. And so, even some of the steepest hillsides were reinforced with stone terraces and transformed into olive groves.

"Unfortunately, in the Venetian era, the oil from Corfu was used for illumination of their towns. So the quantity went over quality and this approach persisted for centuries. The oil from Corfu had a very bad reputation, nobody would use it for dinning." Then, Thanos' face lit up: "But thankfully, in last decades, the things are getting better. There are several family brands that produce olive oil of highest quality, all without chemistry."
Thanos suddenly left the "main" road and led the car slowly via a narrow concrete one. It almost seemed as if he entered someone's private property when he parked in front of a low rise building that looked partially like a garage. There were some other people, (obviously) foreigners, waiting and chatting with a (obviously) local young man. 

This place turned out to be an olive oil mill belonging to the family that produces the most famous brand of Corfu's olive oil. The purest of the purest.

"They are selling the oil as a medicine all over the world," Thanos explained before he greeted with the young guide, Iordanis, the youngest son of the owner.

Dian thought he entered some other world through a looking glass. Never before he heard someone to talk so passionately about trees and the fruits they gave us as a God's gift and how with God's blessing we can extract the most powerful liquid of the world. 
When Iordanis caressed the burly olive tree, the oldest in their grove, you could feel the love he had in his heart.