Red Wine from Heaven

Rioja

Red Wine from Heaven

By Charles E.J. Moulton

***

The flickering dance of a hundred little flames had mesmerized him for an hour now. The fire telling him secrets of past lives.

It was almost as if this change had given him new insight into what the long road leading up to.
His inner fire mirrored as fire in the outer world up to here had been about.
Never had fire fascinated him so.

The good news sent him headlong into the deep relaxation of having arrived. His house almost a guest mansion, a temporary lodging, until today. But now? The board manager had been official and friendly and cordial, but the news had taken all the pressure off his chest. Did the angels have something to do with this? Oh, yes. One angel in particular.

The effect it had on his girls was obvious. No more quibble, no more female bickering. It meant everything to them. Security, friends, success, plans made that could be carried out. His daughter's boyfriend. His wife's acquaintances, the salsa practice and the trips to the opera. No packing. No new surroundings. No adjustment. No questions.

"You mean, it's official?"

Pedro had understood, with all the hugs and kisses and whopping going on, what this meant to them. He had hoped and wished for it, but hearing it dumbfounded him. And so, while his girls planned the upcoming paella evening and what would become a Flamenco Festival, Pedro went into the sitting room, turned on some flamenco, sat between bear skins and African statues, repeating over and over:

"This is mine. This is actually mine."

The echoes of voices in the warm night, the echoes of laughter in the restaurant by the lake, the chirp of the crickets, the realization that this house was not just a temporary gig. It felt like a tapestry of love that laid him into a bed of roses by the open fire of his soul. Like the passion of that pentatonic chord, a musical version of the moric Alhambra. A dancing burst, an uneasy flicker, a need for love. A sensation so deep that even the longing was pleasure.

The pain of never getting the break he deserved, that had not been it. Okay. He had gotten the break he deserved.
But it had all been about coming home. And now, he was home. His soul was home. Spiritual restlessness transforming into divine light.

"Toca me," an angelic voice whispered.

The person he remembered, her dark brown eyes and nougat complexion, had never appeared in his current life.
Her long red dress, her castagnettes and the vineyard they founded together back in the 18th century. It had flourished into the finest of northern Spain. And the universe had sent him back here. To the place where he once had lived.

The pictures of the vineyard in the web, how familiar the place had seemed. And the spirit he remembered inspired him to fight for that job at the ripe Calahorra. He had always felt lost, but that the universe could be that literal surprised him. Find the lost founder. Or did it? Had he not always known? Known the reason for his restlessness?

Then, one day, the only Ruiz Winery heir, Alejandro, died, leaving him the temporary executive. He had been a lost cousin and the reincarnation of the lost founder. And now, today, the thing he thought impossible had happened. It was like a song that had been played a long time ago now reverberating again.

"Un corazon como fuego."

The fire of restlessness.

The Spanish background guitar music Pedro had put on had a steady and penetrant rhythm. It would have been a song like this one Pedro would have played back when he had founded this place, back during that other life. A frequency as trustworthy as spring water, as warm as an Andalusian embrace given by a voluptuous lady.