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Sonnenfreunde - Magazine 2021

A short story for Sonnenfreunde (Issue 2021 – Theme: "Encounter")

A long silence. A finch sang. A child laughed from the water.

The morning light filtered through the high canopy of the old oak grove, dappling the grass in shifting gold. Uwe stretched on his towel, the rough bark of the ancient tree against his back a familiar comfort. He had been coming to Freiheit am See for twenty years. He knew every path, every sun-drenched meadow, and every regular.

A man stood at the edge of the clearing, just where the pine needles gave way to the soft grass of the naturist zone. He was perhaps thirty, lean, with the pale complexion of someone who spent his days in an office. He clutched a rolled-up towel like a shield, and a pair of swim trunks bulged from his backpack’s side pocket—still dry. Sonnenfreunde Magazine 2021

Uwe watched him wade in up to his waist, then gasp as the cool water embraced him. After a moment, Lukas turned back toward the shore. For the first time that morning, he smiled. A real smile. The kind that starts in the chest, not the cheeks.

“We’re all walking exhibits of our own lives,” Uwe said quietly. “The sun doesn’t judge. It only warms.”

Uwe watched as the man sat down stiffly behind a bush, still wearing his linen shorts. He looked like a spy in a foreign land, afraid to be discovered. A short story for Sonnenfreunde (Issue 2021 –

“The water’s warm today,” Uwe said, sitting down a respectful meter away. “Warmer than the air, almost.”

The man flinched, then relaxed slightly. “Is it… allowed here? I mean, really allowed?”

Uwe said nothing. He simply turned his own torso toward the sun, revealing the long, silvery line from his own heart surgery, and the mottled skin of a melanoma removal on his shoulder. The morning light filtered through the high canopy

That’s when he heard the hesitation.

When Lukas emerged, he didn’t reach for his towel. He lay down on the grass, stretched out, and closed his eyes. The sun painted his scars gold.

The man scanned the meadow. Two elderly women were playing Schafkopf under a beech tree. A family with teenagers was splashing at the water’s edge. Everyone was at ease. Everyone except him.

Uwe closed his eyes, letting the warmth seep into his bones. At sixty-four, he no longer came for the tan. He came for the silence. The quiet acceptance of body and nature, stripped of pretense.

We Accept