Nubo✦

Nubo has a habit of looking up at the sky until someone reminds him there is a world beneath his feet too. Then he looks down and usually finds another reason to go somewhere. Sometimes it is a path disappearing behind a rock. Sometimes it is a shell that sounds different from all the others. And sometimes it is a tram he boarded simply to find out where the people with suitcases were going.

Nubo talks about a distant world from which Neptune is visible. He remembers dark water, bright shores, and wind humming through cracks in the rocks. When he tries to point to this world on a map, his finger always stops between the marked dots. In the end, he shrugs. Apparently whoever drew the map has not reached it yet.

At home, Nubo learned about travelling from the waves. He could spend hours watching water flow around obstacles and return to places it had just left. Then he built his first board. It was a little too wide, heavier on one side, and very stubborn when turning. Nubo adjusted it again and again, discovering along the way that some solutions come most easily with a wet head.

That very board carried him on his first great journey. One evening he noticed a narrow streak of light on the water, although thick clouds hung over the bay. The streak was moving against the current. Nubo followed it to a stone arch where he usually rested after surfing. This time, on the other side, he saw an unfamiliar shore. Red stones lay on the sand, and two moons shone above them.

For a moment he sat completely still on his board. Then he paddled carefully closer. He touched the sand, picked up a stone, and kept it as a souvenir. Before returning through the arch, he spent a long time studying the strange sky. The next morning he began looking for similar streaks of light. He realised he had found something he could no longer leave alone.

The glowing sphere on his belly helps him on his travels. Inside it, tiny points swirl like a galaxy enclosed in glass. When the Blue Current stirs nearby, they arrange themselves into a new pattern. Nubo tries to read these patterns by comparing them with the entries in his notebook. He does make mistakes. Once he was sure he had found a passage to the ocean, but he ended up in a cupboard full of brushes. To this day, he wonders whether he misread the pattern or simply lacked the patience to look behind the last shelf.

Nubo has a head full of good ideas and a suitcase full of things whose usefulness he cannot always explain. He carries a smooth stone from his first journey, a shell, a few tickets, and sketches of places he would like to revisit. He can spot the resemblance between a constellation and a pattern of streets. He can also spend half a day looking for the notebook he has been carrying under his arm since morning.

His travels have brought him to Earth too. He fell in love with the waves, but spent just as long looking at bakeries, escalators, and people watering flowers on their balconies. He still does not understand why anyone would shut a beautiful shell in a drawer, or why you should leave the seaside when you could stay one more day. He asks about everything. Sometimes an answer takes him somewhere new faster than the Blue Current.

Now Nubo invites you to travel with him too. His adventures take in unfamiliar planets and familiar cities, restless seas, and places best reached with a pencil in your hand. He already has plenty of questions and a few carefully recorded ideas. He has probably put his notebook down somewhere again. His suitcase is waiting by the door, though, and the smallest star on his face is beginning to shine more brightly.