Elsa’s voyage – chapter 2

Alessia Battaglia

by Alessia Battaglia

Story

The day after, the sun had come out. The light was intense and warm. She stepped out of the room to reach the wide empty terrace. The eye could reach the edge of the horizon as the house had a big garden only on the back. In the front, the immense wide landscape of hills and fields extended, quietly and superbly.

Irregular patches of golden brown were delimited by regular green areas, where trees of different shapes could be distinguished. She closed her eyes for a moment and thought of England. The air smelled differently. She rested for some long moments, leaving behind all the anxieties she had felt during the last weeks. “How can it be” – she thought – “that while the whole world is getting lost, I’ve just started to find myself?”.

She liked questions without an answer. She thought that answers closed all possibilities of investigation. They just closed a process that was supposed to remain open. Most people look for certain truths. But if there is a truth, how can it be an absolute one? This did not make sense to her.

She decided to take a tour of the house, just to make sure that everything was still in its place. The night before she was too exhausted to even think of doing any kind of movement that would require effort.

She opened the windows, and the curtains began to flow like sails attached to the mast of a boat. She smiled and thought of herself being on an imaginary boat. The boat was imaginary, but the feeling she had was real. She felt suspended in a parallel dimension, where she could recall memories from her childhood. That childhood was strictly connected to that place.

She knew all the objects. They were just familiar to her. How often had she passed by that portrait, that bookshelf, or that armchair?

Her steps were the only sound. The silence was complete. After a couple of hours of close inspection, she concluded that she was safe. No damage, no losses, no unpleasant surprises…and that book she was looking for was still there.

© Alessia Battaglia 2022-11-10

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