Beyond summer days

It was a summer day, one of those when flies flutter around the legs and sweat marks appear on the t-shirts of everyone who is doing something else than blinking.

Elisa was sucking an ice cream while playing with ants under the apple tree. Adults were sleeping in the cool rooms from the stone house, and grandparents were trying to watch the soap opera but were also dozing off.

The girl with bulging eyes and muddy dress told the insects that she was hoping to receive a new bike as birthday present. She wanted to go to the fields and ride through the longest hill to demonstrate to her friends that the best brakes were always the sport shoes.

The wheat fields that surrounded the familiar property had been witnesses of the general course of loves and traditions. The walls were surviving hardly despite the kids and parents mischiefs. 

Elisa looked at the sky imagine how the clouds were changing into monster silhouettes and magical beings that remained alive in her innocent gaze.

The little one with brown skin tanned by the mountain air was waiting impatiently the time to swim in the river and say hello to the cows from the neighbour´s farm.

The beds seemed to overgrow by that season and, even so, there was always free space for one more chair at lunch time. The laughts mixed with the toasts in the long conversations after eating which could be listened from the street by the opened doors.

Elisa perfumed her skin with jasmine smell and showed everyone her bruises ensuring that she won against the floor, the pine tree and the mastiff which wanted to eat her lollipop.

The infant lady with tangled hair played with her hands as if were corverting into a camera and she could saved all those moments to be sure that, even being far, she could always return to them, take force and change the reel to create new ones.

The girl of the legend

He lost track. It could have been walking for fifteen, twenty, or thirty days. It was blowing an icy wind and his feet were tripping more often. He held a sachet in the left hand and a map in the right. The instructions were clear and he had known since childhood, when everyone but himself knew his destiny.

The journey was being longer than they told him and the time was getting over. The dried blood was decorating his clothes, almost destroyed on his way and getting him trapped by the branches. His face was the description of long nights without sleeping from the threat of the screams which were getting closer too quickly.

He sighed and looked up. It was there. His knees shook and his legs went to the floor. He cried excited searching for the girl of the legend between the trees. There was just a clearing of withered grass. He checked again: mountains on the left, sunrise straight ahead, and the village with the purple church on the right. He himself was on the cross. However...

The man jumped standing up. The screams were arriving and he could almost smell their breath odor. He climbed the highest tree and blended himself into the autumn leaves. That wasn´t enough for those creatures, but he stopped breathing believing blindly in the legend: he must find her.

They arrived at the clearing. Right away, they looked to the tree he was in, but kept trotting to the village, leaving a trace of their slime on the way.

He couldn´t understand but didn´t have time to think about it. When he pressed the sachet in his left hand, it started to get warm. The rule was clear: only she was allowed to look inside. He looked. Nothing happened. While tearing his eyes away from it, an energizing emotion was covering his veins.

Went down and left the map under some stones. The route disappeared and the paper changed into dry leaves merging with the others. He hadn´t seen anything like that even in the place he came from.

Started walking again. Wasn´t sure where was going. Sometimes he stopped and looked at the landscape. Sometimes he took several steps backward. Sometimes he could listen to the screams and felt scared.

It was at nightfall when he found the house. He knew it was there. The sachet shinning with silver light for a few seconds. He didn´t need the confirmation.

A young woodcutter was living there and invited him kindly to get inside to take shelter from the cold night.

Some years later, he met the girl of the legend, her first daughter. Not everything was written.

His magical world

He told her mother that he was going to search for fairies in the forest. Manuel was an intelligent child, from the top of his class, he enjoyed play tennis but was better at basketball. He was always ready to help at home. The problem was his dreamy imagination.

As soon as he finished the homework, he was going to dip in the mud. Sometimes he came back furious because the trolls had attacked the elves village and he couldn´t repel the assault. He got frustrated more than any other day and stayed late in the night with his lantern under the sheets preparing a new ambush.

One day he returned worried because had seen a deer. His mom laughed and continued with the salad. The boy was used to them and loved their mating calls. He didn´t say a word over dinner and went to sleep directly, no lanterns or tales.

The day after, he faked to be sick. He faked and didn´t do hard work to hide the lie. He faked and her mother didn´t do hard work to check it. She knew him. She trusted him.

Manuel looked at the trees from the window and ground the tooth.

Three days passed. The winter was stalking the mountains and the fog was becoming common on the valley. That Saturday morning, the boy got up with huge bags under his eyes and said goodbye to her mother with more affection than ever.

He told his mother that he was going to search for fairies. And never returned.

Wherever we lost you

It is like a knife that sinks slowly into the skin, that tear each muscle without exerting force. You talk about the sea but you have never gone out of the jungle. Sometimes you hear the roaring of the waves, and it´s a painful scream that you can not imagine calm. Like you now.

Why is your face bleeding if the bullet hasn´t approached you? Why do your fingers scratch if you do not have nails? Why do your words thrust into my eardrums if you haven´t started to speak?

If I could just understand... It hasn´t been much time and you have just changed a little. What is that on your glance? If you have never used make-up, how could it be possible that you haven´t worn a mask before? I don´t recognize you. I don´t know who has stolen the light from your eyes, but it does deserve all the agony that has pinned in there.

You just let the ice be with you on the night. How do you do to make your pain a lava river where no one wants to get closer but we are all caught? How can it be that you pull us to an abyss as darker as it seems there hasn´t ever been life? Does no one care that they have killed the girl you were?

If I can not get closer to you, let me told you that I still have the power of happiness on your lips store in the best place where memories live. I can lend it to you.

Removed

I found her diary a long time after she left. It wasn´t my purpose, I was cleaning and it fell down. I returned it to the shelf and continued cleaning. By the end of the day, I didn´t remember the notebook anymore.

It was three days later, coinciding with the anniversary. I didn´t realize until lunch and it was just because they repeated twice in the news. I mean, I haven´t forgotten her... it´s different.

On the front cover, she had drawn a doll with a party dress inside of a sporty car. Her initials were repeated on the bottom creating a road, and on the top as colorful balloons. I didn't dare to open it. Not yet. The blind was raised and people were hanging out in the sun.

I went to the supermarket, to yoga, and I even had time to prepare a new dish with the leftovers from Sunday. We had dinner, I call the boy, and we watched the debate on tv, like any other day, but I kept thinking about the diary.

I read it once when she only had a few pages written. She gave it to me. I wasn´t interested and didn´t insist. We were in the living room and she was writing. I asked her about what she was doing. She just wanted me to read it. To be honest, I didn´t find the meaning of telling your life to a piece of paper that would end up in the trash, but, you know?, my girl was entertained and she liked it, so, what could I say?, she wasn´t doing anything wrong.

I was already lying down, but it was almost three in the morning and I was still turning in bed. I woke up to look for a yogurt. It sometimes worked. And I passed by her room. I walked inside like a machine, my hands were looking for something that I wasn´t sure what it was. All of a sudden, I was in the middle of her dark room opening her diary.

I sat down by the window, with my back leaning against the wall, and started reading those pages by the light of the street lamps. I laughed a lot... she had an ironic way to tell day to day activities that amused me. I remembered myself scolding her, preparing the swimming bag together, opening her present on Mother´s Day, chasing her around the house because she had taken my lipsticks again, punishing her because she arrived late, cooking together that chocolate cake that she was in love with,... and then nothing. No, literally, she had pulled those pages. Two white ones and nothing in the middle. From October the 23rd to January the 15th.

Sometimes she was two... four days... or even a week without writing on it... but we were talking about almost three months... something that was removed.

I tried to remember. Nothing relevant. The cousin´s baptism, the neighbour´s birthday, Christmas,... And that was a few years before she left.

I kept reading. No reference at all. She continued writing as before. Even on exam periods, she had written a few pages per week. Her sense of humour was the same, but how to obviate that?

It was half past four in the morning when I was checking each milimetre of her room looking for those pages... looking for her and the reason why she had abandoned me and didn't want to talk anymore.