by The Eurostar
Edulcore Cicciotto:
The air is cold, and a gentle breeze brings me the scent of the pines. I never ever noticed how the world can be so... beautiful.
The empty, blue sky dome, the green, fluorescent grass, the flowers, red, pink, white and violet, the occasional snake following closely a small mouse, a deer in the distance, and a solitary raptor flying in circles high above me.
The black wall of pines closes the scene, and after it, only the tall peaks of blue mountains in the distance.
My eyes go back to the hawk hovering me.
It's... I don't know. Instantly I realize that I don't know the name of any of these things... of these beings... flowers, trees, animals... I would like to call them, but I don't know.
For all the years of my life, they were a simple backdrop of my existence. Now I am aware of their own life. I feel completely ignorant.
A smell. A very singular smell, crossing at a right angle from the footpath. Footprints, oval, four toes with short claws. Red fur on a nearby trunk. A fox has passed here?
The run of a moose. I am near a... what's the English name? Una palude... a bog? A pond? Ducks take flight.
It's craving from life, this place. I love all of this. How could I have never cared for this before?
Maybe it was all the months spent underground with the EPS... or in the darkness with the metas in the sewers... who knows?
I raise my head to look back at the hawk. It's still there, patrolling the place, looking for something to prey on. It has grace and power unexpressed. I feel a bond to it.
I don't know how much I have walked.
The sun was low when I left the meadow up in the mountain, and now it has crossed the sky and is back low, near the horizon. Soon it will be evening.
But something hit my nose.
Smoke.
I follow it.
And I see it.
A log cabin, on the shore of a neat, little lake, big spruces behind it.
A thin thread of smoke coming out the chimney.