Parallel Lives – Sample Fragment 18

“I know the feeling, I haven’t been around here for several years either, but this seemed just the day for it. When I moved to this town after getting married, I used to come here as often as I could. I guess it put certain things into perspective… Besides, it’s such a good place to run away from everything.”

The dusty country road took them right in front of the big, rust-covered gate, leaning on ancient stones. As soon as the car was parked under a massive tree, Amalia was out, stretching her legs like a big, restless feline, while Robert was fiddling with something in the trunk.

“Here,” he got so close to her, that when the light breeze blew her hair, it touched his face and he almost shivered handing her a bottle of water, “careful not to dehydrate. And try not to twist your ankles. Do you think you can handle a walk around the place?”

“You have no idea, do you?” She turned towards him giggling, just a few carefree steps and jumps having already taken her past the slightly open gate. “Come on, what are you waiting for?”

She took several steps away, skipping over a few scattered rocks and now ruins of the ancient settlement were spreading around her on the hillside, all the way down to the sea, like a giant lizard baking in the sun. All of the sudden, the universe became quiet and timeless, a mass of suspended emotions, generations, battles and sorrows transpiring through the ancient stones. The past was present again and the present could be lost among the ruins, emotions and fears and worries could be scattered and dropped in the grass and nettles covering the paths of another world, a long ago disappeared civilization could deal with them however they saw fit. A lost civilization… they came to conquer and instead they settled and lived and died. But had they ever been alive or had the trouble of conquering and settling taken over their lives and haunted them to their deaths? They died so many times, each and every time a foot stepped on their world and a soul remembered them, they died once more, without ever coming back to life, their existence so long ago helping to have never lived in the first place. No one can really grasp the notion of their lives so far back in time, so they must have never lived at all. But I am alive now, I am so alive now, because I’m here and because they make me feel so alive. So they must have lived too, they must still live somewhere too, if they can make me feel so alive. She stopped to breathe the ancient heat emanated by the stone wall against which she was leaning, her eyes and thoughts spiralling through the grass on the path, all the way down to the water.

For more sample fragments from Parallel Lives, see: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/396169