Echoes of the Awakening

Chapter 1: The wind that shakes the barley

The wind was a chain of memories that ran through the thoughts and the high trunks; its breath hissed, swirled, then got lost beyond, at the end of that road. An end that flowed into a beginning, in currents that poured out in the form of words; before time carried away the sorrows and joys, the laughter and lamentations, vestiges of the long journey. Even before the shroud of oblivion covered up that naive feeling with which his steps were initiated in the deep lines of history. He was like a pilgrim, forgotten, wandering through uncertain airs, which little by little delineated themselves in directions. Doubts guided him and left behind a trail of dust, mixed with a reddish tint, which painted memories of a time bordered by guilt. But it was there — in the midst of the abyss that separated the shouts of his soul and the serene dance of the autumn leaves — that he made the world his refuge, and also his penance.

Guilt painfully took him away from the place he once called home, which still chased him in an echo of fragile memory. From the roads he made his home and from solitude, his company. Silence was a wise mentor, hovering between choice and decision. But there was also a peace that he found in the world, amidst the majestic and the cruel, between the freshness of the flowers and the bitterness of the thorns, the breeze and the storm, a melodious song and a fierce roar. And it was in such a spirit that he drew strength to bear the burden, even though he did not know the reason, even if there was only certainty in a sea of uncertainty. And in that balance, he found his motives.

Dressed in deep reflection, he barely noticed the morning smiling in clear evidence. It was then that the sun touched him, shy, and revealed to him the golden fields of barley embracing the horizon in a beautiful infinity. He had left the dense and nebulous forest behind to immerse himself in welcome tranquility. The wind whispered a tender melody as it permeated the barley, almost a silent, persistent prayer for the peace to remain there. He then wondered if the roar of war would one day shake those fields forgotten even by the gods. Then he remembered that the hearts of men were already intense battlefields. Few emerged victorious; others lost themselves, enslaved by their own iniquities; but there were also those who, despite being wounded by six swords stuck in their heart, with a seventh in their hand, even at unsteady steps, never stopped walking.

His steps advanced in quick despair, despite the mastery with which he led them along the arduous road. As he turned the green of his eyes back, he saw only the promise of a gallows, the Abyss that in patience awaited him at the beginning and at the end of that journey. And the distance that separated death from his life was only dust blown by the wild wind, a storm already heralded. The truth, one day, would find him under tears of rain in a trembling smile — of pain that was freedom, of freedom that was pain. It would be enough for him to allow himself to make the bitter, and absolute, decision on how to embrace it.

The present, however, tried to bring him back to itself in order to distance him from future considerations in the visceral form of hunger. It was then that, when he set foot in the first village he had found, he took out of his pocket the few coins he had left. He decided to lay his luck on the copper that covered them and on the cunning of his words and glances so experienced at gambling. Although that would make him declare another war against Fortune, delighted in her involuntary caprices. But what would be a hundred more years of bad luck if he perished there from hunger, from the plague or from persecutions? The rush became urgent and guided him to the old tavern. A meow interrupted him for a brief moment, a cautious warning from his little companion. Yellow eyes — emerging on that conflicting mixture of black and white fur — stared at him in disagreement.

"You worry too much, Taky. After all, one cannot argue against hunger."

The old tavern waited for him with closed doors, through which his audacity made him enter anyway. For his story, like so many others, would begin at the bottom of the mug of his own miseries.