Ruins of Autumn

8• Toward The Abyss

    Anila sat down on the black sofa in front of the shelves and looked for the umpteenth time that morning for Brunilda's name as the selected contact to call.

    All the ardent enthusiasm of the previous day to tell her cousin about Sidoreli had been extinguished when she reached the entrance of her apartment, and, unable to protect herself in time from the overthinking, she completely surrendered and guessed that maybe introducing Brunilda to the tattoo artist would be a mistake.

    Perhaps she would be badly hurt by him, and the fault would remain with Anila, who had been deceived by Sidoreli's appearance as a good person and had included him in her friend's life.

    She was scared that the excuse that she had had no evil intentions and that it seemed normal to her that she had thought of the two of them hanging out together would be rejected by Brunilda's argument that no one had asked her to interfere in her private life and that she was the reason why she had experienced such suffering. If it had been written that she was going to meet Sidoreli, they would have known each other without Anila's foment.

    Such a version of life, too likely to be realised in the future, had made her remain silent in front of Brunilda, and when she had told Anila that she was going to stay for three days at her parents' house in Vlora, Anila hadn't talked to her about Sidoreli first, but she had thought that that much time away from her cousin would be enough to straighten out the situation and allow her to make a proper decision.

    Brunilda was going to be back in Tirana that evening, and Anila had to decide.

    She sighed, caught in a confusing dilemma about which to choose, and watched from the track the young people at the skating rink.

    Would she do the right thing if she let it fall into fate's hands? What if the latter had chosen her to make the acquaintance between her cousin and the tattooist a reality, and if she withdrew, in the future they both fell in love with each other, but due to certain circumstances they couldn't be together? Perhaps if it were really written that they would know each other and belong to each other, they would meet no matter the consequences, and no one would be able to separate them.

    She hoped immensely that Sidoreli would be as fair as he had seemed to her and that he would date Brunilda because Anila had the feeling that they would walk together in life.

    Fate; she exited the Contacts app and turned off her phone; she would leave it in the hands of life if that love story between her best friend and Sidoreli was going to be written, and Anila couldn't wait to consider him a relative of hers and for him to make Brunilda happy.

    "Melodi, what number the skates?"

    Anila turned her head towards the reception, looked for a moment at the girl in blue slacks and a white half-shirt who had called someone else behind her back, and looked at Melodia, who she realised was a brunette as tall as she was, didn't seem more than twenty-three years old, answered in an emphatic, serious tone "Thirty-nine," pushed her thick, black hair loose over her shoulder, casually gave Anila a serious look with an unusual strength in her dark brown eyes that gave her the energy of a warrior in life, and ignored the skater wearing soft cocoa shorts and a black crop top.

    "They should have named her Lightning," Anila guessed while taking off her white sneakers to put on her skates.

    She glanced once more at Melodia and the other girl, while they were approaching the sofa, and entered the rink. She noticed that Melodia's acquaintance left for the elevator with the phone in her left ear while she herself was observing the track, and Anila admired the way she looked like a storm that could only be faced by the great souls.