Ruins of Autumn

23• Sacrifice In The Battle

    Leonora didn't foresee the ultimate ending, and yet she didn't rest on the assumption that maybe it was about something other than her and Blerimi.

    She looked, without taking her eyes off for a single moment, as Graniti put his hands on his knees and rose to his full height, and her heart seemed to her as if it would burst out of her chest from the beating-screaming in silence for Leonora to disappear from there, without turning her head back because of the danger that had been waiting for her at home and she, without knowing anything, had slipped into the pitiless abyss.

    She looked enviously at his brother, who, in the accentuated and slightly sharp features of his somewhat square face, looked totally unconcerned and as if he had everything under control, while she trembled like a perch in fear of her life under their enslavement. Every attempt of hers made in the past, to have the same authority as her brother had failed due to the weak self-confidence from the surrounding environment and the panic from overthinking, that she wasn't stronger than the people she faced.

    "Come in, Nora," her husband invited her with a smile. "Graniti has come to greet us. Since we are going to Kosovo the day after tomorrow."

    That explanation was not enough for Leonora to free herself from the grip of the anxiety. Maybe they were lying, so that she wouldn't suspect anything?

    Her brother's calm gaze backed up Albioni's words.

    "Okay," she responded dryly, and hurried toward her bedroom when she saw Graniti approaching her.

    She sat on the bed, breathing heavily with her patience at its peak. She could no longer bear to live in fear of when they would end her life, which they had mercilessly taken from her under their control.

    To fight; the solution was clear, but what would happen after that war? Where would she go to live? She ignored Graniti as an option, to have him by her side and thought of Denada, who could help her, but she felt bad, about falling into her hands, because of fear that something would happen to her, and she wouldn't be able to repay her afterwards. Denada had always offered her support if Leonora decided to separate from Albioni, but the latter had not wanted to risk Denada and Albioni hurting her, to take revenge on Leonora.

    Surely there wouldn't even be an "after that war,"  because she wouldn't be able to win. She would have to defend himself with words, which could even lead to her death. Leonora had always tried to speak carefully, so as not to anger her father, brother and husband for fear that they would become too angry and after abusing her, they would kill her.

    The words, which had often seemed like the only way for her to begin to save herself, could become the reason why her lips, which had set those words free from the prison called "the mind", would drown in her blood after she died.

    She didn't understand how other people managed to win. Where did they get all that confidence?

    What did she have to say to be motivated? All her life, she had only allowed herself to be possessed by negative feelings for her soul. Now she was being asked to do what she had always avoided, to get out of that kind of comfort zone, to do the right thing for herself and not only.

    Maybe... that was the reason why she was encountering so many obstacles, because she was on the way of doing the right thing and to win that war she had to let the existence of the future, surprise her. First, she had to deal with the present and, if there was no future, the fact that she had fought for it and had not allowed anyone else to force her to live as a prisoner any longer would give her the much-missed peace of her mind.