Hello friends! Week n. 4 has come and I'm excited to introduce you to a fiction story based in Venice, Italy.
A contest with a pot of 3 @steembasicincome shares + the SBD payout? You're in the right place!
I write a story, you finish it, you get rewarded. Everyone will get a reward and enjoy each other stories! Not bad right? :-)
Check my previous post for further details. And here's the story..
In the morning mist, the cries of the seagulls were brush strokes against the canvas of a mannerist landscape painter.
A barge slid slowly over the Grand Canal with its cargo of goods destined for the wealthy clientele of the prestigious Molino Stucky. A German shepherd sat next to the man driving the barge. The sailor moved the rudder carelessly and seemed to be made of fog himself, layers of damp solidified in a solemn creature of the sea, insensitive to the perfidious wind of that morning.
From the island of Giudecca, an ancient tongue of silent land populated with vegetable gardens, one could see the Dorsoduro district and thoughtful mothers along the fondamenta, their children swallowed by the school's gate. Venice is a geology of souls and endless stories. A mosaic of heaven and earth and something else that you can never embrace till the end. The streets are calli, the squares campi and campielli, the districts sestieri, the foundations are still made of trunks embedded in the seabed.
Time had honed his senses. He could see a lot from the window, although the glass looked like a translucent placenta that separated him from that vibrant world.
Those glasses encrusted with saltiness had been his cross, then with time he had ceased to feel troubled. On the side of Calle del Pistor the windows were cleaner and he could see more clearly than from those faceing the Canal, due to the lesser aggression of the weather. The view however was not equally interesting.
Thoughts washed by time, slow gestures, daily rituals repeated to infinity, loss of structure and meaning. In the dim light of that damp attic, all that remained was his memories and the incessant spectacle of life out there, through the glassy and salt-encrusted placenta. Memories faded but life out there could not fade, even if it diverged more and more from the threshold of his perception.
The days passed and he kept watching from the windows. He waited. He remembered and waited.
If in a quiet system an event lasts t seconds, the same phenomenon lasts longer in a reference system that moves almost at the speed of light in a uniform motion.
How many seconds did an event last in that dimension where he was now?
He had been a good physics professor, before everything happened. His students had always appreciated his lessons and surely, now that they were esteemed professionals, they remembered him in their memories and anecdotes about university time.
Lost in the viscous broth of his thoughts, he did not even notice the click of the door opening. Finally.
A figure was outlined against the rose madder wallpaper of the corridor outside the apartment. Slowly the figure moved forward with light cautious steps on the carpet of the attic.
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