The Valley

She arrives.

She remembered the village very well. Was where her great great grandma was born and she passed it by car with her mother, brother and stepfather everytime they were going to grandma or great grandma.

When she was small it seemed like thousand kilometers far away from the destination but right now she felt even too close her grand parents. The world was freaking out. Covid was spreading like the Spanish fever hundred years before, pandemic was declares and her plans where all messed up thanks to that. She was supposed to spend the summer in Venice as a seasonal worker, work like a beast and once done with the summer she was supposed to go to Germany and maybe travel outside of Europe for a month or so.

Now the job was gone as Venice was dying without tourism and she had no choice if not move somewhere else cheaper and with work to offer so she ended up in Erto a place she remembered from her childhood and a place where her family had roots. A small village in the mountains of northen Italy inside a valley that makes it look like you are in the palm of a fist with cheap rent, more bars then shops, mainly alcoholic old man and unhappy women that colored to many times their hairs because of boredom. On the end of the road tunnels that pierce across the mountains on the Northwest side there are factories: her very last resource in case of failing to find a better job.

As soon as she arrived she met a friend of her mother, Elisa. Elisa moved to Erto some years before and offered her couch to Aurora for sleep for the first times until she would have found a flat by her self.

The first days passed pretty fast even if in full Covid's lock down and with Elisa's help Aurora found a 30 square meters flat that was big enough for her in the old part of the village and a farm where to help. The old side of the village was her favourite, she disliked the new part and the 70's architecture that compose it and for the help she could give in the farm, in exchange of food, she was looking forward to.

Walking in the empty few street of the village, the night before she started at the farm, she could smell in the air why even her great great grandma didn't want to live, she did as well as a child before know of the 140 bodies that are still lying under the half mountain that slided down in the middle of what was an artificial lake 60 years before during the disaster of Vajont. The strange electricity in the air however was not coming from that disaster, it was something more ancient and felt like it charged her. She shook her head and giggled between her self thinking that she was probably just excited for the far.

The old man seemed nice and the wife was German so she could try to improve her german since was already a year that she didn't talk it. They had 3 children, all younger then her with the older one being a girl and the youngest one having some health problems and being the reason for the starting of the farm. The project was actually a very nice idea and she didn't expect something like that in a place like this.

Crossing the new village she made her way down to the old one when a chill crossed her spine and seconds later a howl broke the night. She quickly checked her memories and she didn't like the conclusion: in this part of the mountains there were no wolfs and she was sure also after a decade without crossing them. Was almost summer but still chill at night and without second thought, using that as excuse, she want back direction Elisa's house because one thing was sure: no more drama in her life, she already had enough of it in the last years and wolfs were not on her "wanting to do" list. Tomorrow was a new start and she was confident about it.