The shimmering obsidian of the mirror hall vanished, dissolving like cold smoke. Marco found himself in a different kind of silence, no longer the deafening one of the deep psyche, but a distant echo of familiar voices, almost a murmur. The air, once sharp, grew dense, impregnated with childhood scents: hay wet from summer rain, old paper and ink, Grandma's freshly baked cake. The landscape slowly composed itself around him, no longer surreal, but a faithful, yet distorted, reproduction of his grandparents' house. The walls were tilted, the windows too large, the roof sagged like a crumpled hat, but every detail—the grain of the porch wood, the geranium pot on the windowsill, the rusty swing under the big oak—was intact, laden with an unbearable weight of time and memory.
A knot tightened in his throat. This wasn't just a house; it was an archive of sensations, a museum of frozen moments. Marco moved, his bare feet sinking slightly into the tall garden grass. Every step awakened a memory. The rustle of the wind through the leaves carried the sound of children's laughter, his own, that of his cousins. The scent of damp earth reminded him of dirty hands after digging for imaginary treasures. It was an immersive experience, painfully vivid. And through his eyes, the landscape vibrated, almost breathing with him, showing cracks where arguments had occurred, lush blooms where love had abounded.
He entered the house. The long corridor, usually narrow, now stretched infinitely, the doors lining it appearing and vanishing like illusions. Each door was a threshold to a fragment of time. He chose one at random, a small dark wooden door, feeling an inner pull. Opening it, he found not a room, but a scene. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his knees barely clearing the edge, while his grandmother told him stories from distant times, in her sweet, raspy voice. The warmth of her hand on his, the scent of her old clothes: it was all there, so real that he reached out to touch her, but his hand passed through, like a wave through water. The scene vanished, leaving him with a burning longing, a nostalgia for what was forever lost.
He found himself back in the endless corridor. This time, the doors seemed to have an aura; some glowed with a warm light, others emanated a chilling cold. He approached a grey, worn door. From it filtered an echo of heated arguments, of slamming doors, the shrill sound of a quarrel he had always tried to forget, a moment that had crystallized a part of his childhood in fear and incomprehension. The temptation was to run away, to ignore that door, but the lesson from the previous chapter resonated: truth is fragmented, but whole. He couldn't ignore the shadows of his memory, for they too had shaped him. He opened the door, and the pain of that memory enveloped him, a wave of bitterness, of powerlessness. But this time, instead of fleeing, he stayed. He observed the scene, not as a terrified participant, but as a detached observer. The memory did not vanish, but its grip loosened. The pain did not disappear, but became manageable, part of the great tapestry of his identity.
Outside the door, the corridor was no longer infinite. The house walls had straightened, the windows had regained their normal size. The garden had become a more ordered, less wild place, and the swing was no longer rusty. It was a pacified image of memory, one that had accepted its scars and its joys. Marco understood. It was not about erasing the past, but about comprehending it, integrating it into the present. His identity was not a monolithic block, but a complex weaving of every lived moment, every person encountered, every joy and every sorrow.
A sense of peace, fragile but real, permeated him. The journey through the labyrinth of memory had led him not to an end, but to a new beginning. He had collected fragments of himself, some bright, others dark, and had stitched them together, not to recreate what had been, but to build what would be. The air around him began to shimmer, the outlines of the house to blur, a sign that the next layer of the dream, and of his soul, awaited him. The past had been visited, understood. Now it was the turn of the future, and the search for a deeper meaning.
Per l’ elaborazione di parti del contenuto è stato utilizzato l’ ausilio dell’AI Gemini.
Luca.
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