CHAPTER I
HESISTATING
There is an age where good and evil are put together in the same weave, where the step from the abyss to the redemption is minimum. Everything appears empty and you can't do anything to stop this icy vice of this grey fog all around you. No, I knew that I wasn't depressed or, anyway, I didn't wanted to surrender at this perspective. The reality was that I felt hesitating. It was like if my life has claimed the time out to think about what to do, because of the great number of changes that had happened in few time. We have just moved in the centre of the city, at Largo Argentina, next to the theatre where some years before I used to go with my parents, in that square full of cats and ancient ruins where the tram comes frequently whit its annoying noise, which let the windows tremble. Don't misunderstand me, that place was incredibly huge and fascinating, an old building with a couple of centuries full of shelters and secret passages (actually, after weeks I was scared again to lose myself in here), but what will replace my old, sweet home? Yes, I know, it was isolated and far away from the centre of the city, but…but unfortunately it was the place where I was born and grow up and now it was the sweet home of perfect strangers. And, after all, I changed my school, too. I was at my first year at the secondary school, attending classic studies, not far away from my new house. It was a difficult school and every day I was feeling more disappointed and unmotivated because of my marks that, despite I was working hard, still remain low. I knew that my report couldn't be satisfying. Maybe I could work better with the support of my family, but they seemed to be too busy at that moment to remember me, so a lot of time I was completely alone in the big flat, seeing my parents only for dinner, ten minutes before their favorite TV program. I sincerely wondered some friends, but the people that I used to meet until that year still continue their own lives in my old district, far away from me. And my new mates, in my opinion, there weren't good. They were part of a community with strong ruts in the district, with all its rules and hierarchies, and I was the stranger. Anyway I couldn't change that invisible barrier that they had build all around them, neither I was wandering to enter to be trapped in. But I was missing the company and all the support that a 14 years old girl can desire. Everything seemed to be grey and motionless. The only thing I knew, was that, from this position, I could do everything. Yeah, but what and when? These were my thoughts, while I was walking on the street, my hands in the pockets and my harms holding tight my clothes, shivering for the cold. Christmas was coming, but I was totally indifferent about that and that atmosphere put melancholy in my heart. In fact, the 25th of December was a day like many others, it had lost its magic that it had once. No more Santa with his elves hiding presents under the Christmas tree in the living room, no more fairy tales, no more magic. All these things were unmasked and burned. It was only a trick arranged by the grow-ups against me and Leo. They had fun and they had deceived us, but now the game was over. Only the empty and the disappoint still remain now. The moment to become adults has come. And now, seeing all these people full of gifts wandering around me, I was thinking angrily how weak can be the human race. But was it the reality? I hadn't an answer. I leaved the savage mass as fast I could and I walked on the terrace of Pincio, in the park. I hoped to find a little peace from my thoughts, but now they seemed to become more annoying from the moment that there was a little silence. I stopped and stared for a while, trying to understand where I was. For the first time, I saw it. It was an enormous sculpture of a great lion, high on the balcony. His fierce eyes seemed to be alive, looking at me. I shivered. Aslan!, I thought. I was surprised by myself. Aslan? Where did that name come from? But was it a name? In that moment, some certainties came back in my mind like a dream where you say a nonsense noun that make you happy without a logical reason. I wished with all myself to find again the magic lost in my world and to show to the others its real existence. A wish incredible and fast, interrupted by a noise that broke the silence at that moment. Someone was desperately weeping somewhere under the trees.