Julius was a man that he had worked in all the world and in great cities, but at certain point of his life had given up all this to live in one of that depopulated smart towns of the appennine.
It wasn’t a difficult choise for a man that he had lived fully the confusion of life, absorbed from its the noises and the fast followed each other of events, and that now he wished only to reunite with the quiet and the silence those lands and the nature yet apart pure could give back him.
That afternoon he walked along the road bristling and difficult that it joined his house with the point higher of the town, place from that it could admire a wonderful view on the entire valley that it turned to west.
His walking seemed to have a melancholy look, yet more evident when from time to time he paused to observe the stones that they paved the road, absorbed in maybe which mysterious thinking.
At a look more attentive, still, from his face nothing of all of this it showed and indeed it experienced that sensation of peace of mind that it fells when after more effort it reachs the purpose of own wishs.
It was in just of these moments of reflection that a young approached him and with a joyous air said - Julius, at last I found you! – and so saing he embraced him.
Julius was enormously surprised and he thought – Who never will be this young with a family face but unknown that with an air so jovial he approached me? He had wrong! Who never will knows me in this town in which all know all but I’m a foreigner? –
The young realized the pertubation of man said – You didn’t recognize me? However a twenty years ago, you held me on knees and you narrated me some stories not bad that yet today I remember how it was yesterday. –
– You are Ludwig! – Exclaim Julius – But how I did I not recognized you! What are you doing here? –
In fact the situation was strange to explain. Ludwig, in spite of the young age, had decided to live in a quiet town at some kilometres from that in which Julius was goes to live and he had heard to talk his fellow townsmen of a man, not of the place, that he narrated some wonderful stories.
He thinked soon that he dealt with Julius, that man neighbour that when he was child he grew up and he had felt less the lack of a father.
Ludwig bore in mind Julius as a father, that he hadn’t never known. Julius with his stories had made glad his childhood and his teens, and the memories of that stories with their hidden sense that they had led with themself, they had given the force to grew up and to go forward in the life, the awareness of what that he was and what were the important things.
The two men seated so at a bar that it is just near there and drinking a coffee they narrated each other all of those years of distance and of how their lifes were crossed again.
Before to take one’s leave, Julius couldn’t leave Ludwig without narrates one of his stories and so begins – A master mason a day explained to son that he going to instruct the craft that the stones that they are of use to pave the roads have all irregular forms, and still, each meets the place where it stands and the similar with which to match. The mason hadn’t to do nothing other to search the place and the similar of each stone, give force to the unions between them and square the surfaces so that the steps of pedestrians are more easy possible.
All of this are like a bit to the life of everyone, all have a place where they stay and some fellow creatures with whom to share the steps of life, to everyone of us has to search the place and the fellow creatures, to polish the surfaces of our characters to share those steps more easy and to give our the force to stay together. -
Unpublished story participating in the competition " I brevissimi di Energheia – Domenico Bia " – year 2007

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