The Valley: Shadows of the soul

By Cristiana Maria Luisa Paolini

A fantastic journey of a She and a Him in search of themselves in a crucial moment of their life. The arrival in a place,unidentified and lost on the other side of the world. Entering a magical valley where time and space are constantly transformed as the human mind changes, which travels for kilometers now, remaining almost at the starting point. All in a time that seems suspended. A rediscovered nature will always be their faithful companion in good and evil.

• Language: English
• Publisher: lfapublisher
• Release date: Oct 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9791220202817

Book preview

THE VALLEY

Shadows of the soul

A book of Cristiana Maria Luisa Paolini

EBOOK VERSION

"This is a fictional novel. Any reference to people,

things or facts that actually happened is purely random."

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To my faithful and

dear companions of

writing and of

reading over the years

Carla and Nicola,

but in particular

way to Peter the

my first and only

teacher of

creative writing,

that spurred me to

work on this

novel why

curious to see them

the end!

INTRODUCTION

This novel is a journey into the mind and spirit of protagonist who is the author of her own story and who tries to do light in the infinite labyrinths of the soul. Travel as a metaphor for knowledge and growth allows our Her to investigate the doubts and fears of all time, finding in Him , male alter ego, an unusual companion in adventure.

The awareness of being unique but at the same time different leads her to discover a valley that perhaps exists only in hers imagination or maybe not, we›ll never know.

A fantastic journey within itself where the multiplicity city of the ego shows itself in the infinite realities of the soul and where too the narrator recognizes itself in the doubling of its own role.

The duplicity of the title further demonstrates that the movement, and not stasis, it is the basis of the elusive mutability of the human mind.

THE VALLEY

Shadows of the soul

"… who, by chance, found himself passing by,

got out completely changed or gone mad, and

there are also those didn’t return.

The warmth of our breaths must have warmed that little lucky refuge. The warmth has stuck to me to the skin and I feel relaxed. Sure, a little numb from the crumpled position we both have had to assume because the den isn’t that big, I have the impression to be a bear when he wakes up after his long winter sleep.

With immediate apprehension I realize that she is not there with me, yet I remember very well the evolutions made to settle in together in the hollow of the tree and I don’t understand how she got out of it without my realizing it.

Evidently the threshold of fatigue had exceeded the limits conscious sensitivity because I hadn’t noticed the least minimal movement. The mind now sets out quickly on the path course of the wildest imagination, and she had already been carried away from the light in another world to be studied in smallest details.

Everything had been devised from the beginning: her growing malaise, the knowledge of the history of the valley, the village themselves, they were a creation of these mysterious beings than anything else they wanted to be able to capture her, as an atypical specimen of a human, studied and studied who knows how many hundreds of times.

I was therefore only the instrument of the person’s safety.

I throw up to that point, and now I just have to go back and this confirming, with his death, yet another legend about valley obtaining in exchange the madman’s license for life to prove further development of an indisputable veracity of history. There is no escape, everything has been calculated to the minimum details, and I fell for it in full!

The first impulse to put his nose out of that hole, now suffocating, it disappears in a moment.

I think about my responsibilities in this whole thing but I don’t feel completely responsible if not for the very natural instinct to take cover when the weather is about to break out outside is.

Everyone would have acted that way, no one would face lightning and thunder openly risking the skin to not appear coward.

And basically, who in life does not want to slip into a black hole to shelter from the elements that suddenly overwhelm you without to know where they started and why they came to such violence?

Then that hole was no more black with despair than in some moments catapult you out of your person with overwhelming force of a stormy sea. Your mind gets overwhelmed repeatedly from that sudden wave, so much so that you lose the sense of orientation too and you no longer have knowledge of either heaven or earth; see only the white foam that envelops and submerges you and you already know what to swim it won’t be enough to stay afloat.

A black hole is what you sometimes want: there, the sounds come muffled, the blinding light of reality is swallowed by the launch of that emptiness. 

Where nothing has its seat, the hooked claws of pain have no grip and everything slips away into a cathartic nothingness and regenerating.

The thought now stumbles on the path of that fantasy, look where he has struck and sees a faint ray coming from a minuscule I bore it in the trunk of the tree.

The darkness gradually disappears and the light invades the pupil with the approach of my cornea to the cortex.

The shape of a half-naked body beyond takes shape in mine crazy mate.

I have known her for a lifetime and yet, perhaps, I am the person less suitable and impartial to be able to trace even a vague imprint of his complex personality.

I do not know if my being a man can favorably affect this attempt to grasp something more that can make you understand, at least in part, who he is.

Perhaps if I had been a woman, I would have been able to analyze with an eye different and more acute, that myriad of small and impalpable minutiae details that only a female creature can instinctively observe.

It means that I will only tell you a part of what you it could be; on the other hand, each person is always a world unto himself for the other.

I was very surprised to receive that letter in which she was asking me to go on a trip to a distant place, not well defined, on the other side of the world, ... in search he said of me itself, of my essence, in a last attempt to understand ...

She told me in an enchanting and at the same time enchanted way of a remote place where an ancient legend said they were found all the souls of the earth.

She added that whoever happened to be passing by was one came out completely changed or mad and there were also those who did not she had returned.

She begged me to leave everything and go, in the name of our or never remote and painful friendship.

And I, an old dreamer and lover of souls in pain and travel to unknown destinations I wasted little time before giving her one answer, settling the few and now worn out questions pending that occupied, like so many perpetual, my long days.

So here I am, attracted once again by the unknown, next to a woman basically unknown, in a wild and unexpected country bile like you.

What to say to make you understand who is the one who has succeeded with few lines to involve me in this absurd adventure?

People usually describe themselves as divided into two essential parts: the physicality and spirituality. Two worlds that come together in one indivisible creature called person.

I don’t know if her can be defined that way, since is impossible It can be seen as an entity, if the field available in the Person description is generally limited to this.

Indeed, her being is divided not into two, but into three parts: is the third component that is difficult to identify since the union of it is concrete, rational and instinctive.

An aspect of her mind that sometimes frightens her makes her foresee the thoughts of others, the gestures, the events, makes them perceive situations unlikely.

Her body escapes her too, as if it belonged to another being evenings. Many times he has looked for an explanation, but unfortunately, badly using concrete and non-concrete mirrors, it was impossible to see giving herself, imagining herself, has not been able to understand what others see.

In a sense, she lacks the ability to self-determine and this creates great insecurity: it is everything, and its opposite.

Wisdom and madness stir and mingle in her mind with the same ease of sand in water: a moment before still and still, limpid and clear, a moment later shaken and dark, impenetrable.

A voiceless scream. A cry without tears. A sincere smile who wonders in fear of always doing the wrong thing, trying to steal what others actually want from her.

Sometimes, however, he is the most independent, free and confident person you can imagine.

It is as if someone at birth had cut off her wings, without then tell him. Do you fly or do you think you fly? And the others, who fail to see. She is confused. Yet she is strong if she wants to. Or ... lost.

Like an image reflected in the glass of a train window in stroke is double. But only one is the real one, or both !? she does not know distinguish them and meanwhile the train runs.

In his fairytale world and reality collide and coexist.

Talking about this person is basically like trying to talk about me himself and perhaps who knows, when I agreed to take this absurd trip

I was looking for answers to many of my unconscious questions.

In a hurry I packed my bags, choosing with careful technique male everything strictly necessary, believing it to be silly and impractical to fill the suitcase with a thousand useless things.

It wasn’t a pleasure trip, after all, and we wouldn’t be to social gatherings.

Instead, I knew, for example, that it would not be the same for you.

The only idea of being able to fill only one suitcase would have that jump in the night at the thought of having forgotten this or that other thing, and reality would then regularly disprove the intentions with an unspecified number of bags.

She always checked, to the point of verging on paranoia, that everything was in order: she never neglected the slightest detail. With maniacal precision every object was inventoried and recorded mentally layer the place where it was placed.

Surely there would be no lack of clothes suitable for a romantic dinner. bellows ... on the steep slope of a mountain!

THE ARRIVAL

The adventure began without much fuss.

She was beaming like a child on her first real trip, with the same curiosity, the same clearly evident excitement.

She never tried to hide emotions if they didn’t create harm to others, nevertheless she was a skillful mystifying if she