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Andrea's Unexpected Return
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Published 6/8/2023In a time of social disruption in Italy, Andrea, a humble yet snarky farmer, must confront his emotions and find a new beginning in the face of his fiance Eugenia's mysterious long-lost father arriving to threaten their traditional lifestyles.
A long time ago, I had a dream.
I was back in my home town. The market. It was early morning, and light was just starting to peek over the mountains. I walked down the small street that led from the farmhouse I grew up in towards the market square. The air was cool and crisp; it smelled like fresh bread, cream, and smoke from logs burning in people's hearthstones.
In front of me was my father, a large barrel of wine on his shoulders. His steps were slow and careful, he knew how to walk with an uneven load. He had been doing this all his life; carrying things around the market since before I was born. He wasn't old at all; in fact he looked as strong and sturdy as ever. But still, they say a man's children grow older than him every year you live after your thirty-fifth birthday, and I'm sure my father would be glad if he could return to those days when he didn't have grey hair and a hunched back.
I followed him into the market square, where people were already busy buying chickens for the day's soup and shopping for fish from the lake nearby. A familiar face turned towards me: Eugenia, my childhood friend and now fiancée was standing by a table full of vegetables smiling at me. She held out her hand for me to take, an invitation to dance as she hummed a tune I hadn't heard before but recognized instantly from our childhood days together curled up under her mother's clothes drying racks at night while we told each other stories about heroes and monsters.
But I couldn't take her hand because the world shifted again, taking everything familiar away with it until all that remained were two figures in front of each other who both looked vaguely familiar to me. They seemed to be arguing about something, though their voices were too quiet for me to hear anything clearly. Suddenly one of them lunged at the other with something sharp in his hand - maybe some kind of tool or weapon? - but I couldn't get any closer to see what actually happened because everything went black again...
* * *
"Are you alright?" Eugenia asked worriedly when I opened my eyes again, "You were shaking like crazy!"
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction, assisted by artificial intelligence. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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