Preamble One, Part Four: Salvation and the Mystical Girl
Sergio physically survived the tragedy that killed each and every one of his loved ones. Some of the people from his town also survived but he did not know them very well. Anyway, he never saw any of them again. He ended up in an orphanage run exclusively by nuns in a town far away from where he was from. Their dialect confused him and he became silent. His new custodians attempted to assure him that his family was now in Heaven, which was a great place to live. Sergio believed it but didn’t care much. He was nine years old and he figured that by the time he reached Heaven, it might be an entirely different place. Perhaps a volcano would have destroyed it. And he would probably be an old man by the time he arrived there so his relatives probably would not even recognize him. He tried to draw pictures in the sand of the ground of his new living quarters but it did not work. Nothing made him happy and the nuns seemed to hate him for this. His soul was broken.
Many sad days passed in Sergio’s life. He did not smile for over two years. His favorite hobby went from drawing pictures in the ground, to sleeping. As far as he knew, he did not even dream while he slept. He struggled with the idea that he may need to live fifty or sixty more years this way, on this land, maybe even in this orphanage. The other boys there ignored him as he did them. When he did pray, Sergio asked God to send him to Heaven as soon as possible.
One day, a girl appeared on the grounds of the orphanage. Since the burning, this was the only female that he had laid eyes on other than the nuns, and the nuns' eyes did not count as female to Sergio. This girl was his age, and he found her outside sitting in the dirt, carving images into the ground in her black dress. He approached her without hesitation and asked her who she was and what she was doing. Without looking up, the girl replied that her name was Malena that she was making pictures. Hearing those words made Sergio’s stomach do a somersault inside of him. Her long wavy black hair obscured her face and touched the dirt where she was making her pictures.
Unsure of what to do or say next, Sergio simply stood in place. Malena continued to carve the ground and told him that he would see her again and that they would visit someplace amazing together one day. The place would be a land full of space to make pictures and they would grow old there together. She then paused, brushed the thick hair out of her face with her hands, looked up at Sergio and smiled. Sergio stared into Malena’s eyes and quietly fell in love for the first time. He was full of questions about what she had told him but could not find any words to speak. He had almost forgotten what a smile looked like.
Before he could collect himself a nun breached his contact with Malena by virtually running towards them, scooping her up in her arms, and carting her away while quietly admonishing Malena for entering the boys’ area of the orphanage. As she was whisked away, Malena continued to smile and look into Sergio’s eyes as if to assure him that what she had told him was definitely the truth. Sergio watched her until she was out of sight and then sat down and continued to work on the pictures that Malena had begun to create, wondering how she knew what she said was true but believing it fully, curious about where they would go.