-A blue sky! - Aurora shouted as she looked at the east wall of the canyon; she could see the Antenna, a huge building made entirely of metal, which her aunt Julia had told her was used for communication a long time ago, but now it was only a fossil of a remote past, unknown to all of them today.
-A long time ago it was possible to communicate through the air, -Julia told them, in her eagerness to show them what the world was like before Orbis, -There were telephones that didn't need cables and devices to see what other people were doing in distant places-, Aurora imagined big transparent boxes inside of which you could see people cooking, playing or telling stories.
She missed her aunt and her stories, they would sit on the rocks in front of her house under the lights and talk for hours after dark and they had finished their evening chores, sometimes other children from the village would join them. Julia said it was her job to tell stories, that she had learned it from her grandfather, Aurora would have liked to do the same as her aunt, but she had died before she had taught her all the stories. Now, after finishing her chores in the garden, she was left to sit alone for long, boring hours until it was time to go to sleep.
At the southern end of La Villa, where she lived, there were no children of her age, she was the youngest in that part, the few children in the vicinity were about their own business, some learning chores with their parents, others playing in groups, which she could not join, because she was too small, so, while her mother cooked supper for her brother and prepared everything for the next day, she had nothing left to do but sit bored on the rocks, where before she would have sat listening to her aunt.
-Before the great catastrophe, the world was green and blue skies-, was Julia's litany, -There were cities where millions of people lived, in buildings that rose beyond the clouds-, Aurora imagined gigantic towers like the antenna, stretching to infinity, in a blue sky; blue like that of some of the rocks Ivan brought her from the mine.
Aurora closed her eyes and could only try to imagine that blue sky, her world of ochre and brown tones did not allow her to do anything else but think of those rocks that her brother brought her when she was younger.
-People traveled in big transports that flew from one city to another, some reached beyond the sky and could go from one side of the world to the other in a matter of hours,- Julia continued saying, -But one day, suddenly, the great catastrophe happened, the world changed completely, the skies were blackened for years, full of smoke and dust, all the people in one half of the world died at once and most of those who survived in the other half, died in the following years-.
Aurora's stomach contracted and her skin bristled, every time she heard Julia talk about the catastrophe, she could see her aunt's expression change, the sparkle in her eyes faded and her face suddenly aged. Julia was not there, nor were her grandparents, nor her grandparents' grandparents, it happened in a time beyond belief, her memory is only in the stories told by those who deal with it, as her aunt did, something she will never be able to do.
It was already dark when she decided to stand up and go back to the house, it was starting to get really cold and her light coat wasn't much help, she could see how the moths were flying around the light fixture she was under; in front of her she saw the light peeking through the windows of her house and in them, the silhouette of her mom going from one side to the other.
She stopped for a while looking at her house and thought how, little by little, that part of La Villa has become empty, more and more people are moving to work in Axia or those who go to neighboring villages, previously, at this hour, there would still be several children of her age playing, today only she is outside her house, she and a few people who come from doing their work in the mine or the farms of La Comunidad.
Her house was the last one at the south end of The Village, you could say it was the last one in the whole village, or the first one, depending on where you come from of course, the four nearest houses had been left alone, in the last 2 years, some had gone to Axia and others, to the other side of the village, where they were closer to the few stores there were and to the farms of The Community where many worked.
His own parents had previously lived on the north side and worked on the farms, that was before his dad started working in the mine and Ivan was born; when they decided to move in together, they did so near where his Aunt Julia lived, to the house where today, standing under the streetlight, he watched his mother go around getting things ready for the next day.
Julia lived in one of those four houses, today unoccupied, the farthest one, living alone with her old books, written in languages that only she understood, languages that have disappeared, old and dirty books with their pages covered with plastic, so that they would not crack and joined by big metal rings. After her death, her mother kept the books for some time, until people from Orbis came and paid her to take them to one of the schools in Alessia, the nearest town, where they would be kept in a large library.
As he continued to see the silhouette of his mother in the window, he remembered that soon it would be two years since his aunt Julia died, -I want to see a blue sky...- he thought, as he began to walk back home; it was time to go to sleep.