meraki.

Opus 36

Still with her head slightly trobbing and her heartbeat quickening as her heart slowly sinked inside of her stomach, Anna hung up on Gilda, telling her to meet her at the City Hall in the next hour.

Then, faster than she could, she dialed the number of the Council of Cultural Heritage of the city, and waited and waited and waited for him to pick up.

Once he had finally picked up the phone, Anna didn't even waste any time with pleasantries and mince words.

She had to phisically hold herself back from screaming into the receiver directly into the Council's ear and blow off all of her chances to be listened to.

She calmly demanded a meeting, effective immediate, putting the phone on speaker and going to her room to wear something presentable enough to wear at the meeting she would've gotten. Because she would've gotten a meeting, or she wouldn't have put the phone down.

The Council member whined for a while about how he was about to pack his things up and leave because the day had been calm and it was about to be 6pm, the time where everything would've shut down for the day, but Anna was relentless.

She didn't waver in her position, she didn't change her demand. Her lungs were burning, her heart was growing inside of her body, out of fear, and her brain was about to experience a short circuit. They couldn't get rid of Dalila's Villa. She wouldn't have let them.

Understanding that no matter how many excuses and whines he would've come up with, the Councilor gave up and agreed to meet Anna in no less than twenty minutes to discuss whatever it was she wanted to discuss, and Anna cursed under her breath, squeezing herself into a black dress she digged outside of her closet and a pair of knee-high boots to match with it.

She would've never made it by bus, there was no way a bus would've been right on time and got to the City Hall in less than 20 minutes.

She pondered stealing a car from the condo's parking lot, but then quickly shook her head, realizing just how stupid the idea was: stealing a car was illegal, showing up to an impromptu meeting would've been the dumbest thing she had ever done in her human life, and there was a high chance she would've gotten stuck into traffic because peak hour was about to hit.

There was only a thing she could do: run.

Throwing her hair inside of a high ponytail, Anna got her bag and her phone and locked the apartment door behind herself. She almost risked tumbling all the way down the stairs, but quickly recovered.

She checked the time, once outside and realized she only had 17 minutes left.

She had always been good at running, but that was in the past; running as a human being had proved to be hard, clumsy, annoying and generally a pain in the ass.

But she had to do it, that day. For the Villa. For Dalila. She couldn't let that place get sold to someone who didn't care for what it stood, or worse, get demolished to build something else in its place. Nothing else should've been in its place. That was Dalila's Villa, the Villa where they had spent days on end reading and sharing knowledge and discussing themes that women weren't allowed to discuss in public those days.

That Villa meant so much to her.

And she could only hope that the adrenaline would've worked as a natural fuel to substain her while she ran as fast as she could.

She knew of various shortcuts to get to the City Hall, little tunnels between the oldest houses of the city center, streets she would've never been able to take with any car nor motorcycle or bike.

When she finally came out of one of the alleys into the City Hall's square, she immediately spotted Gilda waiting for her near the entrance of the building. She made her way to the woman, ignoring the confused glances she was receiving from everyone passing next to her.