Ela and her new life

Divorced Eleonóra is a plump woman in her forties. In the fall, she moved to an older, smaller house near a lake outside the city. A small lake intended for fishing beautifies this place and gives it a touch of peace and nostalgia. Ela, with a pretty face that resembles a girl in her twenties, is tired of life and lonely at the same time, since both children left home for Ireland more than ten years ago. When she smiles, which happens very rarely when arguing with neighbors, fine mimic wrinkles appear on her face, reminding her of her real age. Her long black hair, usually tied in a large knot on the crown of her head, has a strange ebony sheen. A plump, taller woman with an exceptionally endowed chest, has not had luck in relationships, let alone love itself, for the past five years. One disappointment after another came, and finally bitterness. Finally, she sold her large apartment in the city and bought a smaller, older house. She was convinced that she would no longer be irritated by happy, smiling couples holding hands. She moved away so that she would no longer see such lovers around her, so that she would not hear them at night during their joys and sexual outbursts. A lonely person, whether a woman or a man, has a hard time surviving and is carried away by the obvious happiness and vices of other people. So, hoping for peace and imagining a peaceful night's sleep without the orgasmic screams of her neighbors, she left the urban jungle and went to the countryside. Her house is located at the end of the street, practically in solitude by the lake.

The first nights in the house were really quiet and peaceful. Sleeping undisturbed by anything confirmed Ela's decision to live in the countryside. During the day, she occasionally went to the only shop in the village, where she bought the necessary provisions. She also walked between the houses to get to know her new environment at least roughly. Sometimes her neighbors stopped her and asked where she was from and why she had come here. She only met men occasionally. There weren't many of them here. The young generation of men had gone to work elsewhere, and the older generation spent almost whole days sitting around drinking beer in the local pub, talking mainly about their superiority over the entire planet. In fact, one could say that if Ela had also longed for a man, she wouldn't have found him here. Only if he was older, married, and in a pub. On the one hand, a conflict-free environment, on the other hand, the impossibility of meeting someone suitable and forming a relationship.

Ela has found a job that she can do from home. She has been given a company computer, as have some of her other colleagues, so all communication regarding work and the company can be conducted online. She only has to travel by train to the capital occasionally to sign documents at the company or other contracts for text translations. Ela works as a linguist for a large book publisher. She does not have to sit in an office in the company building, as was necessary in the past, but she can work from home. This gives her peace of mind at work and flexible working hours.

Her house in the countryside is habitable and does not require any major repairs. The small garden behind the house also does not require much work, there are only ornamental shrubs, a few strawberry seedlings, a lawn and a place for flowers. Therefore, she can use it more for relaxation and in the summer for sunbathing without the unwanted eyes of the neighbors. On nice days, she can fully devote herself to her work in her garden, which consists of translating foreign literature. Sometimes she also translates from Old Church Slavonic or another Slavic language. Ela was inclined to foreign languages even as a child. She learned German, French and after high school she went to university in Bratislava to study languages. She also began to devote herself to old, more complex languages, based on Old Church Slavonic, and those that are no longer spoken at all, such as Old Church Slavonic, which is now a dead language. She was so fascinated by old languages that for some time she undertook to collaborate on creating translation dictionaries. Immediately after graduating from college, she got a position at a publishing house, where she had special tasks focused on these languages.

While shopping in the capital, she met her future husband, with whom she has two children. A son, Adrian, and a daughter, Filomena. Both are now adults and have started their own families. They decided to live in Dublin, Ireland, where they had previously studied. They liked life abroad and don't seem to be thinking about returning home. Ela understood this and has come to terms with the fact that she will be completely alone. But for now, she doesn't take it as tragic, because she believes that maybe in time she will meet someone who will add spark and passion to her life again.

Compared to the previous year, November was a rather rainy and cold month, so Ela spent more time at her computer and papers in her small, cozy living room, where she had also set up a nice corner office with a new corner desk. On the right side of the wall next to the desk, she placed a new tiered shelf, in which she arranged folders by year. She also has a new laptop on her desk with an external keyboard so that the one on the laptop doesn't wear out. The external keyboard costs only a few pennies and can be replaced with a new one at any time if it wears out. So the one on the laptop is still intact, intact. In the evenings, she gets into the habit of turning on a small lamp on her desk and working on the translations that the publishing house assigns to her for the coming months. She was given time to translate the ones in November until the end of April of the following year. Since the long winter evenings were approaching, she really had enough time for such work. Solitude, silence, and disruption will give her everything she needs.

But sometimes she suffered from feelings of loneliness, sadness and abandonment. She lacked emotional closeness, longed for love and also had unfulfilled sexual desires. She tried to push her sadness out of her mind, mainly by working for a publishing house. Sometimes she would do small repairs in the house or make some changes to make her living more comfortable. After selling the apartment, she had enough money left in her account, since the house in the countryside was not too big or expensive. It can be said that thanks to this, she was in a decent package.

In mid-December, it got quite cold outside and snow was falling. Everything was turning white, and that brought Ela a good mood and encouragement. She immediately went to the local store to buy supplies for the next few days, as well as for the upcoming holidays. The local store is quite well stocked, she found almost everything she needed there. When she returned home, she remembered that she hadn't had time to clean out or sort out the small pantry in the hallway of the house. There she planned to put supplies for the kitchen, such as flour, sugar, canned goods, preserves... So around two in the afternoon, she made coffee and got to work. First, she completely emptied the small pantry - she put everything out in the hallway. She wiped the shelves of dirt and then sat on the floor in the hallway and sorted out what she would keep, what would go in the trash, and what would be disposed of. She had a lot of papers in front of her, old lids for jam jars and various unnecessary old materials. She put the papers on the left side next to her and other things on the right. She also got her hands on an old yellowed envelope, which did not attract her attention, so she pushed it to the other papers. The whole cleaning process took over two hours and Ela finally had a clear idea of what she was going to do with the mess. She started carrying kitchen supplies into the pantry, putting away glass jars for jam, canned fish, and other and other necessary things for survival. When she had everything ready, she took a string and started tying up the papers destined for recycling. At first, she couldn't tie everything up securely, and smaller papers and envelopes kept falling out of the side of the package. She didn't try to put them back into the package, she just pushed them to the side, saving them for last. She tied up a total of eight packages for paper recycling. She took a plastic bag from the kitchen, into which she began to throw old envelopes and postcards. In the meantime, it occurred to her that it would be better to look through the envelopes in case there was anything valuable or money in them. She found nothing of the sort. There was still a yellowed envelope thrown on the floor, so she picked it up. She opened it and found an old, yellowed letter inside. She took it out of the envelope and unfolded it. There was something written on it, but not in our common language. She looked at the writing in surprise, trying to decipher something, until she realized that it was some old writing that probably no longer exists. As an expert in ancient languages, she knew immediately that she had some ancient text in her hands. Why and how did it end up among the old papers in the small space intended for kitchen utensils? - her mind wandered. It was an older house, she realized, and so it wasn't so strange after all. Except for one thing. It certainly wasn't Slavic or anything like it. She took the yellowed envelope with the unknown text inside into her room and placed it on her desk. She decided to deal with the text only after she had finished her current tasks. Then she returned to the hallway to sort through the old mess and move provisions to the pantry.

Evening was approaching. Outside the window, the whiteness of the snow shimmered in the blue moonlight, beautifying the surroundings of the house. Silence and peace reigned over the entire village. The snow continued to fall, and a weak wind picked up, starting to create drifts that turned into magical snow blankets of various shapes. A wonderful evening spectacle – thought Ela. The view from the window brought her very pleasant emotions. She found herself smiling. After a while, she moved to the armchair, sat down in it, and put her feet up on the stool to make herself comfortable. But when she realized that she was left completely alone and abandoned, she became sad. She longed for company, for the presence of a man who would take her in his arms.

Sadness and unfulfilled desires began to manifest themselves more and more often in Ela's life. Even the house by the lake, more or less in solitude, which was supposed to bring her peace, relief from stress, and encouragement, did not overshadow the role of a woman and her mission on this Earth – to find the right direction for her life. Christmas was also carried in an atmosphere of loneliness and sadness. Not everyone is lucky enough to spend Christmas with someone close to them. On the first Christmas holiday, Ela sat down at her desk, leaned against it, propped her chin on her hands, and stared blankly at her closed laptop. She thought about how she could best handle the holidays. She thought she had to focus her mind in a different direction so as not to fall into holiday depression. She noticed a yellowed envelope lying in the corner of the table. She took it and took out a letter that looked the same, with an unknown script on it. It resembled signs, symbols, or glyphs, but at the same time, written script. It was very strange. She had never encountered such a type of writing before. The characters of the writing resembled hieroglyphs or even some kind of glyph or archaic writing from Mesopotamia. Something between Sumerian and Egyptian writing. It was surprising, very strange indeed. She took a blank piece of paper and copied the first group of different characters, glyphs or letters onto it. She described one character at a time under the text again. It will be very difficult – Ela thought. However, in the world of ancient writings, she is willing to accept any challenge, even if their decipherment often exceeds human strength and abilities. She reached for books and manuals on Egyptian and other writings. But somehow it didn't suit her, she couldn't find any similarity to the writing in the text on the yellowed paper. She studied all evening but couldn't find anything that would at least bring her closer to interpreting or rather recognizing the writing. So after Christmas she called the Institute of Linguistics to send her materials to help her decipher the ancient script. It took about a week for a courier to arrive at her house and take a package of books out of a van.

From that moment on, she devoted herself to searching and studying various signs. Sometimes it seemed that she found some similarities, but she did not come to a satisfactory conclusion, there was a lack of logic and the words she tried to create did not make any sense because they did not express anything concrete. So in January, she called the publishing house again to connect her with a specialist in Sumerian writing and language. She was contacted by a linguist who works in Germany for a renowned publishing house and whose profession is focused on a similar area of linguistics to Elina. She is particularly fascinated by the archaic cuneiform script of the Sumerians and the script of the Akkadians. She agreed with Ela that she would come to visit her in mid-January and they would look into it together.