Story from the Bega

by Tudor Andrei Nadolu, 8th grade
"Grigore Moisil" Theoretical High School Timișoara

It was an inviting spring morning. The fiery red sun reflected its warm golden rays on the beautiful buildings of Timișoara. While all who lived here - both people and animals - were waking up, the pigeon named Harvey, a beautiful white dove with only a few gray feathers, reflected on what was happening at that hour of the morning. Slowly, people began to appear on the streets, each going about his or her own business: children were going to school, and adults probably to work. In the city center, in front of the Segafredo restaurant, a tall writer holding a paper net was already seated at a small table. On the table, a coffee and a slice of chocolate cake. Around him, many doves. They were waiting for him to take seeds out of the net, as always, and feed them.
A few moments later, Harvey, our main character, appeared among the other pigeons, approached the man and climbed on his shoulder. He whispered in a soothing tone:
-I want you to soar above the city and tell me everything you see... Be my inspiration today!
It surprised Harvey a little, but, all said and done. He stood up immediately, as if he wanted to pass over the clouds and look down on the busy, bustling city and all that it meant. He had not had an easy day - he had had to brave the morning wind as well as a fierce midday downpour, and in the afternoon he struggled to make his way through the thousands of footsteps of hurrying passers-by. The evening caught him on the banks of the river Bega. The sun was setting, and the crystal clear water reflected the smiles of people passing by. Leaning over the water, Harvey was mesmerized by his own reflection.
Suddenly, night settled over Timișoara. The small, warm lights made the city a totally different place, quiet and peaceful. Our writer had returned some time ago to his apartment, where he had changed and then sat at his desk with a white sheet of paper in front of him, waiting for his ideas to spill out onto it. At the open window, Harvey appeared as they had agreed. He sat on the windowsill just above the man's desk. He had fetched a drop of water from the Bega, which he placed in the middle of the sheet awaiting words.
Suddenly, a string of ideas gathered richly in the writer's mind, the pen gliding smoothly across the white paper. When he stopped writing the man looked around, but realized with astonishment that the pigeon had disappeared. Undumbed, he looked at his notes with interest...
"Long ago, when here was but a small fortress in a vast field, a shabbily dressed girl made her appearance in these parts. She had blond hair and blue eyes as bright as the sea. When she arrived in the fortress, she was banished because of the color of her curls, because of the over-zealous people, who believed that blond people were witches. Fortunately, the girl managed to find refuge under an acacia tree and, overly sad, began to cry. Every day, she tried to fit into the community, but they drove her away. At night she would return to her willow tree where she would pour streams of tears directly onto the ground. It is said that many years later, all her tears formed a river that flowed into the sea. Tired from crying so much, one day, the girl went into the water and suddenly, she felt her own tears melt and a feeling that words cannot describe washed over her soul. Thus a river appeared, the beloved river of our city, the Bega."
The dove, now invisible in the evening darkness, seemed to have brought the man a greater mystery than the one he had begun the day with. From that evening on, the writer set out in search of the truth about the girl, on a journey that turned him into a historian and a detective.