Shadows

Hi everyone!
Last summer I went to visit the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. This trip inspired me for this little text I wrote...

She is not quite alone in that huge palace, but she feels quite alone anyways. Even though she knows there are tourists taking selfies and photos all over the place instead of enjoying the moment, she is silent and try not to think about them, because she tries to enjoy that moment as well as possible. She can feel the spirit of the place, the spirits of all the kings who lived there, in that wonderful Alhambra in Granada in Spain.
The sun is high up in the sky and it’s light makes everything blurred, hot and white. The buildings are reflecting the sun and you can even see the heat coming from the floor.
But what captivate her more than the beautiful panorama on the city, what got her attention as soon as she came into the building, what bring her back to the Middle ages in spain when Sultans were living in here, are the shadows. These shadows projected on the floor and on the walls, they tell stories, wonderful stories about the past. They all have different shapes such as triangles and squares, stars and circles. All these bright shapes contrast with the darkness of the room and make some other shapes appear, the shapes of mosaics on the floor. Colorful mosaics that didn't lose their majesty through all the years. There are small bits of colour in the darkness, small touches surrounded by the shadows.
She follows her mind around the place, going through all the amazing rooms, with the high roofs keeping fresh air inside, the gardens where some small fountains are making a quiet whisper, the flowers’ smell gives a sweet touch to the landscape. And there again in the gardens, the shadows are present. This time they are different, they are more wild and blurred, they don’t have any precise shape. Sometimes when the warm wind is blowing, the shadows move, accorded to the trees. These shadows give a shelter to everyone from the sun, a cooler place to be, out of the heat.
As she keeps walking, she thinks about all these shadows, they are what she will remember of this trip in Granada, the story tellers. And she still hears their whisper, telling old old stories of princesses kept into these rooms before they got married to some handsome princes coming from the Middle East to meet them, stories of the wise old men who sat in the library for hours to try to find a solution to the problems the kingdom had to face.
From all the stories she heard, she is going to remember one better than the others. It is the story of that little girl who was probably the sultan’s daughter, she lived her whole life in her apartments, looking through the tiny windows, trying to see the landscape outside her room. This girl grew up with the desire of leaving her palace, and as she turned eighteen, one day, the guards didn’t come and she ran away. After that, all over the country, people were looking for the lost princess, but she never showed up. The only thing that reminded her of her childhood, the only beautiful memory she had was the memory of the colorful touches on the floor, the green and blue mosaics she could see, drawn by the shadows. When the sultan died, she went back to the palace during the funerals, and realised all the shadows had disappeared. The only memory of her childhood had been swept away.

She feels so similar to that young adult who, hundreds of years ago had found in the shadows the same kind of comfort she did.