The Kastela was faintly glowing as the daylight was still in its last sleep, breathing heavily, while the tired moon had taken its path to rest, leaving a few traces of its tail. Thus, the gentle sea, down there under Paraskevas' Cave, was a grayish-blue veil waiting to sparkle. The whole hill was asleep too, the old Munichia, Prophet Elias, his faithful and unfaithful, day laborers and rich, night owls and rebels, desperate and anxious. Only Vicky Pappa was awake, breathing lightly so as not to wake her husband, Michalis, who had a difficult day at the bank yesterday and would have an even harder one today, as he was handling the files with loans and expropriations. She was not burdened so much by her large belly with the unborn child as by the thoughts that tormented her. What kind of world is the child coming into? Will I be a worthy and capable mother? These were the main worries that troubled her. Their finances were flourishing despite the hard times, and that, in any case, provided some security. A bank employee herself, close to her deputy manager husband, a couple who not only managed money well but had also taken care to keep their savings, most of which came from Vicky’s dowry.
A bitter dowry, since she experienced harsh orphanhood at fifteen, at a very tender age. That was when her parents, Ilias Drakos and Evdokia Kyriazi, were killed on their first trip without their only daughter. They were coming down from Thessaloniki, their city, to Larissa, where they were going to a wedding and would stay there for three days. At a deadly curve in Tempi, a truck went off course, resulting in their car being crushed into twisted metal, one with the asphalt. Both were found dead instantly, a nightmarish death, with the road’s dragon reaping their lives and shattering dreams and family, sending their orphan into the realm of pain and sorrow. That was when Vicky was taken in by her aunt, Fani Kyriazi, her mother’s older sister by five years.