The countryside around Madrid was quiet. Incredibly quiet. "High desert and beautiful skies," are what most people would say if you asked them to describe the surroundings. And though the town boasted of a tourist trade, it was mostly spiked by the curious stopping by to have a burger and walk around an authentic "ghost town" during the summer vacation months only. Others would stop momentarily on their frenetic drive across central New Mexico to shop for handmade jewelry or purchase a hanging psychedelically-colored sand candle before continuing up to Santa Fe or Taos. It was those other, more well-known touristic venues they had planned to see, just  a few hours beyond.  For it was in those larger communities where the Native American and Spanish colonial influences combined to create a hybrid culture so iconic to America's Southwest. 

To Gabriella and Luis, most of the artisans and vagabonds who lived out the year in the little town of Madrid didn't ever complain about the inactivity or it's sleepy pace of life. And it had been that way for the past fifty years They had found in its solitude and backward nature just the sort of life which allowed for the marginalized and often otherwise rejected who had come to the former silver-miniing town  to feel at home—somewhere "out West" in the bright sunlight and healing fresh air.

Luis and Gabriella were no different. Their circumstances with a three month old baby and little else to show for their young lives made them almost generic citizens of the kind which the little town had always served to house, nurture and somehow survive. Though in their case they had the advantage of starting out a new life adventure with a house of solid construction—albeit in colossal need of cleaning and basic major repairs. In spite of the fact that Gabriella was only sixteen, she was historically and genetically programmed to thrive as the women pioneers of this land had always done, coming into it from the East coast or south from Mexico with not many more years to draw from. Just pure instincts and a will to flourish was always their recipe for survival. 

Luis was strong and good natured. A sensitive young man of nineteen who saw no future in the 'gangbanger,' violent life of LA. He too was of Hispanic origin and a willing participant to start anew using the energies that came naturally to him. Luis happened to love Gabriella beyond question and whether the baby he called his own was actually his or someone else's—neither he nor Gabriella cared to have a DNA test to find out. It surprisingly mattered least to Luis. The fact was, he had became irreversibly charmed by little Simonetta the day she looked into his eyes and kept him locked in her gaze.

 Neither young parent of Simi was afraid of work, and that is how they spent the long days of summer when they arrived to take over the deceased Theresa's faded blue house on the hill in Madrid. Luis was good with his hands and what he didn't know how to do he was willing to learn. This resulted in a couple of close calls, as when he accidently flooded the kitchen by breaking a pipe or when he connected the wrong wires in their bedroom, knocking him to the floor with an electrical shock. Other jobs he found more logical and easy to perform, like replacing plastic pipes or painting the interior of rooms they had scrubbed and sanded until the blisters on each of their hands had turned to calluses by the fall.

 Several neighbors had reached out to help them by hiring Luis to do add jobs, and found the young couple to be genuine and appreciative of all they were assisted with. Gabriella had repaid the small group of well-wishers that first month with a Mexican dinner which the neighbors raved about for weeks. By the first cold winds which blew down from the Ortiz Mountains and were created with force behind them in the Sangre de Christo Range, the young family could honestly say they were true residents of Madrid, which to all townspeople was emphatically pronounced "MAD-rid" instead of its Spanish counterpart in Spain, known to the world as "ma DRID."

Throughout the three months they were preparing their house, baby Simi was near them, either listening to her parents sing while out working in the yard or napping in a crib as they cleaned and painted. They found it odd that she never really cried, but instead either smiled or cooed throughout the day. By the first winter months the young child was vocalizing sounds she heard her parents say and even singing little melodies in her own high pitched way. These little songs were always interspersed with the Simi's infectious laughter but also a fascination with the sounds of birds outside and even the chatter of coyotes and foxes at night. Once it gave Gabriella a fright when she realized her daughter was making the exact sounds of a fox which had remained outside her daughter's window one night, seeming to respond in kind to her sounds.

 As there were no other children as young as Simi in the town, and very young people were in fact a rarity, Luis drove into Albuquerque one Saturday that December and returned, not only with staple groceries and materials for more house repairs, but something little Simi cooed and squealed over for hours with joy from that special day forward. For while on the kitchen floor, crawling as she usually did those dark afternoons, this day from of a shopping box her father put before her, out jumped an all black Labrador puppy which took to the child as she immediately took to him. It was a dramatic case of dog meets little girl, and people close to the young family would declare when it came to Simi and "Winter," as they would call him, it was truly "love at first sight."

 As Winter grew with Simi through her young childhood, they shared an uncanny understanding of each other through play. And though there was no true language between them, there seemed to be no need for one as they comprehended each other perfectly. This they would demonstrate almost daily through their ability to know where the other was and what future path or action they would take.

While Simi was still a toddler, running about the house freely, Winter would appear in rooms when she simply wanted him there. She would also demonstrate her ability to send Winter to go and sit by either Luis or Gabriella, with no verbal or visual command, simply by her willing him to do so. Once when she had ventured out to the pump house alone and Winter was asleep in her room, the dog awoke barking and crying incessantly. When he could no longer wait for Gabriella or Luis to understand that he had sensed Simi was in grave danger, he ran into the kitchen and broke through the screen door closely followed by Luis. Her father had found that Simi's little house dress had become caught up in the motor belt of the electrical generator and was severely cutting off the circulation in her legs. Luis immediately hit the kill switch to the engine and Simi was freed in time before a serious injury occurred.

It was that incident, when Simonetta was only three years old, and Winter was then still a young clumsy puppy, that the girl's parents began to not deny the phenomenal psychic relationship which existed between their daughter and her heroic canine friend. As time would pass they began to worry that Simi showed no trepidation of wild animals, snakes or insect which historically young children would naturally all fear. That following spring when the cold weather subsided, Luis looked behind the woodpile where Simi had been playing and he noticed she was holding what appeared to be a colorful, wide ribbon, as he got closer he realized she was holding in her hands a rattle snake roughly a meter in length. Luis calmly got his daughter to  release into a pile of logs. The deadly snake exited her hands freely and seemingly unmolested.

And so slowly began the realization by Gabriella and Luis that their daughter had some affinity for the creatures of the Earth, uncanny to witness and not shared with anyone else. They felt it would somehow be too unbelievable to even imagine for others. Whether it was the fact that she was never stung by mosquitoes or bees, and could call a bird from a tree  down to land in her hand, the surprises began to be less and her parents just started to accept the exceptionality of Simonetta. 

As she grew into school age, they pondered what would need to be said or done in her case, knowing she would soon be associating with other kindergarten children following their commute each day into Santa Fe. Their daughter who now was speaking both English and Spanish with her parents was also communicating with natural creatures in a unique and ineffable way.  Soon the girl would journey out to meet others who ostensibly would have none of the powers. This gift she had seemed to have  arrived when she was just a baby and by no doing of their own. 

It was a concern which the young couple on the one hand wanted to hide, but also had to accept. They nevertheless pondered how their daughter would mature and relate to the world under the influence of these inexplicable abilities. They clearly saw Simonetta's phenomenal  potentials as both a blessing and a curse

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