Chapter One

I opened the first page.

“Once upon a time in the far far south, this story happened.

It was a special night in a town surrounded by mountains, far from the big cities. Two young folks went to celebrate Christmas in different houses with their respective relatives.

Before leaving her house to go to her uncle's, she stood in front of the mirror after taking a bath. Her eyes met themselves in a strict gaze.

‘Next year will be mine. My year and no one else's,’ she spoke with a self determination usual of a versatile personality. 

The two faces became nearer and nearer, she opened her mouth, stuck out the tongue and kissed herself.

The girl kept sucking the glass for a while.

He also looked in the mirror after bathing too, he wasn't with her; not yet. They were in different houses (as I told you), because they were from different families. After drying his hair and tying the towel around his waist, he leaned his hands on the bathroom sink and remained hypnotized looking at his figure.

‘Some day..., you're going to be the owner of the world,’ His reflection told him. ‘I'm immortal.’

He stayed in that kind of magnetic state for an instant. Then he smiled, raised his hand, snapped the fingers and pointed the index finger at himself laughing.

‘It’s now.’

The young man left to get dressed.  

She and he arrived at the houses where they spent the evening and the feast. They stayed with their relatives without making any kind of fuss and were discreet. They did not make any comments or gestures or vulgarities that would reveal their true beings. When dinner came, they ate slowly and politely. They said everything was exquisite, thanked their hosts for the evening and waited for midnight. They talked about what they could and what was allowed. Midnight arrived, they said goodbye to their relatives and went outside.

He walked east, she walked west and they met in the park. They talked about their things, reviewed the script well while inverting roles of a hypothetical discussion.

‘It's time,’ she told him, showing the message that had arrived on her cell phone.

‘Let’s go,’ he told her.

They went to the house of the person who sent the message. When they arrived, a host opened the door, hugged each one of them and asked them not to make any noise. They passed through a dark corridor and went to the roof. The host uncorked a bottle and poured the glasses. In a minute he opened a drawer, took out a jar, and removed a raw material he processed before wrapping it on paper. He lit it and smoked a little, passed it to her, and then she to him. They relaxed. They talked about everything that couldn't be talked about in the previous houses and the laughs began. It seemed everything was going well until the conversation gradually got tough.

‘You're raving,’ Francis barked. ‘If we don't have money for the trip I prefer not to go before doing this shit that only occurs to both of you.’

‘Come on, don't be like that, you know the most important thing is nobody is going to be hurt, and what we ask of you is a piece of cake.’ Santos was comfortable in the armchair, or at least he wanted to appear relaxed in a tense negotiation. ‘Have you ever been to the beaches of Claromeco? They are amazing.’

‘You can't be so selfish with us, it's the first time we can have a trip,’ Jazmin stopped to suck in a breath full of rage as if she were the bad cop. ‘For the first time we can take a trip like this and now you wanna screw it.’

She took a seat on the couch while grabbing a glass of water with some anxious anger in her green eyes.

They were from a British community settled in West of Argentina at the end of the 19th century, at a time when the land of progress and dreams could come true. The first families settled down and worked hard on the farms, adapting to the culture and keeping the whole community to speak some fluent Spanish but always keeping their native speech. A church arose with the stones each first member put by hand, every Sunday mass is celebrated. Although after four generations, there was a revelation.

Globalization, social networks and only the devil knows what else emphasized in the new generations corroded by instant and immediate gratification without effort. Today's teenagers do not understand all the possibilities that are at their hands, they don’t know that any King of past times would love to give out an eye, a kidney or an arm to live at least one year in the times they are living. So much technology and peace unprecedented in human history.

Despite the fact the princes, kings and other nobles of old time it is taught in schools they were despots who were comfortable on their thrones, little is known in general opinion that at any moment those privileged members of ancient times could be massacred by anyone who aspires a bit of these comfort, power or got invaded by the daily paranoia from those times.

Although it may be necessary for the entire civilization built by the immigrants of past centuries to walk a new path of values and principles oriented more towards on―

‘Ask me to call my grandparents telling them I’d been kidnapped,’ Francis said and I apologize, I don't know what I was about to say. Forget what I just said. let's continue. ‘And threaten them to give me the vase, the only valuable thing they have.’

Julius Caesar was murdered by his son.

‘Do you think it's no coincidence that just today we got the exact money we need?’ Jazmin shouted. ‘It is a sign from God or whatever. When this morning I saw the message in the group of the screenshot sent by Santos showing the vase sold, a day so related to miracles and magic, I really felt it.’

‘The truth is you are raving, just raving fucking mad.’ Francis cried. ‘I really don’t know how stupid I had been in believing you wanted to play scrabble with my gramps, never thought you just wanted to take a photo of the vase.’  

‘Don’t be like that, consider a little more about other people and, you know what?  The world does not spin around you. I know what we are doing is a bit daring but hey, there is no other way and I already told you when I got the money after selling my PlayStation games, I will pay back a much better vase with pleasure to your grandpa,’ Santos said smoking tobacco sophistically slow. ‘Come on man, incredible things are waiting for us.’

‘You're raving,’ Francis repeated, almost exorcized. ‘You are fucking insane. Also, why did you tell Miguel to come? You’re going to drive me crazy.’

‘This week Miguel’s dog died and he was devastated until I told him to come. Now he is happier than I have ever been in my entire life and surely more than you have ever been in your entire life.’ Now the bad police, Alexa, spoke dryly but courteously. ‘Don’t be like that; mind his feelings as if it were yours.’

‘You only told him to come just because of his car, I know you.’ Francis looked at her with anger. ‘Actually, I know you extremely well. Do you think I’m a fool?’

Jazmin shot a loosened expression of perdition to Santos meaning the collapse of everything planned with plenty of zeal. He took a while to give a long puff of smoke deepening an unsolved enigma trying to reach an immediate solution. Suddenly everyone freaked out. Someone had knocked on the door. They were terrified. Frightened glances were crossed between them, frozen by fear. It was hit again revealing the nature of that cause and everyone calmed down. A tender glance traveled over all of them.

‘Olivia,’ they said at the same time.

Francis opened the door and Olivia appeared. She ran to greet the newcomers moving the tail so fast with such a joyful exaltation. She already had seen them that same week but for her it’s always a great surprise to meet her master's friends. After sucking on their face and scratching their clothes, she calmed down and sat on the couch to join the conversation. She is a beautiful dog, stray with a diamond soul.

‘Look at her, she only wants for you to have a nice trip.’ Santos was refining a grin.

Olivia seemed shocked by what had just heard and turned to Francis waiting for what he was going to say, her eyes and ears contracted as she was sitting upright on the sofa.

‘What about my gramps?’ Francis asked in a disturbed manner.

‘What they most want for you is to have a good vacation with your friends after having suffered a kidnapping,’ Jazmin spoke trying to calm down.

Santos moved softly his hand to a cold glass of water expectantly. The heat of the night was a torturing. It was a violent summer.

‘I hate you… you’re all a fucking disaster. I'm always the one who has to pay for everything.’ Francis sentenced, although in the depths of his mind he had a feeling that something magical would happen on the trip, so after an intense moment of reflection a decision was made. ‘Look, this is the last time. So be quick.’

‘Great Francis, you're the best, now let's hurry.’ Santos was excited. ‘In one hour the buyer will be in Grace’s Square, we must go now to the gas station that’s on the corner of your grand’s house. I invite you a soda while I call them.’

Santos and Francis left for the station. Jazmin sitting on the couch moved her glass in circles to stir the ice of the gin tonic. Olivia looked at her curiously, as if to ask her if she could explain what happened. Noticing Jazmin would not tell anything, Olivia lowered her head and rested it between the paws. The two of them looked out the window and saw a moon shining through the dark clouds.

Jazmin took a sip and smiled into the night.

II

Francis and Santos arrived at the station, there was only one car loading gasoline and in the cafeteria there were two tables occupied by truckers enjoying a mate. They sat at the most discreet table, it would not be long before more people would go to buy ice, soft drinks and whatever satisfies their corrosive and ruthless souls.

It's Christmas.

Santos makes a call.

‘Who speaks? said an irritated old voice said.

‘I’m calling to warn you that I have kidnapped your grandson and if you do not give me a valuable vase in less than fifteen minutes I will kill him.’ The voice of Santos was the worst play of an actor in a B-film casting.

‘Who the heck are you? Speak louder!’ the grandpa shouted.

Santos got uncomfortable as he didn't want to speak up as there were more people coming in.

‘You listen to me very well.’ Santos sounded afraid as the situation got more difficult than he thought. ‘You know what you have to do.’

‘What an asshole! I can’t hear anything, who calls in the middle of the night without being able to speak as a real man! Marta come here, you listen better than me.’

‘Hello, how are you? I'm listening.’ The voice of the grandma was sweet.

‘Seniora listen carefully, I have kidnapped your grandson Francis and if you do not bring us a vase he told me you have I’m gonna kill him.’ Santos was relieved to not have to draw attention

‘Grandma please do what he says, I am very afraid’. Francis felt more guilty than frightened.

‘Do you think I'm an idiot? Screw you and die in jail!’ She hung up the call.

They crossed muted looks. Santos pointed his finger to call again, but he saw the hour.

‘We can't keep the buyer waiting.’ Santos was plotting. ‘I brought a toy gun which looks real in case your grandfather comes and I would handle the situation. I need you to go to the apartment and tell them with this we are forcing you to threaten them so they give the vase.’

‘It would be more logical for you to go with the gun, by the way, what happens if they have a heart attack?’ Francis shouted and more than one head of diners and waiters turned to see what was happening. ‘I am worried you are not aware of the level of stupidity you have in your head.’

The hall had been filled with desperate customers making their orders to party the night.

‘That's exactly why I'm telling you!’ Santos shouted louder, neither of them noticed the other people's noticing their polemic chat. ‘If I go they will be more scared and it's riskier for them to have a heart attack, they know you and trust you. You are the stupid!’

The two stared at each other without saying anything. At least without saying with words, since their faces seemed to be starring in a duel of who had the strongest and most angry expression. Finally, someone won.

Francis knocked at an apartment.

‘Darling, how are you doing?’ The smile of the grandma was so charming. ‘Someone just called us saying they had kidnapped you but with so much scams news I am trained to cut!’

‘Grandma… it was not a lie, the thieves have threatened me, they say if I don't bring them the vase they will kill us all.’ Francis was shaking as he took out the toy gun.

‘What the heck are you doing with the vase, put it where it was,’ cried the grandpa. ‘You are going to smash it!’

The grandmother was frightened as she saw her husband with his hands forcing his chest.

‘Ricardo what is wrong with you? You will get a heart attack like the other time, OHMYGOD! Francis what is happening, wait―’

‘Sorry I have to go, everything will be fine!’ Francis had a difficult moment to open the door since his hands were trembling. He looked back more worried than sad. ‘I love you.’

He slipped away.

III

That same night, the group of friends was meeting in a bar. It was a heavy metal style pub, Miguel, Santos and Francis were at the quietest table while Jazmin was playing pool with some other guys, and the rest of the tables were shouting, some playing card games and some other drunks singing out as loud as they could.

‘What a great play Francis made our trip come true.’ Miguel congratulated him while he was getting up from the table to go to the bar. ‘The whole night’s on me’

‘The truth is I’m a bastard, I just want to go home and pack my bag,' Francis said as he threw a cigarette stub into an almost empty beer bottle. His dry and tired eyes looked blankly. ‘And I also want to know what happened to my grandparents, my cell phone ran out of battery. I wanna know how they are… you are an asshole and you know it.’

‘Relax man, school is over forever!' Santos was more tired than Francis, but at least he had a smile. ‘Now life begins, we are young, wild and free.’

He raised the glass of beer and began to sing unintelligible choruses. Francis was cold and emotionless.

‘Chill bro, I brought you another beer.’ Miguel seemed to be the king of the night.

Now all the metalheads stopped screaming as soon as the atmosphere turned to a more melancholic and docile one; there were no tears left among the diners in black clothes and gray chains since the song Aun Yo Te Recuerdo flooded the place. Francis looked at his box of cigarettes, there were only three. Then he looked at his own face in a mirror next to him and discovered he was a zombie.

They stayed until four in the morning at the bar until they were kicked out because Miguel threw up on the floor. So they left to have a sleep before preparing everything for the trip, Francis slept at Miguel's house because it was much closer to him, he put the cell phone on charge without turning it on and fell asleep. When he woke up at noon, he felt kind of sick to his stomach although he went down to the kitchen to have milk with cereal. Then he went upstairs to ask Miguel if he could lend him the bicycle to go home.

‘Mmmh-Hmmm,’ Migue said with a yawn.

Francis interpreted it as a yes, so he went to the garage, grabbed the bike and pedaled home.

The sun was stifling, but the heat was being contained by a cold breeze of winds relieving the heat of a terrible summer. On the way home, Francis passed through the central square and the avenue, it was the exact moment between those people who returned to their homes after a long night of excesses and those who went out to continue the celebration with their families and at least seven hours of sleep. It seemed just like another normal Christmas day.

After passing downtown, he got into a residential neighborhood in a state of tiredness and dizziness, he arrived at his house seeing in the front park there was all his family and friends of the family (approximately a hundred) dressed formally in coats, ties and elegant shoes. He slammed on the brakes by the surprising image; it was a terrible impact and he drunk too much last night. He vomited on himself.

He tied the bicycle to a pole slowly, and then he walked hunched over and stealthily through a path of bushes and saw his cousin Esteban who was hidden smoking a joint with a girl who had a sad face.

'Hey, are you okay?', Esteban asked, passing the joint to the sad girl and approaching Francis to hug him, until he felt his bad smell noticing his mess too, he turned away with revulsion until he could see his face better and felt pity. ‘Did they release you?’

‘What happened?' Francis widened his eyes revealing despair.

‘Grandma told us you have been kidnapped and she saw you enter her house with a revolver.’ Esteban inspected Francis as he started to freeze despite the heat. ‘She said you were threatened, I don’t know. Maybe she is delusional with all those pills the psychiatrist gives her, if dad and mom would listen to me they could understand there are other natural and better options.’

‘So?’ Francis was getting in the center of his chest a cold feeling that comes with a previous notion of acceptance.

‘Grandpa had a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital in an ambulance crash’ The sad girl passed the joint to Esteban and he exhaled the smoke from the previous puff, he held the cigarette thoughtfully for a while until he offered it to Francis. ‘So we are at his funeral.’

‘Fuck my life, god the fucking shit I'm a―.’

His throat was invaded by the extension of that cold feeling, he tried to contain it by stopping his muscle spasms until he let himself be defeated by his own spirit and a waterfall of tears streamed down his face.

‘It’s not your fault, don’t worry, poor thing,’ said the sad girl approaching Francis. ‘Don’t you want a little smoke to relieve it?’

Estebi was still holding it.

‘Who are you?’ Francis asked grabbing the joint.

‘I’m your distant cousin, Celeste,’ she said delicately. ‘Just arrive a week ago to attend at the wedding of your sist―.’

Francis tried to smoke but was interrupted.

‘I'll carve you up into pieces!’ a middle-age man shouted running through the park making his way between the guests while they tried to understand what was going on.

‘I was fucking kidnapped!!’ Francis opened the palm of his hands to the sky with the look of an innocent boy. ‘I tried to call you but they took my ph―.’

‘Do you think I’m an idiot?’ the angry man cried after punching Francis’s nose before knocking him bleeding on the grass. ‘Get the fuck off me, you fuckers!’

Francis’s father was being held and immobilized by the younger and stronger relatives while couldn't stop insulting and raving mad in fury.

‘What’s your fucking problem you piece of shi―’ Francis tried to hit back but was also pinned down. He used all his strength in vain. ‘Okay leave me alone, I’m fine!’

They released Francis but still groping him, he remained docile with a bloody nose and with his fists in the pockets.

‘Damn junkie I can smell the alcohol and weed from here.’ The rampage of his father was intact. 

‘Don't you realize our poor son was kidnapped and drugged, my love, are you okay?’ Francis's mother appeared like a silent specter in mourning trying to hug her son tightly.

‘Mom, please don't piss me off.’ Francis seemed exhaustively irritated. ‘I'm fine. I'm going with my fellas to the beach. I want to relax from everything that happened.’

‘You don’t go anywhere.’ A strong, deep, manly voice came from behind Francis at the same time he felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to talk.’

Francis turned around and saw a man at least eight inches taller than he was wearing a formal suit that would be seen as someone attending the funeral if it weren't for a wire running through his ear, black glasses, and the demeanor of representing law and order. Now all the cold in his body which had slowly started to fade with his father's sudden attack was finally gone completely and replaced by the burning affliction of panic and paranoia.

‘I’m sorry dude, I have a trip to make.’ Francis was shaking inside but tried to not show it.

‘You have a lot to explain,’ replied the man with black glasses. ‘Dude.’

Then a van appears advancing across the park. It stopped at the entrance. Francis began to disturb all his mind. The driver's window rolled down. It was a relief for Francis to see Miguel in the driver seat happy as the night before, or maybe more. So many things happèned he totally forgot an usual known car. Santos was sleeping like a baby in the next seat using his bag like a pillow, on his way back home he decided to go to another bar and he only had time to pack and eat three omelets, zero sleep. Jazmin was in the back seat and from behind the window she could be seen with a stressed face of total lack of understanding of what was going on in that whole place.

‘Come on bunch of buzz killers, just chill out!’ Miguel said and then he noticed something had happened, Francis's father was exhausted and surrounded, and the atmosphere of the place also seemed a bit tense but he didn’t want to allow anything to ruin such a beautiful day. There was not a cloud in the sky. ‘It looks like you are all at a funeral!’

Miguel’s shout crossed the entire garden and the silent attendants looked disappointed, so he just laughed and turned on the speakers at full blast playing his favorite Spotify playlist.

Francis went to his room to assemble the bag, while the man with black glasses was following him. He tried to ask questions about what happened and he tried to invent a story. The prosecutor got impatient and urged to get more details of what he did last night but Francis finished doing his things and took a bath. He was toweling himself dry until he saw something that frozen him.

‘What is this?’ Francis thought. ‘A magical door to see the only and real person I am and never saw?’

He was shocked looking at the same mirror he sees every morning and night. It was something he did every day, when he brushed his teeth, his hands or whatever. But there is a difference between seeing and looking. Appalled at the endless scope of the process he was immersed in, he reached out his hand to his double. Seeing how the tips of his fingers joined with the others starting his clone, he was surprised at how different and distant the image he had of himself was.

‘This is your life and no one else’s,’ the reflection told him. ‘From now on you are no longer a child, you are a man and you are the owner of your destiny.’

Francis was puzzled. He took a deeper look inside his soul and remembered the first time his grandpa taught him how to ride a bike without training wheels, the afternoon when they spent the whole day playing with a frisbee on a field, and the last time he made a barbeque before Alzheimer and cancer started.

Francis was puzzled. Salty drops burned the edge of the contour of his eyelids while his face turned red with sorrow. With a grimace of a failed attempt to contain a cry, he twisted his chin and lips, opening his mouth, releasing something of pleaded guilt. Finally, hammer a fist to make the sentence.

‘The only thing that it’s important to think about now is,’ answered with a trembling voice. ‘We are here for a reason.’

He got dressed, grabbed the bag and went down stairs.

Miguel had lowered the volume a bit but the music continued playing throughout the funeral, Francis's father cried inconsolably while his brothers hugged him and encouraged him, when Francis’s mother saw him go out to the garden she wanted to approach him in a tone of hope but he gave her a look to leave him alone and she went to talk to her sister, the atmosphere was more relaxed and calm, small groups of old friends of the deceased began to form and began to laugh at old anecdotes. Now The Way of Life's Meant to Be by ELO was playing. 

‘Your cousin is great, bro!’ Miguel said looking at Francis with his smile of always and then he looked back at Celeste from the driver's seat. ‘You should come with us, it will be marvelous.’

‘Yes.’ The face of Celeste was like a female character from a novel by Jane Austen who had been invited to have a walk around an English lake. ‘I would love to’

Francis, for the first time, noticed her with real attention. She had an informal white dress but at the same time according to the situation, with a small frame and harmonic body proportions, an innocent pale face, curious red lips that looked as if a fire was going to escape from her mouth if it weren't for her glassy blue eyes containing the heat with an iced look.

‘Yeah...why not,’ Francis exhaled, astonished and almost imperceptibly, only someone with supersonic hearing powers could listen to what he said. He didn't understand how he hadn't noticed her beauty before when—

‘Where do you think you're going?’ the agent said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘You still don't understand where you're.’

Francis saw the agent was accompanied by some others from the federal police department.

‘Why do you waste your time that is being paid with all the work done by the people?’ Miguel said and kept smiling while the music kept playing.

‘Look man, I didn't tell you what happened and I don't know if you understand the mess in which―’

‘I know everything, Celeste explained it to me.’ Miguel stopped smiling, turned off the music, and all the attendees of the ceremony were in suspense.

Like a professor's face who just recently started a class the exact moment the bell finished ringing and the last four or five students were walking slowly to their seats, trying to figure out how to give a lecture to a whole huge group of teens the best understandable way possible, Miguel started an attempted sermon.

‘I’m really sorry for what happened, but anyway it was only an accident. As far as I have been studying, the constitution and principles of freedom say no one can be retained by the public forces unless a crime that’s been committed with a certain amount of proof demonstrated in… oh what the heck I’m doing? Come on guys, get to the van and just get the hell out of here!’

Miguel smiled again, winked at the agents, and turned the music back on. Alphaville's Forever Young was now louder than ever. The car started when Francis and Celeste got in, a colorful gnome which happily decorated the garden, made of porcelain, broke due to the passage of the van, the sound of the pieces breaking like glass was listened and also several powerful signs of anguish and anger in the background as if it were a two-second chorus between all the funeral attendees, who had been witnessing the whole situation as if it were a Magazine channel novel.

IV

The van moved slowly when it went onto the gravel road, accelerated through the mountains reaching the horizon and soon they were divided by the greenland and the sky strangely colored by the yellow of a blazing sun. Our young protagonists of this story were already immersed in the dilation of space-time (Santos in his dreams had already entered a state a while before), they were on the border between the life they already knew and experienced since they were born and a new world full of expectations and speculations. But isn't that how we always live?

In no way they suspected up there in the sky, not farther than the Sun but farther than the stars, the beings that inhabit the invisible Crystal City were a little nervous organizing the great end-of-the-year banquet. Although they used to forget the notion of time, they never failed to organize an annual banquet. To celebrate the new discovered arts, the new applied sciences and the new members of their community every year, a thousand or a million years, they gathered at different points in the cosmos. And just in the terrestrial year 2021 they chose Earth, in the deep south. Because they know in that zone there is not much media attention. I have no clear idea how to put these wonderful and charismatic individuals into words, I can only tell you they are not so different from an ordinary human being. Except with the small difference they know very well they are immortal, just like everyone.

There was one in particular who came and went, going in and out of the kitchen to the main room with more trays than could handle, to set up the table where dinner would be. So much so, due to a slip in her walk, one of the glasses she was carrying fell. The edge of the crystal remained intact as it was falling and faded down to Earth. The reckless waiter just nervously checked no one had seen her mistake, and focused on hiding the splintered stem of the glass under a rug.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Getting up she saw the boss looking at her with an angry expression of disappointment, to which the imprudent waiter just smiled nervously. The only witness to the outrage simply stopped glaring at her and went to the kitchen to explain table service times to the chef. The waiter lowered her head and shook it negatively, feeling self deception.

Luckily, and because they were surrounded by lakes and mountains as the main elements of the composition of the landscape on the road, Miguel was driving slowly before reaching the asphalt. The boys were contemplating the harmonized silence and peace towards a common destiny until the truck stopped. There was nothing in front of them to hinder their progress, or at least could be seen with the naked eye. The impact was soft and thump.

‘What happened?’ Jazmin asked with an impatient tone.

‘I can't speed up.’ Miguel stomped on the pedal hard and angry, making the engine roar furiously.

Miguel got out to see there was nothing strange in the wheels, and when he tried to open the hood he realized there was something strange in that space. Then the others got out, except for Santos who was still sleeping.

‘It can’t be!’ Celeste denied almost crying.

‘Alexa, you're going to break your arms!’ Francis warned while he saw her desperately hammering with her fists trying to break something totally bizarre, creepy, impossible and magical. ‘Stop it, you damned thing!’

‘This is seriously happening!’ Miguel shouted enthusiastically as he ran from one side to the other, slapping that strange thing with his hand. ‘This is clearly a dream’

‘Well, let's call the police,’ Jazmin suggested, taking a selfie and leaning against the transparent wall.

‘No way,’ Miguel warned as he took out Alexa's cell phone to delete the photo. ‘Some intelligence service will put us in a dungeon to witness some kind of alien architecture.’

The four of them looked at each other, after doing so they looked at the wall they couldn't see but knew where it was, and then they looked at the sky. Without knowing how or why, they felt watched.

‘We have to check if we can go out the other way on the opposite route and make sure no one finds out about this until we leave,’ Francis suggested as they hurriedly got into the car.

‘Yes, it can't be this has to happen today,’ Jazmin said, more fearful than angry. ‘This looks like a curse.’

Celeste agreed, a bit sad and a bit motivated.

‘It's a signal for the beginning of a great adventure,’ Miguel said with great enthusiasm jumping up to his seat.

An officer of the national gendarmerie, Lucas, with his classic twenty-four-year-old innocence, arrived at the security post. The checkpoint was strategically located where the access and exit of the route can be seen without the drivers noticing they are being watched. Every once in a while they seized a car, and usually the worst thing could be found was drugs from the assholes who come and go traveling. Once Lucas asked a driver to open the trunk, he seemed like a good guy (the driver, Lucas is an excellent officer), but something smelled strange to the young gendarme. The driver stammered without wanting to give clear explanations. Lucas was scared thinking it was an important load of narcotics, until he finally managed to convince the driver to open.

There were more than a dozen dead capybaras. Illegal hunting was the only strange case he had touched in his very few years of service. His boss was a few years older than him, four decades to be exact. And the two were about to witness something unprecedented.

‘Do you want?’ he asked his superior, while he took the first terere sip. It was very hot.

‘No, thanks.’ Ricardo, the gendarmerie lieutenant, had taken a specialty coffee from the new place on Escosesa Aveniue.

Lucas was surprised to see Ricky didn't even take off his binoculars or at least extend the hand to greet.

‘There are those assholes, aren't they?’ Lucas asked, trying to focus on where the other was looking. ‘Miguel and his shitty little group.’

‘Yeap,’ answered without moving or giving more details.

‘What they might be doing?’

‘I have no fucking idea, but I’m scared to death,’ he answered motionless.

Lucas was speechless at such a response, still holding the terere and from the bottom of the lieutenant tried to discover incredulously what was looking at those binoculars.

V

Dylan was in his fifties, he used to start work a few minutes before the sun rose. He maintained that work routine for the last thirty five years. An ancestral practice which his grandfather had told him goes back to the first Celts when they accentuated the south of the island in a time called Albion. They believed getting up when the last visions perceived of the sky were mutating from dark black, to a bluish progressively lightening until it became light blue, being awake under this morning show could absorb an energetic charge of electromagnetic energy to start a new day. He was dedicated to the wood business, his father and grandfather had taught him from a very young age when a tree was ready. To be able to feel when a log was mature enough to pass to another life, to a life of human utility. Always respect strict care behavior as if they were family. Never work a tree that is still breathing.

And when the sun moved to the sunset, Dylan would sit down for the first time in his workday enjoying a cold beer. But that day was different, the sky was almost purple at noon and Dylan previewed his break. Yes, he loved the one made by the neighboring community who, respecting the Bavarian law, continued to make it with only corn and water of the finest and best possible quality found. And he loved it, he loved the fact there is a refuge at the end of the world where what is most dear to his heart has survived ... the gastronomy, art and beauty of the ancients. The cold bottle he was holding had an image. A medieval scientist or chemist with the aesthetic of the time surrounded by artifacts in an antique rustic laboratory.

The magician, as he liked to call him, was just the figure of a man dressed in a long brown robe, cheering as he savored a wonderful concoction. Also on the label, he could see a coat of arms; Dylan supposed it is the same shield from the German family descent almost which elaborate the brew a few kilometers from where he was resting while admiring the landscape of mountains and some small lakes. To the side of his view was an extended simple gravel road, the only thing that could be seen with from his view as a human creation, a white metallic figure with four wheels was approached, advancing slowly but progressively towards it. In a few moments it was close enough to identify the driver, an asleep copilot and a few silhouettes behind. He realized they were exhausted by their looks, but they still greeted him and he gave them a more charismatic and happy salute. So they gave a fake and worked smile, but at least they tried hard for it and Dylan recognized it. So he smiled again at them barely lifting his bottle up. When they passed by disappearing slowly on the opposite side of the horizon, Dylan took another sip.

Yes, he loved that beer.

Santos was still dreaming. In his imagination, a fleeting dream trail of an electronic party with hypnotic beats was fading from a dark, bluish dance floor, with faceless young boys and girls waving their bodies sweetly. The track fades, glows pitch black. Santos wakes up. He notices the van and they haven't left the town yet, he listens to the silence of all his companions. He perceives in the environment a certain restless disturbance, or rather a kind of mute suspense. He quickly concludes it's just exhaustion from the long night before, and proceeds to continue his nap without anyone knowing he had woken up.

Little is known about him, despite being the most popular folk in the only rugby club in at least nine thousand acres. No one knows that every night of his birthday he lies in San Mayritt Cemetery park, only accompanied by stories. Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson and sometimes he encourage reading Leopoldo Lugones, while surrounded by mausoleums where the remains of people who were once young like him. Who once loved, who once hated, who once got excited, cried with sadness, cried with joy, shouted with rage and anger, and shouted with happiness just like him.

A couple lay buried where now only bones remained. Cold bones once formed a motor skeleton, dynamic and alive, portrayed in an eighteen-year-old boy who had dared to ask a girl of the same age on a prom night if she wanted to dance with him. And those bones which now are at the bottom of a frozen and dark earth a hundred years ago had reply yes. They danced all night long until they were completely alone. All the guests, the members of the band had been playing from eight at night until three in the morning of 1921, the other waiters who had served dinner, dessert and drinks, classmates and more etcetera; they had all disappeared. There were only two souls left dancing. For him, it was the last chance to declare his love to the girl who had been looking at on every break in high school without daring to speak. Until that night. And she said yes.

They danced until only the two of them were left embracing and imagining a piece of music no longer played. They got married, worked every day except Sundays, had children, and were happy. Time passed. The years passed. Always feeling the same love as the first time they kissed. Today their remains are in the park where Santos loved to create and imagine these stories of, in addition to books and stars, were his only companions; the dead ones. Death did not have to always be something macabre and dark, despite the loneliness on the night of the tombs he was fascinated by understanding, besides life, death is the only thing we have in common with everything that exists, existed and will exist.

The San Mayritt Cemetery is an extensive park of more than 350 hectares where it can be appreciated from humble tombstones with engravings of famous phrases the deceased used to say, to finely crafted mausoleums by prestigious artisans. Variety of pines, eucalyptus, tipas and ombús trees covers the view. It has an entrance of two four-meter columns built of limestone and an iron gate; this entrance is only representative of a place since there are no walls surrounding it.

‘Is something ever going to change in me?’ Santos wondered. ‘Will I ever be happy and leave the past behind to keep sinking me into this madness and loneliness? Of sadness and misfortune?’

No one suspected it. He was able to handle the situation. Every time someone asked about that topic, he managed it. Corporate congress trips, meetings in other provinces, in other continents. Caring for relatives. No one, absolutely no one suspected it. He always showed a charming face added to his somewhat rebellious but handsome young man's style. Everyone understood he is a nice and attractive boy.

Illuminated only by the stars and a candle which allows enjoying his nightly reading, Santos went to the cemetery not only on his birthday but also whenever he needed to be in his habitat. His grandparents were the only two people who knew about the incident he suffered at the age of seven.

Despite everything, Santos always looked happy. He was seldom perceived as annoyed or irritated, and this pair of attitudes could only be witnessed during long nights of alcohol and tours of bars, parties, and clubs in rare moments. Most night life was in peñas, adolescent students, and young adults from various towns. With their cars and speakers, refrigerators, and bonfires, they created the perfect environment to end the week, on Friday nights on the beaches formed by the great rivers that cross the Northeast. Sometimes a large campfire was built bringing together all the groups of folks in the same flame.

‘Hello,’ A girl about sixteen years old approached Santos in the previous new year. She always thought in him, seeing him almost every weekend night at the river. She was from the Dutch country, southwest of San Mayritt.

San Mayritt was just a town that did not exceed fourteen thousand inhabitants, and of those fourteen thousand inhabitants half have ancestors from Germany, the rest of the half was divided into four quarters. A quarter from Holland, another quarter from England, another from Belgium, and the last from Switzerland, the French part. The center was a large avenue, the Scottish avenue. Named after the only inhabitant who fought in the war of the confederation, a woman from Scotland who had cut her hair and managed in a cunning way to simulate her sex and be accepted in combat.

The community was established in an expansive rural way and did not get to industrialize much. So little that each family continued to educate their children with the language of their previous homeland, but the Argentine state requires all towns schools to teach in Spanish as the main language. What at first caused a scandal, ended up being effective when it came to communicating between two people from different communities.

The girl who showed up to where Santos was was Bernie. She perceived in an unconscious way his invisible melancholy. He was away from everyone, on the river bank alone. There were ashes left from a small attempt at an improvised fire and a small book of the Borgesian Aleph in his hands.

‘Do you have a fire?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Santos dried one of the last tears smiling to hide the sadness. ‘I light it for you.’ They looked at each other deeply, like devouring themselves in search of their true souls. ‘It's an old school lighter.’

‘Let me try, I like old school stuff,’ she said, grabbing it.

It was an old Zippo from World War II. he had bought it at Mr. Barney's antique store.

She turned it on.

‘Yes!’ She returned it to him with a smile. ‘I did it!’

‘You did it!’ Santos smiled back. Silence invaded the conversation for a moment. ‘Did your friends forget a lighter? You could also use the fire.’

Shy and innocent was his expression.

‘Yes,’ she said sitting down next to him while exhaling out the first puff of smoke, staring with a calm steady gaze. ‘Surely any of them could lend me a lighter, but I wanted you to do it.’

A thrill of suffering, ecstasy and desire swamped over Santos’s mind. ‘Any of them could lend me a lighter, but I wanted you to do it.’ A cannon and its lead shot would have split his lung, causing his heart to burst blood, and perhaps he would have felt less intensity than those words. ‘But I wanted you to do it,’ Santos had locked himself up for so many years, his whole life perhaps in a torment of sadness and loneliness he forgot what a real good feeling is.

Trembling with stammering indecipherable words, Bernarda reacted with pity and curiosity. She wanted to know more about what the hell was going on with him but she got up, looked at the cute and poor beautiful boy for one last time and left.

On his last birthday he celebrated eighteen laps of the sun. Santo had brought something different to the cemetery, where his real passion was: solitude. In St. Mayritt it's very frowned upon to visit the cemetery at night, and anything that is frowned upon is generally respected for being mindful of what other people think. But, as I had already told you, we are facing a new globalized generation that does not usually respect traditional customs.

Mysterious Buenos Aires by Mujica Laínez is the book he brought on his last birthday. So besides mausoleums, stars, candles, a whiskey, and the life stories Santos used to imagine about the dead ones, he was accompanied by the folk of the foundation of the city where it all began.

Horrified at the same time of feeling the venture epic about the expedition of Don Pedro de Mendoza, Santos remembered the history teacher. His name was Klaus, and he lectured how the commander of the first forward, overwhelmed by madness, assumed the artillery chief Juan de Osorio was planning anarchy. Don Pedro decided to hang him before killing him with a knife from behind. His chest was written with the legend ‘Por traidor a la corona’. Two weeks later, the two thousand Europeans who had landed on the Rio de la Plata coast where they founded the fort of "Nuestra Señora del Bon Ayre" in 1536, suffered from the famine as a result of being cornered by the aborigines. Such was the desperation that the two Spaniards who had decided to eat a horse were sentenced to death just so other Spaniards could eat from those corpses. If only Juan de Osorio had been still alive maybe the story would be different though Santos and Klaus.

The hunger and desperation were pulsing in his flesh while reading those pages, and he remembered the incident. He remembered he didn't feel hungry and he was seven years old. His grandmother, a month after the anniversary of the tragic event said at tea time it had been a miracle.

‘An angel stayed with you to take care,’ the grandmother told him subtly, eyes lit up with pride.

‘Why didn't the angel take care of mom and dad?’ Santos asked, barely touching the cup, looking at the sad floor.

‘Because only the pure can be cared for by angels, and that's only happened with children, when we grow up we get dirty with sin,’ the grandmother replied and her eyes shone with more power. ‘Santos… would you like to know a secret?’

VI

‘Come on wake up buddy!’ Miguel offered a shovel with a certain insistence.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Santos asked with eyes barely open while trying to fight against a searing force to glimpse his blurry and powerful dreams. ‘I didn't sleep anything last night!’

Miguel started to explain everything while Santos kept his eyes closed but he listened carefully with much possible attention. When the telling of everything that happened finished, Santos opened his eyes with disbelief and curiosity and looked at his side. It seemed bizarre what his friends were doing.

‘So, are we like in the Simpsons movie?’ Santos approached the group seeing them on their knees digging.

‘I would say this is more like Stephen King's The Dome,’ Jazmin added, sweaty from her work, stopped to look at who asked, and then continued with the well.

‘In The Simpsons movie or The Dome show how they get out?’ Celeste asked, somewhat annoyed and fearful.

None of the five said anything else. They focused only on continuing to make the well. They worked for hours, every once in a while someone took their time to rest and drink water. And look at that invisible wall. Then continue working. At times one of them stopped digging and used the shovel with all the power to try to break that wall. Hammer blows as if they were whipping. There was not even the noise of the blows, just the feeling of it. They didn't even sense tact in that thing; it's as if there was only air, an air forbidding them move forward. A kind of force had encapsulated them exactly at the moment they were going to go on their first trip without responsibilities other than having a good time.

Celeste felt it had been a kind of karma for leaving the funeral before the mass; Francis believed it was a government experiment; Santos assumed was just an error of the matrix, Miguel thought they were protagonists of a reality show and in any moment the cameramen would show up, and Alexa… Jazmin didn't theorize the issue at all; she just wanted to escape the town at all costs.

The sun was setting slowly but for them the afternoon passed quickly, exhausted by all the physical effort of digging a well next to the dome. A little more than three meters…only to discover the wall of air was also underground. Celeste was the first to drop the tools and lie on the grass. Lying down looking at the sky approaching its sunset, she saw Venus. The first star to appear.

‘Neither of the two serves us,’ she said looking at the planet.

As soon as they heard her, the remaining four also left their tools, left the well and saw the orange sky. They looked at each other. Then they lay down on the grass to watch the first stars.

‘What is not useful to us?’ Jazmin asked after downing a pint bottle of water in almost one gulp.

Nobody said anything.

‘What neither of the two things serves us?’ Francis asked, rolling himself a cigar.

‘Neither The Simpsons movie nor Stephen King's Dome will help us,’ Celeste clarified. ‘Neither of them would tell us how to get out of here.’

Celeste sat up, and the others followed her sitting in a circle. They looked at each other in silent terror. Until Miguel brought a basket of fruits from the van. Apples, strawberries, and peaches. They were in the trees of San Mayritt fields. Jazmin rode her bike last morning to pick fruit from the trees. She filled a large number of baskets.

Perhaps those who do not know her intimately think she is somewhat a little annoying and maybe they might be a little right. But Jazmin is a great companion, not only she gathers the fruits because she suffers from a kind of compulsive anxiety, but also because she likes to feel she serves in groups and is a great collaborator. Making sure all the companions are well in their basic needs is one of her primal satisfaction.

‘So I think this might be a kind of signal,’ Jazmin stopped being angry to be thoughtful. ‘Sometimes I have a huge hatred for everything in this town.’

With a sudden pause, she settled thoughts in her head.

‘And I can't even name it…’ With her closed eyes, she relaxed. ‘Sometimes I hate you, Mayritt, but it's the hatred I have for everything that didn't go well in my life, your trees, your stars, your mountains, and lakes… this is paradise.’

 She held back a tear.

‘Sorry, I love you San Mayritt,’ she finally said.

There was another silence, but this time it was not an empty and fearful silence but rather a thoughtful silence full of expectation.

‘Perhaps the first night of our trip we will have to spend it here,’ Santos said. ‘That is the signal. Despite everything that has happened here, everything I am is thanks to this place, which gave me too much; maybe we have to say a noble farewell, camping on a mountain for example. I think just leaving like we almost did in our first year of finishing school is not right, that's not the way to say goodbye.’

Another reflection of silence took place.

‘Yes, let's just hope this witchcraft goes away or the cameras appear and tell us it's just a joke,’ Miguel commented somewhat paranoid.

‘We can camp just there,’ Francis said, pointing his finger at a hill with a lush forest. ‘The magical Mount, where I spent my childhood with my imaginary friends.’

Miguel, Santos and Jazmin saw him getting emotional for the first time. Celeste had just met him and noticed it too.

They grabbed their stuff and went back to the van. No one spoke. The landscape was full of mountains, forests and lakes. They got as close as they could to the chosen mount along a somewhat careless path until they reached seven hundred meters from its peak, the road became dangerous to continue advancing with the car.

‘We have to continue on foot,’ Miguel pointed.

It was a full moon night, so they didn't need their flashlights. They were surrounded by trees of more than four meters in a jungle environment. The path extended slightly steeply. It was not tiring at all, during the march an attractive feeling of uncertainty, fantasy and charm was surrounding them.

They had already assumed what happened was much more than strange, but they also understood it was the first summer without going back to school. Say goodbye to old responsibilities, having to get up at 6 in the morning five days a week, line up with all their peers as they sang the Argentine anthem while the Argentine flag was being raised, after singing the British anthem while the British flag was being raised. They, being from the English community, were raised with such customs. They spoke better Spanish than their older relatives and neighbors since they related much more with those from the other communities.

And no, they couldn't say goodbye to their hometown as they had planned. That's not the way to say goodbye. What was to come could not be more than a magical adventure, and as they were walking they thought what was at first a tragedy little by little was transformed into an increasingly seductive and fascinating environment due to the uncertainty of what was to come.

‘Finally we are here!’ Miguel threw a branch he had raised during the march to the center of the peak. ‘You were right Francis, this is the spot.’

A view of a starry sky in which even some galactic trails could be seen was what they were having as a ceiling. Usually a landscape like this would be impossible with an entire moon, but it was a special night. The peak of the mount curiously did not have trees during an important circumference of only barely grown grass. This is because a long time ago some mountain peaks had their trees cut down by a Belgian community. Their ancestors believed where a municipality was founded, the trees closest to heaven had to be used for the wood of the coffins of its first settlers.

The mayor of San Mayritt decided this slight deforestation should replicate in some other peaks. Without the next trees to grow, make the peak of those mountains a small wasteland. So a record of the history of cultural diversity would remain. On May 2 in the year 1915 there was an entire inauguration of the new ground on the closest peak from the center of town.

‘This is the foundation stone where the memory of our ancestors and what today accompanies us in our tradition will remain,’ Erik Veimer, governor of San Mayritt at the time, had said laying the first predecessor stone of a large stone floor would be covered by earth. ‘This space of this mountain will not be forested, leaving our mark and legacy.’

The mountain the boys had chosen to spend that night was the furthest from the center and was the least frequented.

That's where a child named Francis built his own fantasy. In general, the mountains with felled peaks had squares with games, stone seats, and the neighbors went to rest with their children. "El Monte Magico" was so far away that his imagination was the only thing inhabiting it.

First things first, was to get some woods to make a fire, after a quiet moment of search and a little of primitive ingenious, a bonfire was born. So, the show started. 

‘Miguel I beg you, nothing sorrow,’ Jazmin said as Miguel played the first chords on the guitar. ‘Let's cheer up the night, please.’

‘I might have some bongos,’ Santos said, looking in his bag. ‘I brought the traverse flute.’

Francis with the bongos started a mystical percussion at the same time Jazmin created sounds with the flute that seemed to be taken from a Celtic village. Miguel played bass chords while Santos and Celeste sang vocal hymns with deep harmonies.

A great musical and spiritual synergy was generated while everyone was submerged in a trance of thoughts and reactions. Jazmin sank into a mental state where images of a universe in which she was the protagonist of an excursion she took with her parents as a baby and a pack of wolves ended up raising her and teaching her the secrets of the Earth. Miguel ran into the abysses of the ocean believing he was captaining a pirate ship in search of crossing a Dutch ship full of spices to mutiny it and enrich himself to live the rest of his life on a Pacific island surrounded by luxuries and vulgarities, the pounding pulse of his hands was hypnotizing those fantasies.

They remained in trance as if they were migrating to a new dimension while time and its measurement vanished. Without knowing how long it took to be in such mental and bodily activity, they stopped making music, looked at each other and laughed.

‘We must be hired to the Colon Theater.’ Francis ridiculed in the midst of laughter.

‘That’s why we couldn’t get out because we need to practice!’ Miguel said laughing.

An awful sensation invaded them, Miguel realized what he said and the laughter disappeared. They remembered the dome and were disturbed. They locked themselves in another silent terror of not knowing what to say, until little by little they slipped into their own worlds. Miguel with the guitar to throw plucks into the air without effort or harmony, while staring without attention at the horizon. Santos reading a novel of Frances Burnett, entering the world of a strange garden,  Jazmin began to do yoga, giving her muscles some stretch to forget everything else. Francis and Celeste were the only ones who were not alone, they lay on the grass to look at the starry sky.

‘Sometimes...,’ Francis was the first to speak, Celeste turned her head with an introverted expression of surprise expressed by her shy eyes. ‘Sometimes it overwhelms me to know there are more stars than grains of sand.’

Celeste stared at him in silence, laughed a little, and then gave a proud look at the sky.

‘I think we are in a reality show where some aliens are watching us sitting in their armchairs eating a cactus in the desert of Mars.’ Celeste assured. ‘I believe the Martians and other civilizations scattered throughout infinity do not attack us because they love human art.’

‘Really? Do you think they appreciate us?’ Francis asked, stupefied and fascinated by the idea.

‘You know, if it weren't for that, they would have already destroyed or enslaved us.’ Confidence was evident in her. ‘They must love us.’

They looked at each other showing embarrassed and shy smiles, and looked up again. Despite the presence of the full moon, a strange effect was taking place in the celestial vault that night, the stars looked brighter and sharper than usual. They were all amazed at the spectacle of heaven.

Celeste realized she hadn't gone to the bathroom for most of the day and had drunk a lot of water, it was a violent summer. She got up and with his eyes inspecting what was beyond.

‘I'm going to look for a bathroom,’ she said.

Francis watched how Celeste vanished through the plants until completely disappear in the dark, thinking how well he handed the conversation so he shoot a glance into the stars and concluded that love is just awesome. The rest of them continued in their things, barely noticing her.      

VII

Celeste went outside the camp with a pleasant satiation to walk alone. She found the perfect tree and proceeded to do her needs. She was a sensitive and shy girl but very adventurous. As a child, she loved to watch action movies, and then play as an archaeologist in search of precious and mythical lost objects, fighting against villains who only wanted to destroy the world, and all the responsibility of saving it depended on her heroic deeds.       

She also realized she hadn't had time to appreciate the magnificent scenery around. Despite the large number of trees that covered the sky, the moonlight was enough to be able to be seen and light the path, making it possible to continue exploring without losing trace back to the camp. She continued the walk a little more absorbed by the wild beauty of nature.

After a while, she noticed something strange. A halo of light moved uniformly and circularly, intercepting the view. Could a bird be being illuminated so brightly? She wondered as she saw how a fly shining about fifteen feets from her, only separated by branches and leaves, made her think if it was a pack of light bugs. She realizes the ripple of a phosphorescent apparition was in front of her and suddenly a great fear and need to run back to where the others were camping invaded her. And when she was about to do so, the light stopped moving and became visible its shape.

It was a self-luminescent sphere, and a sound started to emanate from it. Like the singing of a voice impossible to describe in words, it was much more than attractive and pleasant; it was like being in a dream. In a dream one was visiting heaven, where gods and immortal music composed by artists produce with extreme natural and pure talent and embracing peace. A concert of voices performed with amazing intelligence and virtue.

Celeste went from feeling fear to feeling an increasingly alienating hypnosis by taking slow steps into that light and sound. What had been to her at first the appearance of a bright bird, and then a pack fireflies was at the moment she got within ten feet of a spectral bluish-white spark hovering. The spark transformed into a woman similar to what could be an intergalactic queen from a science fiction movie. She was seen as a woman who transmits peace, serenity and righteousness.      

‘I believe you liked what I was singing,’ the female spectrum said.

Celeste opened her mouth trying to say something but her head was filled with different kinds of thoughts at the same time. She couldn't say anything. She wanted to tell her to keep singing, at the same time wanted to ask if she was an alien or an angel. She wanted to ask if she could teach her how to sing like that while she wanted to run away to where the boys were and she didn't know if it was to escape from the specter or to tell them to go and see the same thing as her, she felt horror, madness, love and ecstasy. The woman who had sung watched as Celeste's eyes began to move everywhere as if she were about to suffer a psychological break.      

‘Don't be afraid,’ the bluish spectral woman said, as she took Celeste’s hand and everything around exploded in a gigantic white purity obscuring all vision.

The garden where they were vanished and the panorama changed into the coast of a paradisiacal island, next to the shore where the waves fade.

‘I landed in the forest where you were, to listen to the needs of the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom,’ the strange woman said in serene peace. ‘A glass was dropped from the sky and I just came to see if everything was fine.’

Celeste sorted the ideas in her head and let herself go. For the first time in a long time, she felt comfort and at ease with a company, even if it was not human. Intense pleasure washed over her as she continued to float on an ocean of calm. They stopped being on the shore of a beach at the time the guardian of the earth took her arm to fly between the clouds of a blue sky. There was no sun but its illumination was present. As if its rays of light had been impregnated at the moment of noon, and the sun had faded and disappeared without leaving its luminescent effect still shining. The light kept the color of the sky crystal bright blue. The clouds were fluffy like soap bubbles and soft texture like cotton.           

‘I am the one who will be spinning the clouds of the heavens from the first time they were created until they float on its waters for the last time, I will accompany the life of this earth from its birth to its death.’ The woman transformed her specter bluish to a pale skin tone, with a white dress, black hair, a sweet face, jovial and fresh, but without ceasing to express authoritative confidence. ‘It's been a long time since I last saw a human.’

And at that point, she touched Celeste's chin with the tips of his fingers.         

Celeste sighed while her glass eyes lit up.

‘Take me with you,’ Celeste said.

The strange woman continued slowly caressing Celeste's face, and Celeste sighed harder and harder. The poor young woman whose face was being pampered struggled against her impulses to control herself, and for a moment she thought she could. Then she felt a passion burning deep in her chest. Little by little, she glided into the most intimate and secret desires, raised her arm, and lowered it again.  Opened her hand, and clenched a fist. Opened the hand again, closed it again. She stopped for a moment and stopped looking at her companion in the clouds. She cast a gaze to the side. Her partner stopped patting her face and placed her hand between her shoulder and one of her breasts.

Celeste gloated a moan and lost control. The dirtiest and wildest impulses won out. When she was touched below the neck, a sudden electrical force expelled her. The guardian stopped having a serene and authoritative look when Celeste contracted her belly with hers. The cloud-spinning guardian's face changed into sudden surprise, dumbfounded and speechless.

Her reddish cheeks got warmer in the moment she squeezed the upper thigh of the other. And she moaned too. They both moaned. Celeste proceeded to gently massage her own and the guardian's thighs. The moans grew louder as caressing intensified. The guardian of the natural realms tried to stop her but she also failed to stop herself.

Celeste slowly with her hand prostrated under the guardian’s back began to move it to the left breast, a nipple hardened and a black lightning was summoned by a superior force from beyond. The beginning of an earthquake accompanied by a storm of strong winds broke down the sensation between the two of them, the blue sky with white clouds scattered towards an almost black gray background. The first lightning bolts sounded while Celeste and her partner were terrified of the future.

‘We can't be together.’ The guardian lamented. ‘The unspeakable eternal forbids it, I just came to do my job and it was not my intention to find you... but I don't regret it.’

The deity smiled wistfully as the rain awoke and warlike rumbles rose.

They embraced. Celeste looked more closely at the deity. Her silver eyes shone with a happy sparkle like a jasmine plant aside a lake of eternal brilliance. The folds forming the beginning of their mouths advanced smoothly until they finally kissed. A second bolt of lightning exploded over the entire storm, but now it was yellow. As if the warmth and love between them had commanded the wisdom of a heavenly architecture to further extend the moment of intimacy, and to imagine its ode to the most beautiful and perfect buildings.

They teleported to the bedroom of a palace that had never been inhabited or built before, they were just there to spend a little more time together. In the dome of the highest column of the castle, they had their space outside of existence, outside of order and universal law. They were totally free, yet there was little time.

They didn't care about anything more but undressing their clothes until the only costume left was warm-hearted, pleasant and pure skin. The guardian grabbed Celeste's shoulder and yanked her to the pinewood floor. Celeste bit by bit felt her partner's sweaty lips covering a trail of kisses briefly born on her neck and gradually ceased on the nipples. The journey of kisses concluded in feeling the scorching moist scent of the fervent energy rising from the chest to all her blood capillaries when her teats were licked and softly chewed.

Celeste had always felt insecure about her body, from her below-average height to her pectorals she considered undersized. Now all those insecurities, anguish and lack of self-esteem were buried feeling how her boob was stretched accompanied by teeth vaporizing an excited exhalation. It was coming the climax when Celeste's fingernails scratched the back of the guardian deity erupting exhalations of pleasure.

They looked at each other for the last time when everything around them was nothing but a white glare.  

‘My dearest precious,’ the guardian said. ‘You made me remember and feel what it was like to be a human. I had forgotten sometimes fragility could trigger a torment of such perfect, beautiful and pure emotions, I love you and you will always be in my heart, I leave you as a testimony of what is the path of the journey all the blessed immortals must fulfill in order to ascend to the high level of existence.’

The deity began to bid farewell as the two of them stood by the infinite dimensions of light while holding hands.

‘It's the only thing I can do for us to see each other again, if we continue together my forces will be degraded to escort the earthly fauna.’ She drew a heavy sheaf of tied papers.

Celeste’s eyes were shining with tears that spilled the turbulence airborne when she took a book bound with solid rigidity. The white flash washed out while the wind surrounded them curved the fallen leaves of the woodland. Celeste witnessed her mate of passion fading away into the distance until was lost in the abyss of the other side. She landed in the garden where had found “the toilet”. Got back to a previous reality where only humans and animals existed as living creatures. Nothing of deities with powers, celestial worlds… nor relations of deep pleasant warmth for her either.

Besides the tree where she had met the chanted illumination, a sudden idea of having dreamed it all shivered. The concept of having an episode of psychosis gave her the chills to imagine she had an onset of schizophrenia. Her thoughts were full of all sorts of shocking conclusions. Celeste launched to move in circles desperately. Couldn't stop thinking how something so amazing, charming and lovely could also be such an obscure frightening fantasy. Why dark? It was just a crazy dream on a summer night anyway. Dark because it isn’t possible the intensity of the voyage with its sensations was a dream. So it was the indication she had to go to the psychiatrist as soon as possible, get tests and live the rest of her life treating her madness.

She kept moving in circles filling her mind with terror of self-conclusive imaginations. Celeste is in an insane asylum, over fifty, cumbersome long curly hair, a straitjacket, and walls with a ceiling and floor of white cushions. It is not going to be to break the head. No. That brain is already so bloody hurt.

‘I wanted to study marketing or advertising. Why does this have to happen to me right now?’ Only the forest listened to her. ‘Please God, make my head last until I'm sixty or seventy, not now. I’m not prepared for madness. I promise I won't go back to smo―’

She stepped on something that almost trips her. There was a kind of block. She found an artifact powering off the tyrannical over thinking. Another terrific tension hit again after realizing this object confirmed what was experienced was real. But if what happened was true, the wonderful and amazing company she had was authentic too. So a delightful pleasure smile occupied her lips.

The thing that calmed her down and made her return to happiness was finding the document she grabbed at the farewell. A deep, impulsive desire to get back with her washed over her, and she wondered why she had to go so fast.

‘I'll leave you with what we adventurous immortals have to do to see each other again,’ Celeste said, speaking to herself while holding the strange book. ‘That was what she told me. Didn’t she?’

The leaves off the trees shacked in the dark.