Little Titania jumps up, stretches out her arms, and catches a hummingbird with brightly colored plumage, fuchsia, green and silver. She lands and, without letting go of the bird that flutters fiercely between her fingers, runs to where her aunt is meditating.

Valeria is sitting cross-legged among the roots of a loving tree. Her long red hair, tied in a multi-bunned ponytail, flows down her shoulder and curls over her baggy white pants. Valeria breaks into a smile as she hears the animated girl coming, and her gaze lights up to find little Titania jumping up and down in excitement with a tiny creature fluttering in her hands.

Valeria's gaze is crimson like her hair, a visual testament to being the fruit of one of the clan's ancient and dying traditions. That rule that dictates that the blue branch and the red branch of the family, the judges and executioners, should never mix. The rule is so far back in time that it almost seems fabled, and varies depending on who is telling it. Some elders claim that it was an edict of the sacred writers, because otherwise from the mixture would arise a new destructive god, who would threaten both the earthly and the heavenly passages. While the more reactionary youngsters theorize that it was a pact the Hundredhearts were forced into, to avoid creating a mixture that would merge the best qualities of the two clan lineages, something that may not be of so much interest in today's age of the great villages, but certainly caused headaches for the warlords in the era of the fighting kingdoms.

Despite the warnings and rumors coming from the past, Valeria concludes that in facing her niece she does not glimpse any destructive deity or even a nightmare for an ancient warrior leader, but the sweetest and most beautiful girl she knows. And like her there are many others in the clan, young people with purple hair and eyes but as normal as the rest, some are judges, others executioners, none is a demon or anomaly. Sons and daughters of unions that would have brought exile or the death penalty just two decades ago.

"Aunt! Aunt! I got a present for you!" With a dimpled smile Titania holds out the hummingbird.

The joy on Valeria's face trembles a little, because in the innocent face of her niece she sometimes sees a ghost, that of her sister Diema in her tender years. Thinking of Titania's mother inevitably leads her to remember of the day fate left the child an orphan.

If Titania's name comes from titanium, Valeria's from valor, and Diema's from diamond, Hestor's name came from the word "history", and perhaps his parents suffered a premonition in naming him (or as they like to say among their people: a hunch), because there was nothing that impassioned Hestor more than knowing the past of all things.

Hestor became a voyager, he traveled the passages, many times being foolish enough to risk his life to enter forbidden places in order to satisfy his curiosity. Thus it was that he tried to enter the great village of Neburia, multiple times, in one he even disguised himself as a woman, and in all of them he was discovered. But the sentinel who repeatedly unmasked him, instead of killing him as usual, fell in love with the man's tenacity and even agreed to marry, allowing Hestor to enter Neburia and flit in the ancestral library of the white tower.

The sentinel, a woman so beautiful that she caused the suicide of an army by refusing the love of the commander, supposed that her beauty, her attentions, the ancestral knowledge of Neburia, added to all that her husband asked from the outside, including lovers for the nights when the sentinel is far away fulfilling some mission, would fill Hestor until the day of his death. For if one thing is well known, it is that the husbands of the women of the clouds are not allowed to leave the village again.

But stronger than knowledge was blood and nostalgia, for Hestor longed for the freedom to go anywhere, but above all to roam his homeland, to lose himself in the rain of leaves of the loving trees. The man escaped taking for granted that the sentinel would forget him and get a better husband, but he was wrong...

Hestor returned to the clan. Diema was very glad to see him, and he was very glad to see her, for they were childhood friends, and where once there was attachment, as the weeks went by love sprang up. A judge and executioner grew weary, and nine months later they gave birth to Titania. Before the child was a year old, both Hestor and Diema decided to go out and travel. Hestor bought a beautiful pink wooden carriage that he commissioned from a leading Arborea carpenter.

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The carriage left at dawn, heading down the road through the forest and down the mountain. A couple of hours after the departure, a stab of pain pierced Valeria's chest in the middle of breakfast. Torment and surprise hunched the woman over, making her knock over the bowls and their contents Her eyes were filled with the despair of her sister, to whom she was connected by blood and soul.

Without mediating words with anyone, Valeria grabbed her curved sword and jumped out the window. She felt she had little time left, her sister conveyed a growing urgency. Valeria entered the forest and advanced without slowing down, soon her skin was tanned with sweat from the haste and the summer heat. She found the carriage overturned next to a stream, with no one inside and the luggage lying on its side. She heard a moan, or rather a very childish cry.

Valeria threw herself in the direction of Titania's cry, and a hundred steps later the cold went into her bones.

It was like passing from the earthly to the heavenly world. Every tree, flower, stone, root, or grass, was turned into a beautiful statue of ice, the same with the lake, smooth and pristine, where a couple of fish and frogs were frozen halfway across the jump. Only one other color broke that illuminated and pure blue, and that was red.

On the frozen lake lay two bodies lying face down, their clothes tanned with blood and frost. Husband and wife have extended an arm towards each other, a reflection of having tried to be together even in death. It is hard to tell who died first, but it is certain that their fingertips are inches away from touching.

The baby's cry brings Valeria back to herself, after being transfixed by the sight of the corpses of her sister and brother-in-law. Among the bushes is a wicker cradle, and tucked in the cradle is Titania crying loudly. Staggering towards the baby with her hand outstretched, is the most beautiful woman Valeria had ever seen. She looked like a painting, that of a divinity with long white hair and frosted silks, blessing with her touch a baby girl in a snowy landscape. But the cuts and bloody stains on the sentinel's body gave her away as a member of the earthly world.

"I will take you with me. You will be my stepdaughter... And you will suffer every day the pain that your father caused me" The sentinel's voice is so pleasant that it seemed to turn the proposal from a cruel scenario into a gift.

Valeria reacts. The executioner's mark shines between her shoulder blades: Simple lines representing the figure of a person cut, like an X split in half.

A journey that must have cost her more than 20 steps, she crossed it in a single leap, positioning herself behind the sentry's back. The curved sword enters the woman's back, cuts through her spine, pierces her heart and exits between her breasts. The sentry gasps, blood streaks paint her lips. Valeria with a second movement releases the sword. With a third movement, driven by anger, the sword becomes a blurred trail that in a few seconds runs through the sentry's body more than a thousand times.

Valeria stops the blade. Her lungs burn, and her body is covered and moistened by a layer of sweat. The sentinel is turned into a pinkish mist that soon disperses in the wind. The executioner sheathes her sword and approaches the baby, cradling her in her arms and telling her that everything will be all right.

"Auntaaaaaaa!"

Valeria returns to the present. She finds a sweet little girl with her cheeks puffed out in a pout, annoyed at being ignored. Valeria smiles again and pats Titania on the head a couple of times, a gesture that makes the little girl forget any trace of bad mood.

"Look, a present!" Titania holds out the hummingbird again.

Valeria nods, takes the bird carefully so that it doesn't escape, and with a movement she has practiced many times, breaks the creature's neck, giving it a merciful death.

Titania clenches her fists near her face, again looking displeased.

"Hmmmm, when they're alive they taste richer"

"Would it be right to cause more pain than necessary, just for an extra bit of flavor?"

Titania averts her gaze and remains silent, as if she really has to think about it. Valeria sighs and adds:

"The answer is no. It is essential to control our passions... Only in this way can we aspire to have a soul as pure and shining as the-"

"The moon! The moon!" Titania goes ahead of him and jumps up and down.

"Good girl"

Valeria pushes two fingers into the hummingbird and opens it in the middle, extracting the heart. She divides the organ in two and hands one half to Titania. The girl immediately puts her share to her lips and runs off with the arms outstretched to her sides, the sweet taste of nectar in her mouth, and feeling herself flying free in the wind like a hummingbird.