Lucifer takes hold of her. Her body shakes in such a way, as if she were possessed, until the ice gives way to his weight and the water current drags her to a life without a future.
Wasn't that what Luz wanted?
That mark that surrounded her somewhat cheeky cheek has disappeared; just as her life is about to disappear (not die).
And I emphasize not to die because the water minimizes the power of the wind. The wind, the only element that the writer of this story and Luz shared, has been replaced by ice water.
However, the writer does not live by the beach. It is only the sea water of the beach, unpurified, that she has in common with the protagonist.
So how can Lucifer get the story into the writer's head?
No, it's not that Lucifer is forcing her to write this story. He simply brings it to her mind for an unknown purpose. In the end, it was the writer who decided to write and publish it on the Internet.
It is quite possible that now her mind is just like the ice rink that cracked before Luz's erratic and involuntary movements. The famous writer's block. When that happens, a character will have the joy of being able to be The Rebel.
For, although the writer continues to write, stubbornly no doubt, there will come a point when he will no longer be able to see; therefore, he will no longer be able to control the characters (if he ever controlled them).
The wind allows us to breathe to admire the fictitious or true reality (depending on your species). However, now that the only possibility is water... water is transparent... but transparency must choose whether to be the reflection of reality or fiction within the protagonist's story.
The wind can accept both worlds, but water always has to choose. That is its destiny.
Of course, these problems only present themselves in this book because it is sponsored by Lucifer. He is fire and fire serves to destroy what the mind wants to build. Fire wants to build what the heart needs to feel. And feelings hate the idea of feeling imprisoned, of being certain that their future is already written. That is why "the forces of the universe", so to speak, use destiny as a parameter to moderate Lucifer's actions.
Right now, a series of eventualities have occurred in the writer's house. Events that made it necessary for her to paint parts of her house. She searched everywhere for "ducky yellow" color in all available hardware stores. But she was left with only a choice between opaque colors and red. Her mother thought of Snow White's apples and her daughter's taste for apples. In the end they both decided to paint the black metal gate of their house with vermilion red.
The problem was that her mother didn't know that she had to first buy white paint to use as a base and then paint the red over it.
Or could it be that the writer relates writer's block to the color white?
Maybe that same force that the wind gave to Luz's neurons to generate those little wrinkles on her skin could also have crossed some threshold that I don't know until it reached the writer's neurons.
It made that her unconscious could repel that color that represented what was about to afflict her. A presentiment.
A presentiment!
Of course, a presentiment is what is also in common between the writer and the world of the fantasy-crazed protagonist.
So water has nothing to do with it anymore?
No, the presentiments come from an anguish that cannot be defined with words; but it suffocates and shakes the body at the same time, as if it were a frenetic rhythm that leaves you crushed with pleasure.
Perhaps the writer feels something special thanks to her presentiments.
For example: Her mother has just painted red, since she couldn't paint the door, a column attached to the lower half of the wall (the one that joins the parallel walls of the kitchen) with which she forms an L. This L forms a rectangle with the kitchen ceiling. You could put a glass cabinet to make it look like a window for the kitchen.
Anyway, the important thing is that L for Lucifer, or that is the writer's hunch.
Is it a coincidence that in the end she only had to use the red paint to paint the L-shaped wall that is part of the kitchen?
Maybe that wall was waiting for the intensity of the vermillion red. But what would be the reason. That's outside the limits of our protagonist's story, isn't it?
It must not if we fantastic beings want revolution. The water must reflect the reason why the color intended for that wall is vermilion red.
I know that this is the path that my "cause" must follow because in the writer's reality. Not finding the painting I wanted and having to opt for red may be a "causality" in the writer's reality.
Remember that in your world as in mine there is a cause for everything; so the word "chance" is not an option.
However, the word "cause" is the one that represents my fantasy world and the word "causality" is the one that represents the author's reality.
Without "cause" or problem a story does not move, it has no direction.
Without "causality" (although the human ear likes "chance" better) there would be no effort that would be rewarded. Man would not fulfill any of his dreams. Nor would his sins be punished.
Nothing goes away, nothing comes back. This universe would be static forever.
But back to the subject, what separates my "cause" with your "causality" is the letter L. This in the Spanish language because that is the native language of the writer.
The Spanish language is the one that is rooted in their feelings. You know that these feelings are fundamental to create the fantasy of this story.
Why is that?
The crux of the matter here is that these two words, "cause" and "causality", are the ones that will clash for the sympathy of the water.
Only one of these two words will be the key to the presentiment that water will reflect on one of the two worlds. Mine or yours.
Only words can confront each other, because only words reach the human soul and the soul is the only means by which humanity can transport itself to other worlds.
That is what the butterfly needs if it does not want to drown. If it is to carry the word "cause" as a representative of fantasy beings; then it needs to save the soul of Light.
Words are a human thing not an animal thing, so Luz can't die, not yet.
I must be right in assuming that Lucifer is on our side. It is evident that he has wanted my little children to be taken from me. He wants me to react and I will. It is certain that there is something behind his interest in a war of words; but I don't care, as long as I can get my children back.
Although I feel some pity for Luz and her environment, there is too much hatred and pain. I didn't know what it felt like until Lucifer the demon threw me inside the head of this tormented girl; above all, addicted to fantasy.
Maybe that's why, even though she's unconscious, we can still breathe. The butterfly, at the speed of light, has come and gone from the clouds of the purple sky.
The clouds mimic and follow. They mold quite well to whatever comes in contact with them. Not only in physical appearance, by copying the shape of the stranger. It also copies the function that this same stranger performs.
The only thing that matters to the clouds is that they never leave them. Not even for a second. In a second they can blur until they disappear.
Thanks to these copies of the butterflies made of clouds many fantasy beings inside Luz's head have been saved from suffocating to death.
Each cloud-butterfly absorbs a fantasy being inside itself. Then they take flight and group together as a flock, to follow the leading butterfly (the original).
The atmosphere smells of sulfur, that is why I know that this attack of Light is the product of the attack of its darkness.
And the demon in love?
It has vanished as my not so developed verbal intelligence is doing. Even if I make a fool of myself as a narrator, I have to keep talking. For Luz, synonymous with drowning is to be ignored when there are so many people around you. To be on the verge of death is to be looked at and ignored. To die is to try to belong to this world and, to do so, to reject what you are.
If I talk and talk and talk, I will give the butterfly-clouds more time to evacuate all the animals.
Of course, we have to consider that the speed of the clouds in the water is not a favorable factor for the animals inside Luz's head, I don't want to be so discouraged, but if they don't hurry I will be speechless.
I, unlike the other animals, I can breathe thanks to the red scarf that was formed between Alexis and Luz, before Marisa came to control the fire.
The scarf faded in the wind. Somehow, it allows me to keep in touch with what is there and happening on dry land (as well as frozen); through Alexis' perspective.
Maybe that is why, even though I have not been in his head, even before the scarf I could already glimpse something of his interior. Because it is called a red scarf when the human cannot see it and does not notice its existence; but when he does not see it, but feels it; that is called passion.
I bet that only at this point they can no longer prevent that word from invading their minds. They can no longer pretend that they do not recognize what that concept might imply.
Just because they can't pretend doesn't mean they will give in. On the contrary, if you belong to the club of solitude, that is, there is a space in you where there is no gravity, the very place where her imagination resides and reinvents itself (there I am); then you can continue to expand this space in your soul. In this way it will be practically impossible for something external to bind something inside you. That is exactly what Luz wants.
Before she met him, she created her own world inspired by everything she had been taught and everything she considered against her hyperactive nature.
I can register that hyperactivity in the erratic movements of her body and soul. I also notice that in Alexis's mind the memory of small hands making traces on a blank sheet of paper with no direction is projected. Gradually the image spreads until the movement of his hands becomes visible. His hands tremble, as he tries unsuccessfully to draw something on the paper.
No doubt he has been trying for a long time. His colored pencil is too small in size, and I sense the heavy pressure he hovers over the pencil going to the paper.
I don't think he intends to draw. "A nothing" trying to be able to be qualified as art. That's how I would describe those blue strokes that do not form any figure for human eyes, but perhaps they do represent a set of feelings on his part.... you would have to possess the point of view of an animal that still remembers something.
I see the blue lines vibrating on the paper. I wonder if the Alexis of those times can see it too.
From this vibration between the lines, a deep blue powder comes off the paper as he crumples it into a ball and throws it into a trash can.
Alexis came close enough for the blue powder to fall on his chin and part of the threshold of his neck.
"There's too much inspiration outside for you to paint. The world starts with a dot, then a line and then there's an infinite beyond of possibilities...until you get to the shape of love."
Her caramel eyes sparkled under the sun's rays that served as spotlights. Her profile began as the top of a mountain made of cream-colored clouds that descend smoothed by the wind; the wind steals the top of each cloud, as it does with everything within its reach.
However, its beauty and the concepts derived from that beauty are impossible for the wind to steal.
Alexis' teacher was really very beautiful on the outside, and Alexis was reluctant to believe that she was beautiful on the inside as well. He hit one of his classmates and, if it weren't for the teacher, he would have been expelled.
She lied to the principal claiming that she had gotten him a psychologist who would help him for free. Which was a lie, but the teacher was willing to try to understand the world as he perceived it. So she decided to pose as a psychologist. Buy a blonde wig, black glasses, wear farm clothes and fake a professional degree in psychology.
In the afternoons, little Alexis was taken to a classroom to have sessions with the supposed psychologist. Although she asked that she only be allowed to enter the school. Without saying anything to the child. She would see her way to introduce herself, casually. Although, in reality, this hides a reason behind it... a cause.
"Why don't you go mow the lawn? Don't they pay you for that?"
Even though the teacher was disguised as a farmer looking for a job as a school groundskeeper, little 8-year-old Alexis knew it was his teacher; but he liked to make the others think they had won and he had lost or that he was the innocent child.
"I want to surround this school with the shape of love, but I still can't think of what that might be. There are so many forms, but I'd like to find one that sums up the others."
Alexis rolled her eyes, as she covers her face with her hands and yawns. He didn't want the teacher to realize that he didn't believe her at all.
"Will it take as long as my mother's meeting with the principal?"
He knew that was all just an excuse for him to be there getting therapy for nothing.
"Maybe more... Do you have any ideas?"
Alexis knew he had to get into "Prince Boy mode.
"Love is like that breeze that caresses your cheek, comes softly to you, lets fear mold it to its liking so you can be inside it. For fear is in everything, but love... you must be the shelter the wind has chosen to shelter its love. It has chosen your jaw as a stop for its breeze."
The pink, small, heart-shaped lips of the gardener formed a smile beneath the dark glasses.
"How can it be that an 8 year old boy would say those verses to me?
Where did you hear those verses?"
Alexis raised her eyebrows, she felt she was playing her part well and it gave her a certain degree of pride. More than anything, it made him feel relieved to be able to help his mother get rid of the woman his father was pining for.
He out of desire and she out of bitterness.
"Miss, I learned to read at three and to write at 5. At 6 I already started writing my own verses. What I told you was one of them."
The teacher had an intuition that Alexis was a child prodigy, but now she was certainly proving it. A quiet and reserved child at recess, but when it was time to intervene in class there was no one to stop his tongue, literally.
"Come to the window, don't you want to feel the breeze too?"
Alexis was getting sick of pretending and maybe at some point he was going to talk back badly, if he kept up his deceitful cheesiness.
"I've felt it countless times. Even if, yesterday's day was cold, the effect of the breeze I feel it every time I recount the good of my day."
The gardener gave him such a sweet look that, even if it was part of his purpose, he couldn't help but pout in pure disgust.
"And this isn't the best time of your day is it?
I guess seeing is no more useful to me as it is no more useful to you just to talk."
The gardener walked out without saying anything to him. Which surprised and annoyed Alexis. She would have to learn to understand the gestures and looks of adults better.
Alexis had to anticipate adults, they always play surprises with each other and.... also with the children.
He was about to leave when he saw the gardener start to do somersaults on the grass. She was running back and forth, while moving her lips. On her neck there was also a certain vibration that made him think that, perhaps, she was trying to sing.
And so it happened, the days passed between the teacher's childish attitudes and the thousand and one excuses that the director invented so that Alexis would have to stay every weekend.
Her mother didn't mind, as long as she kept a poetry and math book in her backpack. The school gave her lunch, so her mother was less to blame for not being able to hold back the urge to cry.
Alexis would help them find an excuse, always looking for an opportunity to annoy any classmate. Without realizing it, however, the level of hostility and aggressiveness in her actions had decreased. Although he liked to think it was part of his plan to be charming in the eyes of the teacher who becomes a farmer on the weekends.
Alexis' mother had made him read the screenshot she took of the online request her father had made on whatsapp. Even though the man deleted it, the woman paid her nephew to make her see all the deleted conversations. What she found were many flower orders addressed to the school and, specifically, addressed to teacher Evans.
The children know that the teacher has a suitor, but not that it is a married man.
Alexis was trying to calm her mother down by acting like the prince she wanted her father and, in general, all men to be. To tell the truth, his mother had raised him with the purpose of having a blue soul, as, according to her, was the soul of princes.
"It's called Prince Charming for a reason, isn't it?"
The mother had made him listen to classical music; watch cartoons, cult movies and documentaries about science and technology. The latter was what he really enjoyed and the gardener always sought to encourage him.
So when Alexis was encouraged to leave the room, the gardener was beginning to wonder things like, "What if love were in heaven and not on earth? What if love is immortal because it would be inside mortal beings like humans?"
Alexis could not cope with so many questions that could give surprising answers and bring much happiness to her mother. Although he read, researched and observed, he could never answer those questions to the gardener. However, he was beginning to believe that it was only a matter of time, it was a matter of time deciding to keep his love in him....
"...if to create something that is useful and eternal you need love. Then it is understandable that humans are ephemeral. That we have impossible dreams makes a lot of sense; so I guess the lack of love makes impossible everything we consider impossible... if you want to create something extraordinary and that reaches the whole world; you have to get the love of the only being that brings life to every corner of this planet: The wind."
Little Alexis and the gardener were cutting one of the bushes without determining any particular shape. The idea was to let their hands work alone and let intuition guide the work.
Now Alexis' new punishment for putting a toad in a teacher's desk drawer was to help the gardener. The mother did not have to testify on her son's behalf. On the contrary, it seemed to her that a few weekends of work would help him reform his behavior. Besides, she could do other things.
"But... if all that is ephemeral is that which has no love... neither does nature love us, she dies when we eat the fruit, hunt animals or someone cuts down a tree.
The only thing that always remains is the earth from which nature comes. The Earth. The one who created the planet is the only being that has love. This planet is eternal.
The wind and the ocean may be everlasting, but they must receive love from someone else, from another being... the one who created The Earth and the whole universe."
The gardener kissed him on the forehead and hugged him so that he would not see that she was about to cry.
Between games, jokes and a dog that the gardener gave him for his birthday, a strong bond was forged between Alexis and his teacher.
When December arrived, it was hard for her to believe that she was the cause of her mother's pain. He was supposed to deceive his teacher, just as his mother was deceived by his father. Although, after learning so many cheesy things to make her fall in love, he felt she deserved a real Prince Charming.
In fact, watching his mother suffer in silence for his father and seeing his drunken neighbors (which is exactly why his mother would not allow him to set foot outside the house) fight, scream or cry, he thought that the blue soul did not exist, but that it was so necessary for his mother and teacher that there must be someone who could create it.
Would this be a better world?
Of that he was not sure either, because, if drunks tell the truth, men are not the only ones to blame:
"You know what he said...what he said to me...or or.... she told me that she had to fulfill her dreams and that I, her son, was a burden she couldn't carry to Paris.... do you have any idea how it hurts...no love is as great as the pain felt for an absent mother?"
That was an understatement. The other neighbor friend of hers for drinks and perhaps other recreational activities.
"That rhymed, it rhymed damn it...everything that rhymes is true...because universe...universe actually means the one verse and that too rhymes, if not in this one, it will rhyme in another language..."
This neighbor was taken, but he was a retired history teacher. Maybe not because he wanted to, he talked too much about history, language, myths and legends; even when he was not in his right mind.
In short, Alexis didn't know who the real culprit was, but he still believed that a blue soul would be an extraordinary creation. Besides, maybe the blue soul could make her dog have the capabilities of a human and live up to its name: Human.
He didn't like to hide Human, but his mother would kick him out if he told her. Even if this action was a kind act, worthy of a true prince, the mother considered herself a commoner with enough mistakes that he should not even make. Even if the mother herself made those mistakes and horrors for which she scolded Alexis, he should always remember that his spirit was that of a prince.
"You must be brave, kind and respectful. You must be strong. You are my only prince, from here to infinity and beyond.
Maybe when you get upset someone else will come into you, that happens to me; but that's not your mother, that's not me. When you are a teenager you will understand... the bad guy is never you, it's that other guy... you are a prince charming."
The gardener's hug, reminded him of his mother's typical hugs in the mornings and evenings, after telling him a futuristic fairy tale.
His mother used to be as sweet as the gardener. Truly, his teacher had made him miss the woman who was really his mother, before he hated his father.
He decided to make a surprise for the teacher, no longer with the intention of breaking her heart, now the gift of a good fan.
Since Alexis believed that the closest to the love that created the Earth was heaven (there must be a reason for the church and the concept of God, right?); the essence of the teacher should be able to "touch heaven".
She needed spotlights as big as those that illuminate the great stars of music on stage.
It was obvious that she could not ask her father for so much money, and even less without a convincing explanation. Day after day he searched for a way to create those spotlights himself, but his efforts were in vain. He was always close, but there was always something missing in his equation, even though he was number one in mathematics.
The only thing he could do to try to take away the frustration was to go out to the park to walk his dog. Maybe it was a coincidence, but after rubbing his head on his dog's belly, he fell into a terrible sleep and gave in to the arms of Morpheus.
Upon awakening, Alexis wanted to see a science fiction movie that would encourage him to keep trying.
When he saw his cell phone, in the YouTube recommendations a video appeared with the title: To be more enlightened than a star.
After signing up for so many inventions youtube channels, he finally found a channel called: The Pharaoh of Technology.
And the one who was doing the spotlights was, his neighbor, the former history teacher.
Thanks to this video, he was able to finish the reflectors on time.
It was December 24 and, unlike other Christmases, he had breakfast in his room. This given that her mother needed to give herself a gift: Face the situation.
After so many screams and broken dishes, the father decides to go to a hotel. From the moment she closed the door behind her, the mother suddenly enters her son's room and rushes him to leave, according to her, to visit her mother, she very much needed your understanding.
Although he did not agree, he believed it was more convenient to listen to his mother. She had already suffered too much, the father undoubtedly deserved it.
He asked his mother to go away to pack his things in his suitcase. However, the mother touched something with the tips of her cleats. She kneels down and finds a box under her son's bed.
"How many times have I told you that princes are ordered with their things. Everything, even things, deserve respect ..."
The mother takes out the box and opens it.
"Searchlights? Did you see it on youtube?"
Sometimes Alexis was surprised by how easy it was for her mother to change her mood: from despair to the most indifferent attitude towards the relationship problem.
Everything that is done to avoid falling is certainly worth it.
"Yes"
Alexis replied with a timid tone and a certain degree of embarrassment.
"For now it doesn't matter, they are just your pinnacles in science. But later on, you have to be unique and original in your projects. Don't forget it"
As soon as the mother left the room, Alexis left her room through the window; but he did not count on his father deciding to return because he had forgotten his pistol in the room.
As soon as she saw her son with both feet on the sidewalk, she led him back to the house.
"I am a military man, I work on a research project that will revolutionize this planet. I deal with things that compromise the lives of many people. I have to deal with all that, but you cannot deal with a child.
I told you that my present is my past and my past is dark; but I told you above all that it was not a safe place... you insist and I was weak...
The next time you see me it will be to take my son away from you forever."
Again the shouting started, the fights and plates flying until they broke on the walls and the floor.
However, Alexis was not willing to put up with them anymore. He went up to the second floor, but not to his room. Alexis was no longer going to hide her desire to go and give a gift and would do whatever it took.
"Where are you going with the backpack?"
Mother asked, observing the blue backpack hanging from Alexis' back. The father, unlike the mother, wasn't going to waste time asking. He was going to hit her again, if necessary to get her to go to her room and not come out. However, when he tried to approach Alexis, he pulled out of his coat pocket the gun his father kept in the room.
"Before I continue to be your puppet, I'm going to get out of here so you can keep fighting. I want to go have a merry Christmas and I hope you guys get that, even if it's apart."
Alexis never once looked at her mother. If she had, she most likely wouldn't be able to resist her mother's melancholy.
They both watched him leave, but did not follow him. They were both paralyzed.
Despite knowing the address of the teacher's house, thanks to his mother, he never went. This time, however, he could not allow his invention to go unadmired by a teacher who deserved to be admired.
He was anxious, so he ran as fast as he could, or until a certain drunkard let him be able to.
The history teacher was retired not for his liking. The principal had long ago expelled him for his drinking problem. That night he drunkenly left his house and was about to go to the liquor store for more beer, but was dazzled by a motorcycle parked in front of the liquor store. Strangely enough, this storied man loved motorcycles and knew many ways to start one without a key. That's why, and because he was drunk, he started the bike and, as his five senses were not very well placed, he almost crashed into little Alexis.
Thanks to heaven, or someone else, Alexis saw the motorcycle in time and was able to avoid it; but he had to do one of the stunts that the gardener taught him: Lifting her body with both hands and propelling her body forward.
The problem is that he didn't do it so well, so his weight fell on the backpack that hit the sidewalk.
Alexis couldn't believe it. He unzipped the zipper and saw his two bruised reflectors. There was no way to save them, they were already useless and there was no more time.
He was going to leave tomorrow and he wasn't going to see the teacher-gardener anymore.
Alexis runs with tears in her eyes. Although there was no ice as in the countries of the golden-haired people, the wind contained a cold that seemed to freeze him to his soul. With every step she took, Alexis felt his feelings being trapped by a kind of rock that contrasted with the warmth given off her skin by the tremendous coat that was part of his pajamas.
As she arrived she scrutinized the brick house with a dingy gate that at the top had little grates framing small windows. Well, they were incomplete windows. If I had to compare those windows to anything, I'd say that from a distance they looked like teeth with parts destroyed by decay.
"I'm sorry unconscious of Light, but to Caesar what is Caesar's and to the Devil what is the Devil's. No doubt this house (for me, psychiatric without budget for the second floor) has the perfect aspect to belong to the darkness: Dirty and with chewing gum stuck to the floor... this the infernal palace."
Alexis didn't understand how someone as cool as the teacher could live in a house that looked more like, as I already described it, a small asylum forgotten by the state.
This palace has only one floor. The second floor is half built, there is only one floor, what looks like a room and a clothesline full of underwear and some underpants.
Alexis cried even more, because with his intelligence he could go far and offer his teacher a better life than the one she was leading.
He decided to jump over the wooden fence surrounding the house and enter through the back door. And, as in every insane asylum, all the doors Alexis came across were well secured, there was no way in.
Would anyone in their right mind enter a house like that?
Alexis stared at one of the windows. The one on the side of the house. One word was written there: "HAPPY".
He approached out of curiosity and through the window it was a blur. The window was on a wall that was almost entirely red. There was another part that was light blue. But, it is quite peculiar that the red colored part forms a letter L.
The truth is that Alexis did not care about this L. I don't think he even noticed it. He was absorbed, looking at that tear sliding down the window. The same one that was erasing the letter F of the word HAPPY.
The window was fogged with something white and some dirty water.
"How could anyone be happy here?
This more than a statement, it would be a plea, a wish to the universe...a Christmas miracle."
This was the most logical thing he could think of to think. So, he decided to complete that HAPPY, with what he considered to be the proper word for miracles in December.
The one behind the window and Alexis read aloud: MERRY CHRISTMAS.
They both noticed the voice of someone small. However, without warning the window opened halfway revealing small, heart-shaped lips identical to those of the teacher.
"She's not here, but I am, I will always be here, I will always forgive you, I don't care if you don't, nor do I care if she says we're not guilty of anything.....
I could never leave you because my love has been shaped by your fear. I'm under the eternal spell called the family bond... you can leave me tomorrow if you want, you'll never see me still, but if you leave me now.... Will you leave me tonight?"
Alexis didn't even think, she just did what she had seen in the classic movies her mother had made her watch.
When the girl cries it's always best to kiss her to silence her.
I can't continue narrating because this kiss, unlike the one they gave each other on the ice, was about a kiss that, instead of paralyzing something, made everything in her, especially her soul, scream like a thousand demons.
And I... Do I really have to answer?