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But the answer that came back tirelessly was as clear as it was certain.

“Of course you do. You’re Azura, you liked that name very much.” he sighed. “We were there, living peacefully, and then the darkness came. It took everything away.”

He stopped for a moment, his breath weakening.

“It was sad and inevitable. You just forgot, that’s all. Azura, please stop being like that and pull yourself together, it's very important.”

Ivyne shook her head again, backing away.

“I wonder what I’m doing? I’m talking to you when everything here may be just a dream! And you never existed!”

“In a way, it would have been better for you, Azura.” he acquiesced to Ivyne’s confusion. “But please remember otherwise we'd never be able to free ourselves.”

Blood spurted out of the huge red mass and flowed from everywhere. Rales of agony broke out from his ashen prison and tore the whole kingdom apart. Then his blood darkened and mixed with the torrential rain that eventually poured out of the raging sky and slowly plunged all around into a black sea.

“See you later, Azura.”

Ivyne shouted the name of the stranger, but he had already returned to a world she could no longer reach. She believed that her heart would die out and thought that she never knew as in those moments, even if everything had to be defined only as a dream, more pain.

And when the mists of Ivyne’s dream finally faded and she woke up on her bed with purple sheets, like the long curtains of the door window that hid the morning light, tears that seemed inexhaustible ran down her face.

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.” the girl whispered again against him even though he had long since dissipated, under the veil of morning light. “But you’re wrong, I’m not Azura.”

***

Ivyne Raot remained prostrate on the black wooden chair of her balcony, her orange satin dress in light veil, floating in the light morning breeze, she contemplated the big lively and colorful city that stretched straight ahead of her. Her long blonde hair almost white, always stunningly catching the rays of the sun, swirled around her pure face, she relived her last vision, that dream so intense and so horrible that had shaken her to the very depths of her being and yet she was unable to push it back.

Again and again, she thought tirelessly of those terrible and incomprehensible dreams that had appeared to her one evening on her way home from a party with friends and which have since never ceased to haunt her. Although she had never believed in such incredible fantasies, she finally had to agree that magical things really do exist.

That day, she went to a friend’s birthday party who had always made advances to her, to which she would only respond at her whim, while her heart remained as cold as winter nights. She wanted to meet her friends and have fun with them. Alas, her suitor, if one can call him that, had thought the opposite, and had almost harassed her all evening, praising her for her wonderful beauty, accentuated even more by her short trapezoidal dress of a light blue, thickened with a shiny veil.

Whatever it was, and no matter how much she flirted and played cruel games to escape better, she always hated the touch or the boys’ interests in her person. Her friends were always aware of this despicable part of her, just like her mother. They have all tried to understand this because it has not always been part of her nature. But somewhere, for some inexplicable reason, it had become hers. As she returned from that feast where Ivyne had once again broken the heart of a desperate boy, she felt something strange on the way, the caress of the cold wind, the smell of the earth or the beauty of the starry night were more pronounced than usual, and something grabbed her and opened a door inside her.

She stopped in the middle of the road and saw a boy squatting in front of her, wearing a long golden coat, an intense rain of bright and transparent feathers falling all around him. He was bleeding profusely. His large body was bending in pain, and then straightening up as he approached the girl, his hands stretched out towards her.

Then the wounded blond boy looked at her and his tormented smile was the only thing she could detect.

“I finally found you.”

The deep, magical voice and the terrible aura that surrounded him shocked Ivyne thoroughly and made her back away in horror.

“Please, help me. Please! I beg you, Azura! I finally got to you.”

But Ivyne, not listening to him, not understanding anything, backed away even more.

“No,” she whispered, terrified, shaking her head.

“Azura!”

“No,” she replied tirelessly.

“Azura, help me, I beg you, help us.”

The stranger’s voice became even more shaken and desperate as he tried to touch it. But the girl didn’t want to know anything.

“No, don’t come any closer, go away!” she was finally able to scream.

The sounds of furious horns woke her from that terrible dream and without the help of her friends, she would have been violently hit by a drunk driver, zigzagging on both sides of the road and spitting out all the existing insults to express his fury.

“Honey, what happened to you?” asked her friends who were furious at both her and the immoral driver. “You could have killed yourself, you know that at least!”

But Ivyne was having trouble getting back to reality. She kept looking at the place where the damn boy was standing for just a moment.

“But the boy was there, wounded, asking me for help, and I, I...” she tried to explain, still all turned upside down from that mysterious apparition.

“What are you talking about?”

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