Part 20.5: The melody of passion

The first time Mary and Tiffani went to Marisa's farm was when they were both still in their fourth month of pregnancy.

The more cheerful and dancing was Luz's mother, while the more quiet and reserved was Alexis' mother. That is why Marisa was not surprised that the first time they entered the "magic ceiling room" (I call it that way), in Tiffani's case, the ceiling turned electric blue.

Marisa didn't think it was necessary to see what color the ceiling turned in Mary's presence. After all, what she was really interested in above all else was the very possible nephew nesting inside her friend Tiffani's womb.

She knew that the mother of her possible nephew was suffering because her idiot brother was never going to recognize that child as his own and he already had his justice bought. Truth be told, he handled justice. He was part of the world's elite.

That is why Marisa never knew what color Mary's eyebrows turned the first time they joined to be one and went to the corner of her lips and entered her interior to illuminate with a certain color the life of little Luz.

Luz's mother did not give so much importance to these colors because Marisa did not explain too much to her and she could not think of anything else but to be happy to make her daughter happy.

Now she had to worry about the economic solvency of her little family. She and her daughter. She was determined not to go back to her daughter's father. It was clear to her that he was unfaithful and the big proof was that phone call with a little girl's voice. It could be the daughter of the father's mistress or his blood daughter, worse. And, without a doubt, that other woman was shameless.

Not even on this journey through the light could Luz's mother leave those weary thoughts. She made fists and the force of this accumulation of feelings, somehow, just as the color made the emotions flow through her cause, channeled the light through the cause, worth the redundancy, formed by the lines of her hands and; something particular, by the lines that have not yet appeared on her skin.

The latter I recognize because I have captured the origin of the golden sparks that delineated Mary's silhouette: Much of it comes from the skin of Light that was incinerated by the wind.

But they are also sparks from her other two children: Flavia and Esteban.

What happened to them?

Flavia's sparks smelled like burnt lipstick and Esteban's sparks smelled like fried fish. As for Luz's sparks, well, it looks like a mixture of these two smells.

I can barely breathe, it's as if a fire had charred something in all three siblings at the same time.

Now the one who must carry these ashes (sparks) is poor Mary.

How could she imagine that the house would be in chaos because it was inhabited by three teenagers?

Although, if her future wrinkles took sides before their time, it means that her own mind has a clairvoyant power. Luz had already said that, but I can just confirm that this conclusion is not induced by her excess of not very happy feelings (note my sarcasm).

This clairvoyant power is given to shine in the same element by which the great majority of animate and inanimate beings can be reflected: Water.

And here I thought the redundancies were pure incompetence on the part of the writer. However, it was only a clue to the most important place in the whole story, part of the clairvoyant power that perhaps one of Mary's three sons also possesses (otherwise, there would have been no clues throughout the story) prepared me to get this far.

Although bubbles are used for a variety of purposes, in this case, the redundancies proved to be like bubbles, repeating the same thing over and over again, only producing replicas. And I say this because now I am seeing through these bubbles a quick succession of everything that I have been narrating to you and I suppose it will reach this moment. A repetition of my life being an entity in the head of a teenage girl.

The bubbles don't allow me to see anything new, but they do allow me to hear a variety of musical pieces that my cat-like ear hadn't picked up in those certain scenes of the story. Low notes and high notes. Melancholy and euphoria. Holding back and a hint of detachment. And other melodies that I doubt have already been invented.

What I find most curious is that all the musical pieces are contradictory to the scene. For example, in the scene where Luz and Alexis sleep under the same roof in the camp (during the only day where I was able to meet most of the characters) where there is supposed to be music that stimulates romance or sexual tension; Luz's heartbeat (as I mentioned in a previous chapter) which are flames that have the shape and attitude of a set of dragons emit melodies that would be played if they were at the mercy of a serial killer, or when Dracula is about to suck the blood of his next victim.

This is cruelty not romance.

These bubbles that carry inside the memories of this beautiful story (again, note my sarcasm) emerge from the gills of a school of fish of different colors.

These fish are symmetrically distributed in the sea forming a set of diamonds with their caudal fins adjacent to each other. These are white in all fish.

The body of these fishes gives off a glow with the color of the iris of each fish.

The body of the mother of Light has disappeared, what is floating is her soul surrounded by. It is this same soul that vibrates with the colors that shine of all the fish.

Truth be told, no human body can swim in the water garden.

The most likely thing is that it is in the earthly part of this garden. In the depths of this immense sea. There darkness prevails. Like that day. That day like that night when Alexis and Luz were in the camp.

And I speak specifically of this day because I am listening to Alexis thoughts during that night. Thoughts accompanied by those same sounds, almost imperceptible, generated by the explosion of the bubbles colliding with each other.

"... an echo, a redundancy, a bubble; they are all versions of the same fact or the same plot or the same argument, but never of a true story.

I won't allow it... you will always remain in the rough draft of a fantasy romance story.

An echo is for plots that pass into history through the wind.

A redundancy is for plots that got stuck in the soul.

Most misspellings serve as a reminder to the soul. The body may make mistakes in its fact-filled life, but the soul also wants a life...it wants to make its own mistakes.

You have made Luz's soul forget what it should remember, but everything in the world where bodies live is governed by a principle of causality and if I can speak directly to you now it is because you are very close to this world, at last.

At last an adolescent heart was able to connect with a mind that attracted the demon for all the original sins that dwelled within it. What Lucifer did not know was that his feeling of guilt has nothing to do with the reasons that the world of bodies has invented.

We both know that the consciousness is the soul of the body, the one to be protected. That will be my gift to you.

Why are you so afraid of humanity?

You are looking at the bubbles because you want the mother of Light to drown in that water garden.

Do you think that if you stay here long enough you won't have to feel that unique and unrepeatable warmth of a mother?

Maybe it is because she is unrepeatable that she is in that garden full of bubbles. Because that sea needs her to preserve her faith by witnessing live the gift of life. That which is maintained and increased when the creator can feel his work with all his senses.

Although Lucifer has made you a demon apprentice, your fire is not yet cold enough to freeze the warmth of the soul of the mother of Light.

You may deny all that I affirm, but the principle of causality will sooner or later imprison your life in consciousness; by means of the words that will soon lead you by pure causality to the most important challenge of a demon.

You see causalities flow like water both in the draft of a story and in life.

This is the first part: How much can your fire against the maternal heat?

And if I'm throwing spoilers at you it's because the lines of the future couldn't resist the magnetism of my words and my warmth when she embraces me.

Maybe this feeling between us is her mother's impossible dream, a desire that drowns her and makes her float at the same time. A dream that could paralyze her.

That's partly why you are here, you want the colorful to become gray, the dream to become nightmare... you want what's between Luz and me... you want our psychic charm to paralyze the maternal warmth..."

Ignoring what he has said and keep talking Mr. hurt... although, of course, maybe with all those arguments about the principle of causality already almost almost humans are already on a par with us, the animals.

Damn, I should have guessed that the human forces within this story would not stand idly by. I wrongly assumed that the writer of this story would respect the integrity of the story. Even though she had said from the beginning that this was a rough draft. That is not true. This is a story, but from the heart of a teenage girl who lacks the good memory to remember spelling rules. There it is clear that the devil has intervened, obviously.

And yes, the sparks of the three is something I can control. Moreover, as I speak these same sparks ignite more and more. It seems that the fuel of the three brothers is words.

If that scoundrel Alexis cared anything about Luz, he would give some sign of where his brothers are. Whoever loves you loves your family. I know he can because otherwise he wouldn't have so much information about everything that has happened.

I already knew that he had been one of the creators of the game, but I think he has put more effort in creating what happens after the game.

What happens to characters who die in a game?

That is the case of Luz, she stayed on the train.

The weird thing is that I never smelled any sulfur on Alexis. Well, what does it matter who the demon is or was. Now I am the demon and he with his words has baptized me as such.

My fire results from the union of the three golden sparks that surround the body of the mother of Luz. She flickers a lot when the colored lights emitted by the fish become intermittent, giving small gaps of time in the darkness.

Something tells me that our friend Alexis is going to do more than just talk like an annoying chatterbox.

The mother can't take her eyes off the bubbles and how the skeletons of the fish are slowly coming into view.

These skeletons extend to intercept and connect their bony endings with each other. Bone with bone, they form one, a single path. In the end, the result is a tangled crossroads of "bone paths" that my recent fire does not like at all.

As soon as I bring Luz's mother closer to the intricate scheme of paths, my flames begin to die down a little. The only thing that is clear to me is that we (Mary is practically my puppet) have to swim through these paths. I am sure that all the land that sustains this country is also made of these "bone roads". Of course, there is mortal and immortal labor here.

But what self-respecting immortal needs anything from humans?

The problem for swimming is that this little fire of mine (which outlines Mary's silhouette and moves her through these strange waters) has a function in this sea. Otherwise, I could continue to make her swim. She's just transfixed looking at the bubbles and the glitter.

I certainly need a higher level viewpoint, as I would call it "X-Ray" to see the whole structure of this sea. Maybe I can find another way past this sea and get to the farm where they need nannies. Although with so many trap doors it seems that they don't really want to hire anyone.

Well, I guess if Mary can't stop watching the bubbles where Alexis is with his ear glued to Luz's chest (other bubbles follow the succession of events of this story without stopping); it must be because for some strange reason he is the host of this water garden, right?

Alexis smiles mischievously of satisfaction because I am doing what he wants. He knew he would have no choice.

I'm a poor storyteller, I don't know everything.

"Have you ever wondered why you can only know what her heartbeat sounds like through that flaming being?

You have heard so many sounds inside her but those emitted by her heart, or at least you have no opinion of your own as to what they sound like.

Before, her heartbeat was like the soundtrack to the stories she dreamed and narrated in her sleep. And of all those stories there was one that talked about unicorns and cats..."

Could it be that now I will understand the reason why I was chosen to invade her mind?

Alexis is sinking his head deeper against Luz's chest and I wonder if he's not afraid she'll catch him in the act.

"Thanks to that story I knew I wasn't crazy and that you really existed. Probably the memory of your death lingered in her mind and that's why she made a cat, the so-called Spy Cat, the protagonist.

At first I thought she was crazy, but her stories explained painful events in a magical way. Events that were very similar to mine.

I would tell you the stories, I would love to relive them and imagine them again; but since I could hear for the first time her impetuous heartbeat, she doesn't tell any more stories in her sleep.

It was sad for me, but her heartbeats reproduced those sounds I always heard in the countryside and replaced my mother's curses and cries."

Let me guess, you were stalking from the tree that is almost next to Luz's window while she slept.

Now you have a vampire complex?

Again her amused and silent smile. It seems that the only thing that illuminates itself in him is his smile and some little greenish glow, I think it is a pair of fireflies, it dazzles where his eyes should be.

However, Luz herself said something along the lines of: "His eyes are black, blacker than night, a black where not even an iota of light enters. Her eyes are as black as a black hole.

He attracts everything, but no one attracts him."

Alexis can't help but laugh without any fear of her waking up.

"Luz doesn't want to wake up, that's why she won't wake up. The bubbles transmit to her the warmth of her mother's gaze. She feels her mother, even if Mary doesn't touch her.

The two are as close as they are far away at the same time. Only the impossible dream they share that paralyzes them both can make Mary swim. But, for that, first you have to listen to what I heard after a week of feeling like a child listening to her heartbeat."

She sank her face deeper and Luz's chest sank even more, as if her skin was elastic or possessed an excess of flexibility and....

Is that Latin language?

As soon as Alexis moves her face away from Luz's chest, a poem in Latin language starts to be heard in the middle of the darkness. A minute later, from her chest emerge dragons made of fire, her heartbeat.

These dragons intermingle with each other causing bigger and bigger flames. Simultaneously, a myriad of delicate yet strong melodies blend together to create a musical track that invites you to dance to your heart's content.

That's exactly what I'm doing because I can't resist.

"You haven't heard this until now because Luz has never been this close to unraveling the mystery surrounding teenage karma which is based on a principle of chance.

Why in adolescence?

Most of all, to know what exactly that teenage karma is... in the end it's in adolescence where it's decided whether you're a criminal, a tramp or a prince

Who of them all will see the light of youth?"

That adolescent karma thing (leaving aside that it has been uttered once again by throwing the principle of causality to the wind) I had already heard it in the poem heard when the bones became skinless and muscle-less.

Even with these revelations I can't stop dancing as if I'm not interested in what Alexis is telling me.

"Dance cat, dance

Dance wild instinct

Turn and turn

Like the earth on its own axis

Like the cat that's going to bite its tail

The pain will erupt

Because you can't live

Without having to suffer".

The fireflies glow with a green color that begins to blind me, to deafen me and, apparently, also wants to leave me without smell. And the hope of an animal can only reside in its senses. The hope of survival.

But now my own fire burns my ears, my eyes and I can smell nothing but smoke and ash.

Those dragons made of fire are the very melodies of all-consuming passion. Everything that dwells in her mind and, perhaps, part of what dwells in that mystical place that some called "The mind of the world", where they say hope was created.

I speak now of this mystical place because the melodies of passion only obey humans who possess souls that have completed a century of life and their hope is still searching.

It is said that the color green is the color of hope and it is only hope in something that advances the force on which the impossible dream rests.

That force is the maternal warmth, the one who will suffer, but the leader of that force is me.

The one who will pay for the broken sticks is me.