PART TWO: OF TENDERNESS AND OTHER BASILISKS CHAPTER XI: THE HARMFUL ANIMAL

   I left Baphomet with dizzy ideas and my head as a turbine where a hangover was future water which was grinding mercilessly, an intoxicated course of a burning river where it seemed to be swimming, disrespectful and foolish, an army of crazy ants. It looked as if they were dancing senselessly, an almost macabre dance, but rather than perish in the fire, they grew eccentric as they invited their congeners to an orgy of lava and anarchy. The silhouette of the world and reason loosened while sliding down the alcohol toboggan of that night of July. And without any firm handles, I was about to fall and drown. My life was a watery slope that did not allow me to see the edges and I slipped rapidly into a chasm of pain and terror, in the vacuum of not distinguishing my terrified silhouette in the midst of the images that were dizziness and suffocation, a shadow fleeting in paths that had not had any news from me, in which I had not left either steps or footprints in the 29 years I would be three days later; that wandering throughout existence with no injuries or joys, as an automaton who obeys orders, with no criteria for questioning them; which in a bend of supreme boredom can throw away his life steeped in treacherous elixirs that delayed reflection but killed, as a criminal, without one being aware of its rancor.

CHAPTER XII: THE SLAP

   The night and I seemed to be ill of the same disease, unexpectedly shrouded in a similar tone of poisoned pallor. It was as if a novice painter was painting it an unhealthy, unrealistic white, but in his large stains he was neglecting one of the corners of the horizon, since the natural black still persisted in some areas of the south. Who knows if I managed to survive because I was taken in that direction? That candid apprentice had erased Scorpio, but later they would tell me that some adjacent constellations remained, such as Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, from which Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda hid, the head and the tail of the snake, which perhaps had slid ffrom his hands, where they had possibly decided to jump just to end up meeting me.

CHAPTER XIII: TWO BITES

   I was still drowsy, for I thought that after coffee I went back to sleep a bit, and perhaps, in a stormy lethargy, I woke up suddenly, perhaps screaming. I guess that it would be 9 o'clock in the morning. At that time, the vision of a new face attacked me as unexpectedly as a storm of warm wind. The newcomer was a man who would be, in addition to more or less my age, of a stature similar to mine, or perhaps was somewhat shorter. Brown hair and brown eyes, a beige corduroy jacket, brown trousers and  boots, and a pretty dirty clear shirt which, however, seemed to retain the light of day. He seemed a tree trunk well clinging to the earth. So I saw him for the first time, retaining the first sun in his worn clothes and his radiant smile. He smelled a bit of sweat and enough of dirt, but his soul struggled to peek through his filth. Still drowsy, my thought lost its clarity and I failed to guess his name when I greeted him:

CHAPTER XIV: HUNGER

   It could not be otherwise. Every day I woke up earlier and the frightened light of the last dawn of July already penetrated through the southeastern crack, stroking my right eye as an amnesty. I began to balance the past. My fear was different now. The belief already helped me that Nicholas Siddeley was mortally wounded; but from then on I had panic that he was resurrected. I had woken up with time enough to reflect, this day 31 at my usual time, more or less 7 o’clock. I sensed that John was late to get up and if there was a coffee that day, −every day, but the first, there was, but I never took it for granted- his arrival would delay. But dawn was not the only light. Even powerful and luminous, I still thought I would have to decide whether I had fallen in love with Luke. Curiously I had already decided that before him it had been John. I never rejected what my heart was telling me; it never shocked me. But I thought it was better to be sure before making similar mistakes in life again. I decided with no apparent reason to stand up and get out of the tent. Everything was dark and there was no one still up. I pretended I didn't want to see Luke in the vicinity, Protch. I chose to lie to myself and I thought all I needed was to stretch my legs.

CHAPTER XV: SCARCITY

   A drowsy and clueless ray, whose goal was surely not me, woke me again, inviting me to open my eyes in the morning. August was already a burned bread smelling of seeds and cereal. The smell of the Kilmourne seemed to reach my canvas and even the river, like my life, fermented. The tent was a furnace where suddenly I noticed an unexpected loaf of bread. When lifting the blankets I saw that they had introduced a new book: Great Expectations. I had never read Dickens, but I knew the argument. I would have surely seen it in the movies. I didn’t open it then because heat now came to settle and the day was intensely hot. Mentally, I had put myself the date of August 6 to return, and already the days escaped my fingers. I knew I was going to miss them much and started to meditate how I would continue without them. But at 8 coffee came to me coffee and something much more expected: Luke’s face.

CHAPTER XVI: THE WISDOM OF THE EARTH

   It was rivers of light which, touching every crack, woke me up that day at about 10, and I had no courage to oppose their burning force. I unbuttoned the crystals of sleep and I stretched with hope and some sadness: I had only four dawns left with them. That day I intended to get to know then better exploring their permanent camp site. In addition, health made me signals so I dared to take it. Untangling those threads I was, when there came my daily coffee. It was Miguel again. He came with a blue linen jacket and a shirt of the same color. Later he gave me breakfast and good morning, and resumed the conversation from the day before as if we had left it unfinished.

CHAPTER XVII: BLACK MASS

   When finally I dared to go out, the night was another sheet with which some playful spectrum had wanted to wrap up. I could hardly distinguish Miguel and John’s tent, so close. For the first time I did the experiment to guess where the wind was blowing from and soon I realised that it was not difficult to find it out: it blew from the east and Olivia, I thought, would be calm. But as in a haunted lock, the key that opened it was inserted into the magic hole in its trunk of dreams and it blew away so hard its cinerary urn westward near that dense linoleum which was decomposing in cottons, discovering remnants of unfolded beauty slowly. So I was watching, little by little, that the night was not cold. Or dark. That a capricious part of the fog had stayed to live in the path of the Milky Way, from the Scorpio, in the south, up to Cassiopeia, in the North. Thousands of bright pebbles filled the night so well lit with magic. I could not do other than exclaim, not knowing that I was being heard:

CHAPTER XVIII: THE TALE OF THE UNIVERSE

− "God-Cause was alone and He was accompanied. He was one and He was two. He created Himself and both created one another, but nobody created them. That’s how God-Cause is, Nike, both indescribable and incomprehensible. But in my head I know that this is true. And at the same time He was a woman and He was a man, He was both at the same time. Or else, how could He engender all His daughters and sons? With whom? Everything in Him was beauty and harmony and desires to create. He lived in a nebula, no space or time yet, and felt the voice of Urgency, a gift that was in Him but He originated, to expand and invent everything. And before creating everything had an order. There was no kind of tension, because he didn't know anyone who could oppose his wishes. And it is fair that He alone could contemplate that perfection or otherwise His creatures wouldn’t have been able to stand it. His creatures..., well, I don't know much about all this, Nike, because we will not deal with God-Cause, but finally one day He decided to give them life, and they were females and males, their daughters and sons, the first being-gods..."

CHAPTER XIX: RECOGNITION OF ACCEPTANCE

   All tales are a re-creation, they give a second life to still life; they are, like pictures or music scores, a new existence, like the soul of the bodies. I remember a conversation with Mistress Oakes, some time later, in which she said to me:

− "I have spent my life next to two rivers. You can see their bed as the body which carries its soul inside: the water that is blessed when reaching the sea. Because in it, it melts into another flow, it transforms and lives again. Sooner or later, Nike, you will find your soul. Since it also will come out of your body."

CHAPTER XX: THE LITTLE KING

   August 6 was a day of challenges and sadness, cries and wonders, of sublime beauty and emotion mourned. A sleeve was falling off the old pillow of that paradise and when I got out of the tent the sun was static, maybe from there the word solstice comes, the pure light filling the Eden of those enriched poor people, bathing their humble land with gold, from which I was bound to be eclipsed. The light seemed a still life: apples and quinces. But the quinces were all covered by a diffuse light. The apples were an invocation to that Eden, juicy and evocative. It was 10 o'clock in the morning and they were all there. They seemed to have gathered in a circle around Mistress Oakes’ tent, and she heralded something and advised them calm, not to leave yet. They were all but Olivia, Lucy, Luke and Bruce, but the latter I saw coming from the river with a full bottle in his hand. Something he must have read in my face finding me opposite him, because the faithful friend seemed to understand that he would no longer swim with me. His pure heart must be suffering such desolation that he suddenly seemed to lose his balance. He bounced back immediately, but the bottle he was carrying in his hand suddenly shattered in front of Lucy and Luke’s tent. Instantly I saw Luke was startled and when he understood what had happened and after asking Bruce how he was, he became an improvised sweeper who removed all the crystals. But some of them must have remained. It could be a bad omen, but Mistress Oakes, who had also seen what had happened, turned and said:

CHAPTER XXI: THE LUMINOUS BEGGAR

   Our big yellow star must be following its course in the south, at its greatest height. I was not able to feel its light, and would be lying if I said that I could even feel its heat. And although it had been for millions of years doing the same route, I looked at it unable to believe that it wasn’t as disoriented as I was. But in my case it could be that the universe, after diverting my path, made me now wander along I didn’t know which ecliptic. I thought that the great star of day would have had time to at least see how a small star vied with its fire here below. And in my heart, that I had discovered those days well enough, all the furrows were opened to make a place to that little king forever, and separated like the petals of a flower, which after receiving heat from the sun, strongly hurt. So I had come to their outskirt without the ability to see or hear and I was to leave with such great ailment that I could neither feel nor think. Finally I went after John, I don't know whether crying, but with befuddled senses.