Ivyne shouted the stranger's name, but he had already returned to a world she could no longer reach. She thought her heart was about to give out, and thought that never
had she known greater pain than in those brief moments, even if everything had to be defined as a dream.
And when the mists of Ivyne's dream finally cleared and she awoke on her bed with crimson sheets, like the long curtains of the door window that hid the morning light, tears that seemed inexhaustible streamed down her face.
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” the girl whispered to him again, even though he had long since dissipated under the veil of morning light. “But you're wrong, I'm not Azura.”
***
Ivyne remained prostrate on the black wooden chair of her balcony, her light-veiled orange satin dress floating in the light morning breeze, gazing out at the great, lively, colorful city stretching out before her. Her long, shining blond hair swirling around her pure face, she relived her last vision, that dream so intense and horrible it had shaken her to the very depths of her being, and yet she was unable to push it away.
Over and over again, she thought of those terrible, incomprehensible dreams that had appeared to her one evening on her way home from a party with friends, and which have haunted her ever since. Although she had never believed in this kind of incredible fantasy, she finally had to admit that magical things really did exist.
That day, she went to the birthday party of a friend who had always made advances to her, to which she responded only according to his whims, while her heart remained as cold as a winter's night. Tonight, all she wanted was to meet her friends and have fun with them. Alas, her suitor, if you could call him that, had thought otherwise, and had almost pestered her all evening, praising her for her marvellous beauty, accentuated even more by her short, light-blue trapezoidal dress, thickened with shimmering voile.
Whatever the case, and no matter how much she flirted and played cruel games to escape, she always hated the boys' touch or interest in her. Her friends were disturbed by this despicable part of her, as was her mother. They all tried to understand, because it wasn't always part of her nature. But somewhere, for some inexplicable reason, it had become hers. On her way back from the party where Ivyne had once again broken the heart of a desperate boy, she sensed something strange along the way, the caress of the cold wind, the smell of the earth or the beauty of the starry night were more accentuated than usual, and something seized her and opened a door inside her.
She stopped in the middle of the road, and saw a boy crouching in front of her, wearing a long golden cloak, an intense shower of shiny, transparent feathers falling all around them and covering the ground with their glittering color. He was bleeding profusely. His large body bent under the pain, before straightening up as the girl approached, hands outstretched towards her.
Then the wounded blond boy looked up at her, and his tormented smile was the only thing she could detect.
“I've found you at last.”
The voice and the terrible aura surrounding it shocked Ivyne deeply and made her recoil in horror.
«Please help me. I beg you, Azura. I've reached you at last. But Ivyne, not listening, not understanding, backed away even more.
“No,” she whispered, terrified, shaking her head.
“Azura!”
“No,” she answered tirelessly.
“Azura, help me, I beg you, help us.” But the girl wouldn't listen.
“No, don't come any closer, go away!” she was finally able to scream.
The sound of furious horns woke her from this 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 every insult in existence to express his fury.
“Honey, what happened to you?” her friends asked, furious at both her and the immoral driver. “You could have killed yourself, you know that at least!”
But Ivyne had trouble coming back to reality. She couldn't stop looking at the place where that damned boy had been standing just a moment earlier.
“But the boy was there, wounded, asking me for help, and I, I...” she tried to explain, still shaken by this mysterious apparition.”
“What are you talking about?”
They all turned towards the spot pointed out by Ivyne.
“You saw it, didn't you? You've all seen it?”
But his friends only looked at each other without understanding and answered him kindly.
“There was no boy, Ivyne. You were there, far away, standing in the middle of the road, looking deathly pale as if you were seeing a ghost.”
“And you still are.”
Ivyne shook her head. She didn't want to believe it was a vision. More like a dream, no doubt. A very clear dream, carried away by a pathetic man's car.
“But he was there! she insisted all the same.”
“You were only dreaming, Ivyne. Probably hypnosis.”
“You really should see a doctor,” exclaimed one of her friends, joking happily. It's very dangerous.
“Not as dangerous as you,” replied the girl, indignantly, behaving in such a way as to make the problem disappear. That's why I had the fit.
Then the friends went on their way, chattering like a broken music box, the incident already forgotten, except for Ivyne of course. But she kept her secret. A secret that seemed to be understood only by her.
And from that day on, the boy never left her side.
Ivyne smoothed her silky hair, raising her head to let the morning rays of light caress her face and skin, then decided to leave the bed.
She was feeling a little tired because of the dreams, so incomprehensible and heartbreaking, that relentlessly continued to suffocate her and invade her entire existence, to the point of killing her internally. Openly mocking her impotence, they flowed tirelessly from obscure, inexhaustible sources. They had appeared for no reason and without any certainty, with the sole aim of destroying her. At first, Ivyne's optimism had led her to believe that this phenomenon would only last for a breath, that it was only the fruit of her imagination, too rich in fantastic tales and stories, her fault for loving them so much. But now, knowing it had nothing to do with her over-fertile dreaming mind, the girl had gradually lost the balance of her existence. As a result, countless questions began to haunt her and darken her mind, slowly extinguishing her joie de vivre. But who in her place wouldn't have asked these questions? Constantly wondering what he really was? Anything but normal, in any case, because you couldn't be normal if you were plagued by visions as incredible as they were inexplicable. This frightened him greatly and was very painful.
The questions just kept piling up, so annoying and completely ridiculous if you heard them. And the answers were inconceivable. Besides, who was going to ask them? And how to do it? She'd never be taken seriously, and at worst like a madwoman, Ivyne thought ironically, completely lost.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
