And then… Xxx Mark’s Square was flooding with the evening tide. The sleeping girl never changed: She was a shadow and a shape and the reflection of nothing, illustrated in silver light before Elena’s eyes, real and not real at the same time. She followed the servants to a sitting room. He went to kiss her hand but she brushed past him without pause, sitting on a nearby chair with a high cushion. She floated down dark corridors and wept into the canals, forgotten and alone. “Is it real?” she said again. “Please, not so rough…” he said, but she swallowed his words with another open-mouthed kiss. Everything had been real; she had seen it all with her own eyes. When it burns, it produces illumination as intense as daylight. They embraced this way for a long time while Elena counted the beats of the girl’s
