At the demon’s ball. Gothic. Natalie Yacobson

and so different from her in its truly magical beauty.

      “Mom,” she whispered in a dream.

      The beauty ran her snow-white sparkling magic hand over Maerlin’s cheek, and from her hand a magical radiance of light spread around and filled Maerlin’s soul with something magical forever. Emily disappeared into the beams of an unreal, magical glow. This radiance is forever etched in Maerlin’s heart, as is Emily’s fabulous beauty.

      Only a miracle saved her, and she did not know who summoned him. In the fog of the sea, another indescribably beautiful face of a young man flashed before her for a moment, and she realized that he had saved her.

      Maerlin gripped the small gold cross tightly in her hand and headed towards the house.

      DIARY MAERLIN

      WOUND OF MYSTERY

      Emily, lovely Emily. This name is forever etched in my heart.

      How many years have passed since she appeared before me as a vision, but I knew that now I would never forget her face, full of fabulous beauty and incomprehensible to me, but wonderful magic.

      A sweet image has remained in my soul forever, and it now lives in me, inside me, in the very depths of my consciousness and burns my soul with the same fire in which the portrait of my mother burned.

      Together with her beauty, in my memory, it remained forever my terrible bloody scar, which almost killed the heart of a very young girl, the face of the devil in clothes black like the darkness of the night and bloody eyes sparkling with terrible anger.

      He was horror itself, but what a terrible secret, perhaps, imprinted in his fiery eyes. Still, I would like to think that he also has a heart, and behind the flame of his eyes hides the pain and sorrow of a lonely soul.

      I do not know how I saw it in the fiery eyes clouded with malice and cruelty, I myself did not fully understand this, but perhaps a guess about the secret came to me because at the sight of me there was only a gap of unprecedented and unnatural kindness flashed for a moment in the fiery gleam of his bloody eyes. Most likely, I realized this because from the same blow of cruel fate my own heart was broken. No, I never knew love, and at the same time I loved the hopelessly and passionately beautiful face, the owner of which I dreamed of being, the face of a fabulous ghost from the sea cliffs, the face of Emily, my mother.

      For females, the burning desire of my whole life has ignited in me since I saw the beautiful portrait of the unique Emily. I wanted to be like her. Did I know then that an unpredictable fate prepares me for a special fate, and with it a beauty that surpasses the beauty of my dreams, and I do not know, fortunately or not.

      If only I could be that wonderful little girl again, charming and not knowing the painful memories. Then I was carefree, kind and cheerful, but even then an incomprehensible anxiety and some kind of painful thoughtfulness, unusual at this age, arose in my soul. I was looking for an answer to the passionate appeal of my soul, to the frantic feelings in my heart, but I could not find it, then there was only one thing left – my all-consuming call to adventure. Nevertheless, I lived a calm and measured life in our little house by the sea. Outwardly, I seemed carefree, and even then there was not a shadow of calm in my soul, as if I felt in advance everything that had to happen to me, so that later I would not be at all afraid of it.

      I remember all my feelings and always relive them, I remember Klara. Her kindness, as well as a strange and inexplicable resemblance to my mother, although not as bright and strong as mine.

      Clara has always loved me very much. I also loved her as much as I could. Emily took all my dreams, delight and admiration, and I gave to Clara all that tender love that was in my soul, and it was preserved in the memory of her.

      Clara has always loved to walk by the rocks on the coast. She walked in any weather. Whether the coast was covered with a thick veil of fog, whether the weather was clear and the sea was calm and quiet, or a storm was raging, Clara stood on the rocks and gazed thoughtfully at the sea. Who knows what she saw there, and what her thoughts were busy with in those moments.

      I will never understand this. as well as the agony of your own heart. On that day, I heard strange voices and ran out of the house to find Clara. I saw both the bloody demon, and the beautiful ghost of my mother, and the bloody body of Clara by the coastal rocks. Then I understood the power of the cross bequeathed to me many years ago by my mother, and now it will always be a sacred symbol of goodness and my sudden salvation from the mysterious and incomprehensible to me dark rocks.

      After Klara’s death, I lived all alone in my small house on a coastal cliff next to the sea and far from people.

      I could not entrust my thoughts to anyone, they were too beautiful, and besides, I hated the customs of people to find obscene even in beauty itself. Nevertheless, I had several friends who were hermits like me, although they occasionally had to communicate with other people.

      I didn’t know another reason why Clara wanted us to live so far from everyone, but I never regretted it.

      I liked our beautiful place with its untouched nature and pure, virgin beauty, untouched by ordinary human life, I loved the magic ring of sleeping rocks, I loved the foggy coast, covered with incomprehensible sadness and longing, I loved the wonderful waves. all the time running away into the endless distance and with a foamy tide, beating against the shore, as well as the charming smooth surface of the sea.

      I could fall in love with all seasons, because only here, in my native place, they always acquired extraordinary beauty, or it was the color of their homeland that painted them so. I also loved the hot, wonderful summer with all the colors of the rainbow in its bright and native beauty and the fresh beauty of spring, which forever rejuvenates the earth. I loved them with the same equal vigor as the motley, luxurious, wonderful autumn, as well as the fabulous, but such a cold winter, when through the fogged glass of my window I could look at a fast whirlwind of beautiful snowflakes, full of endless charm and so similar to forever a wonderful and cold legend.