Has Melisandre Made a Friend Today?

The moment Melisande announced that she was going to make friends all over Paris, Verlaine and Rimbaud’s peaceful life as partners came to an official end.

Melisande’s sleep schedule was a mystery.

Verlaine would often find a small figure curled up on the living-room sofa late at night, wrapped in her wings.

She insisted that the living room ceiling looked “more like it has stars” than the bedroom ceiling.

Verlaine tried to carry her back to her room, but half asleep, she would wrap her wings tightly around his arm and mumble, “Dederun, don’t go.”

Melisande’s “great mission of making friends” always came with unexpected gifts.

Sometimes it was a squirrel from the park that chased after her relentlessly. Sometimes it was an ugly stone by the river that “could smile.”

The most troublesome incident was when Melisande tried to invite the pet parrot from the cafe on the corner “home for the night,” causing a minor commotion that lasted twenty minutes.

In the end, Rimbaud used his ability to open a subspace and gently but firmly “sent” the feathered friend back to its perch. He showed the owner the Commune’s special credentials and gave a rigorous explanation of “the behavioral science of anomalous creatures.”

Afterward, Verlaine patiently explained to Melisande that friends in human society usually didn’t need to be “invited” back to the nest.

But for Rimbaud and Verlaine, the changes had been gradual and subtle.

Melisande’s farewell came on an ordinary morning, silently and without warning, explanation, or even a “goodbye.”

As usual, Verlaine walked into the living room in the daylight, only to find the sofa empty and the blanket neatly folded.

A silence far too familiar caught in his throat.

Then he seemed to see that young child he had considered one of his kind, once standing barefoot on the windowsill, holding high a pure white flower that had come from who knew where, facing the rising sun.

The pose was almost like a sacrifice, or an instinctive call to return home.

Then a light that was too pure, or perhaps only the afterimage left behind as her figure faded, gently swallowed her.

The outline of her wings, her curled locks, and the white flower all disappeared into that halo of pure white light, gone without a trace.

As if she had never existed.

Only on the cold windowsill, where the flower had been, lay a colorless, almost transparent crystal, like a tear with nowhere to go, frozen in time.

☆

[Reader’s Guide] Melisande is a humanoid child with wings, scales, and golden slit pupils. Her mind is that of a child; her logic is consistent, and she often talks to herself. She has a purely malicious nature and is unaware of it.

Theme: You don’t have to become who someone else wants you to be. Simply exist openly and honestly, and you will be loved.