Things were not really going as they seemed. And, that morning, no one in the universe was realizing it. Not even the Assembly, despite the effort put into being aware of the facts, would ever have imagined it. What was about to happen was inevitable by now and the consequences that would befall young Flavio Mancini would cascade down on the mood of the Assembly first, on the fate of an entire civilization later.

The slippery surface of life, on which Flavio stood, never quite agreed with the shaky legs he had. The Assembly knew this well, having woven, followed and cared for his fortunes since before he was born, for centuries. In his bleakest moment, darkness and cold would have been a welcome anesthetic for his torments.

Soon, with his feet literally resting on a slippery surface, he would have contemplated death up close, suffered its subtle charm until he desired its cruel beauty of oblivion, until he desired to drown in it and erase himself completely.

When Flavio fell into the water, his body was whipped by the frost.

Stiffened by the cold, he sank below the surface rippled by waves. With his chest full of despair, he watched that boundary between air and water move away enough to condemn him to drowning.

"If only I could go back... I would at least learn to dance."

A handful of ridiculous thoughts emerged from his desperation. Aware of being in his own grave, he admired the flashes that the moon projected on the waves. Spectacular and cheerful. He glimpsed the macabre sense of humor of a fate that was mocking him until the end. He wished he had at least the breath to laugh about it.

"...and instead everything comes down to a pile of sad memories, wasted time, without ever having lived love, without ever having really lived life... If only I could go back..."

But reality had overwhelmed him with a sequence of events insensitive to his efforts, unappealable as those waters that were torturing him, and without giving him any choice he had been traced a fate against which it was not possible to rebel. His warm tears fell upward into the mass of icy water, where his cry dissolved invisible in fragile and mute streams. Resisting the violent urge to breathe, he looked at the black sky distorted by the waves, through fragments of ice soaked with the whiteness of the moon. A whiteness gentle and ethereal, though ruthless, frosty.

"...and irrelevant as this life that I never had the courage to love or the love that I never had the courage to live."

He felt so irrelevant, at that point, that he doubted he had ever really had an identity in the universe.

"Did we ever really know each other for who we are, Claudia?"

If he had had the chance to go back, he thought again, he would have learned to dance with Claudia. Now with only a few moments separating him from death, however, he would have remained certain that he would never see her again. And yet, if nothing else, he could decide to love her until his last thought, a thought so strong that it seemed immortal to him.