The sun is peeking behind the distant mountaintops. Its ruddy flame and heat are chasing away the last dark twitches of the previous night. Sheltered behind the old ruined walls, side by side, we are welcoming the dawn. Time is the inevitable master of all our encounters. Can it be stopped, so that in eternity, in perfection, we could reveal to each other all the tremors of our souls and the feelings of our hearts?

I know you are fighting with yourself. I know it in your every look, touch, in the words that sometimes break out of the dark abyss of your soul. And that very darkness, so deep and unfathomable, takes all of me. Sometimes, a smile comes out of your cruel seriousness and illuminates me with magical beauty. And just when hope is born in the flicker of such light, the darkness strikes again suddenly and unexpectedly - the darkness so terrible and inexorable.

I still don't know why and what makes you so irresistibly attractive? There is almost certainly an all-pervading feeling of being completely intoxicated by you. Maybe I know you from the unexamined worlds of my own thoughts, subconscious longings after something mysterious, something that I so strongly want to reveal, rename, make personal and mine. Maybe your distance is again a new challenge for my new conquests. In spite of all, I still persistently look forward to every meeting, during which I experience both love and pain with equal strength - pain as a payment for my sin, and love as an infinite feeling that completely infiltrates me and makes me a woman.

I do not know how you feel; the darkness of your soul does not reveal the truth. That's why even today, upon waking up, I will inhale your body scent and carry it in my nostrils, as a part of me, until we meet again. I will take with me the depth of your gaze, through which, when you look into my eyes, I discover something only mine, found after a prolonged search. And that's why, mornings like this are beginnings of a new life for me, because in your embrace, welcoming the ruddy sun in the east, I am born again and again...

+++

"Kaos, may I know where your paths lead?" I asked, embracing the inevitable fact that his response would be as always-mysterious .

"To the same, already seen places," he responded, turning away from me.

"Yes, unknown and very distant. Are you happy there?" my question was more an attempt to disturb the silence.

"Happiness is a feeling I am learning about only when I am with you. I am not happy there. And I will never be. I want to live the life of a mortal, in a valley of Rodgold, where murmurs and roars are heard, where men love and women give birth."

"Then stay, or take me with you," my voice was a longing plea.

"I can't. You can't go where I'm going. But promise me that you will wait for me here, on the first day of Autumn. I will come back."

I know the time is near. As the sun is rising up the horizon, I am meeting his gaze, distant and melancholic. The touch of his hand is also a goodbye, a farewell without embrace. He is going out into the light of a new morning, into rays that are taking him again onto an unknown journey.

"I love you,..." I am sending him off with a smile and tearing eyes , although I know that I will never get the response. The feeling of loneliness is overwhelming me. I am again alone in the pain that will last for a few weeks. I know the pattern : the pain, the sadness, the acceptance. Until we meet again...

On the days when the pain and sadness are unbearable, I am standing alone at the entrance of Kaos' world. I am recalling our first encounter, trying to understand where, when, how he entered my life. One distant summer afternoon, the black clouds brought him into my life. Being away from Rodgold, and seeking shelter from the storm, I entered the ruins, for which elders always warned to hold a hidden power and a terrible secret. I entered this same, circular chamber at the east side of the hill. Huddled in the farthest corner, I waited for the rain to stop. But the night came, in all its terror, echoed by thunder and lit by lightning. That night brought him to me.

I was told as a child that fairies and gnomes were born on such stormy nights. I closed my eyelids tightly. I did not want to look at the terrible apparitions, distorted in every stone, tree, crack in the wall, apparitions that were the fruit of my imagination and fear. In the shift of lightning and thunder all at once, there was silence - the supernatural. The rain stopped, and it seemed as if time had as well. In the light that looked like lightning, a shadow emerged, masculine and strong. Looking at it, I hid my face even more in the darkness. The silhouette of a naked man remained lying in the fern, which spread like a carpet across the chamber. And the clouds disappeared. The full moon illuminated with its rays that unreal being that was born in front of me on that dark, warm, stormy night. Holding my breath, scared and silent , I headed for the exit. Every step was a blink and a shudder. And right at the door, protected by beautifully crafted columns, I felt a cold shaking hand on my shoulder.

"Where am I? How long have I been unconscious?"

Turning toward the deep masculine voice, I met with piercing, black eyes. Long blank hair was falling down the unknown man's face and covered his broad, strong shoulders with its curls.

"I don't know, time has stopped." I replied.

"Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you. Where am I?"

"This is the border of the Eastern Empire." I answered meekly, keeping the secret of our village, hidden in the valley, between two mountains.

"Has anyone else seen me?" I felt fear in his question.

"No, no one but me."

"What did you see?"

"I saw as much as I was given to see," I felt the need to truthfully explain what had occured. "Light and lightning and thunder and..."

"It means you saw everything," his booming voice interrupted me, trying to cover the mere uncertainty in his tone. "Now you know my secret. Now you know the secret of my existence and the world I come from."

"I don't know anything, and I don't want to know," I admitted, fear escaping from deep within me. "Just let me go. And I will not tell anyone about you."

There are days when I wish I had never left Rodgold that afternoon. Although all the villagers were preparing for the big annual festival, I wanted to be as far away from that omnipresent excitement as possible. The villagers were cleaning the apartments, which hung like bird's nests on the cave walls. In one of these, I lived with an old woman. Her name was Tekla, and she was all I had. She found me 20 years ago in the forest, next to a thousand-year-old stone altar, on which the locals used to make sacrifices to their pagan gods. I never found out where I came from and who my parents were. I only knew that I was accepted in the village and that I learned to live along with them.

Tekla , whom I learned to call mother, responded always the same on all my questions about my past and future uncertainties:

"In its own time, the man will come - someone who will love you while I would be far, far away from you and this village. You will build a family and you will be happy."

She certainly thought of my life after her death, which was surely approaching. Her age was noticeably taking away her strength. All her life she was alone. Almost unnoticeable in her modesty. She avoided women's meetings, conversations. She was silent and proudly bore her burden of loneliness, derogatory smiles and gossip all her life. As a young woman, she loved a man from the village. When they made their love public, asking his parents and villagers for permission to become spouses, they did not agree. His parents didn't want Tekla as a daughter in law because she was orphaned, poor, without anything material to bring with her to her new home.

As a young woman, Tekla took their rejection with pride and no one ever heard of their love again. She left the village and lived in an abandoned cave, near a mountain waterfall for years. Whoever encountered her in the surrounding glades and valleys, looked at her with mockery. And then, one winter, she returned to the village with a bundle in her hands. She returned to her once abandoned home. Soon the locals found out that she brought a child with her - a female baby, just born. And when she encountered a revolt,and loud insults of her immoral life from the locals, she asked to say goodbye publicly to everyone for the last time.

"I am leaving again knowing that I am not welcome here. But you should know that you will bear the sin of rejecting not me, but this little child. I found this little girl in the forest, on the altar, wrapped in a soft cloth, white and clean. I followed the tracks that led her to our land. They got lost in the river, under the waterfall. Whoever brought her, and left her, has no intention of taking her back.

If something happens to her, the wrath of the gods will be upon you, because you know that once taken off the altar, she carries a special power and blessings."

The villagers did not listen to her, but with the worst humiliation of stoning and beating they expelled her again. They burned her house and continued life as if she had never existed. But soon the plague began. First the domestic fowls, then the cattles, and then suddenly the children started to get sick. Villagers started to mourn the deaths of their loved ones.

The council of elders sat down and made a decision to return Tekla and the child. They found them in the same cave, damp and dark. The beauty of the girl overshadowed everyone who saw her for the first time. With black hair in curls and piercing black eyes, with the face as white as ebony, she greeted all with outstretched arms and a smile.

And the villagers demanded sincere forgiveness. Forgotten in her suffering, Tekla finally found her piece. She raised a child who became the most beautiful girl in the village. That child is me - Iris, who is still searching for her roots and her actual family.