“It takes a boy and a girl for a love story to be told and it takes time for the feeling to settle between two hearts,” Jaelle started her story telling while her eyes fixed Kris from across the fire that was burning in between them. “This story as well is no different, despite taking place in the country of passion and everlasting love confessions, the France of the 17th century…

Henry was a normal noble man, almost in his thirties, a man that was popular among single women and known as a player among the married ones. And why wouldn’t he be one? He had the fortune that was allowing him to move in the closed circles of the society and the looks: curly, chocolate brown hair and a pair of sparkling, almond-shaped eyes that made him look exotic in the eyes of the pure maidens. His lips were usually twirled upwards in a happy-go-luckly smile, but it was the smirks that made hearts drop in the stomachs. Where to put that he was visible from across the ballroom hall due to his tall stature.

But Paris was no longer interesting to him. Same old frivolous women, same old ways to spend his money. So he took off in his carriage, stopping in what his coachman said it was Aix-en-Provence. It was just a small town with old noblemen that ran away from the horrible Paris.

Call it fate or however you want to, but Henry felt like halting his journey for a bit and visit the city. He was tired, his expensive clothes weren’t in their best shape, his hair was all ruffled and he had a stain on the tip of his boot, but he couldn’t care less as he descended down the street, approaching more to the park he saw on the other side of the road. There was no one to recognize him there and no one seemed to really care that in a day of a sunny Sunday, he was alone in a park full of lovers or mothers and kids.

‘Monsieur,’ he then heard a sweet voice behind him, causing his whole body to turn around, ‘you dropped this,’ a young and fresh face was staring back at him with the innocence and sweetness of youth written all over the small and pale face of the blue eyed girl in front of him. She was wearing a black dress with long sleeves and her hair was braided and held together by golden pins. But the most beautiful jewel she was wearing was the smile on her full lips and the most expensive gift he ever received was the sight of her slim fingers wrapped around his white and silky handkerchief.

‘T-Thank you,’ he stuttered like a teenager in front of her.

‘You’re most welcomed,’ the girl smiled back, making her teeth shine in the bright sun that seemed to reflect in her eyes and whole being. ‘I take that Monsieur is not from around here?’

‘You’re right…’

‘Madeleine.’

Even her name had the resonance of gems clinking against each other…

‘I think the beauty of Paris is fading in front of this park,’ Henry then spoke, his eyes never leaving her face. And she looked down, embarrassed, like an educated young woman from the high society. ‘Are you from here?’

‘Yes, I live here,’ Madeleine’s voice made his heart halt its beats for a second. ‘I think I will always be around here.’

‘How come? Don’t you wish to see Paris one day? Or maybe Marseilles?’

Henry watched her eyebrows knitting together in a troubled expression. She was so precious!

‘I want to, but… how should I put this? I think this small town is what represents me as a whole being,’ Madeleine surprised him with her dense flow of thoughts. ‘I think even the sun light will be different to me once I leave this place.’

‘The sun,’ he muttered, still looking at her pale face.

‘And you, Monsieur? Where are you from?’

Brilliants shining brightly in the sun – that’s what her eyes seemed to be to him.

And Henry smiled, passing his long fingers through his already messy hair. ‘I come from a place where sun never shone his light down on me.’

☾ ♅ ☽

Without even realizing, 28 years old Henry fell for Madeleine de Demandolx, a 17 years old girl, the only daughter of a middle age couple. She was his angel, the only light that shone in the darkness of his life, the only fortune he wished to have only for himself, the Heaven on a devilish Earth.

Maybe it was the look in her eyes when she was looking at him or maybe it was her enigmatic smile that would appear on her lips as if she knew a secret no one else knew or perhaps the way her eyelashes were moving like the fluttering wings of a dark butterfly made him delay his return to the capital. Surely, she was educated and prepared for marriage like all the other women he ruined before. But even so, he wouldn’t dare to move an inch closer to her, afraid to tain even her shadow with his shallow self.

Madeleine de Demandolx was the reason he bought a house near hers, the very reason why he was moving like a wild cat inside the study room of his new house, a half written page resting on the clean desk behind him. He was prepared for the ultimate step a man was bound to take sooner or later in his life. He was sure he was. And yet, something was strangling him from the inside, preventing the right words to come out and settle down on the beige page in front of him – Henry was nervous. For the first time in his entire life he wanted to keep a secret from everyone. He wished Madeleine was his and his only secret… But society had rules and he had to obey them through a stupid letter.

A love letter that had to arrive at her house as sun was still setting…

Sealed and sent, his heart was lying in the envelope of that letter. So Henry was left with only waiting and waiting, pacing around the house that was supposed to serve as meeting place as soon as she’d receive and accept, of course, his feelings on paper.

But midnight had long passed and he was still all alone…

Hope was slowly burning down like the candles on the festive table he had prepared for Madeleine de Demandolx, the girl that had changed him completely, the only one that could light up the darkness surrounding him.

‘Henry!’

She came to him like an angel descending from above – all dressed in white, porcelain like skin, trembling lips and teary eyes.

‘Madeleine! I thought you’d never come!’ Henry hurried to her side, resting his big hands on her shoulders, feeling her trembling. ‘You… received my letter, right?’

‘I… have something to tell you,’ she confessed, her hands slightly pushing him away from her.

‘You don’t have the same feelings like I do.’ It was all he could think of: Madeleine wasn’t in love with him and she was going to marry someone else. His angel was deserting him, his light was dying on him…

‘It’s not that, Henry,’ she tilted her head, sadness overflowing her eyes in an expression that could have been read both as fear and shame. ‘I am seventeen, Henry.’

‘Age is just a number, my dear,’ the man caught her in his arms, keeping her trapped near the place where his heart was beating like drum. ‘If that’s what is worrying you, then –’

‘I am dying.’”

The sound of the guitar in the stillness of the forest close by was like a whole cascade falling in the form of droplets in a coursing river. And Chanyeol’s expression had gone blank, while Jaelle seemed to be in great pain. But even so, despite her fingers tightly clenched around the hems of her soaked in sweat shirt, her lips started moving and soon, a sorrowful voice disturbed the silence and their hearts:

“When they met she was seventeen

Like a black rose blooming wild

                                                                  And she already knew she was gonna' die…” Jaelle sang, her eyes fixing Chanyeol’s finger moving slowly up and down the neck of the guitar.

“The room was cold and leafs could be seen falling down from the branches of the tree in front of her window,” Jaelle gave them no time to waver from the sadness of the story. “The knelt Henry was trying to cope with the idea of losing the one that gave him hope, the one that taught him that love was more than the eye could see and that it was present in everything that surrounded him.

‘Henry,’ a heavy hand rested on his shoulder, startling him. ‘She’s asking for you,’ her old father whispered as if in a church. ‘Go and ease her pain, my son. She’s sad.’

The young man could only nod and hide his face away, ‘cause the pain of her loss was more than he could feel…

But he went inside the room with blinding light coming through the closed windows. It seemed that even the wind dared not to blow against the trees outside – the one resting under thick layers of blankets could not be disturbed by such an unimportant change of weather anyway.

Madeleine was laying with her eyes closed, her fingers intertwined above the covers that seemed to keep her thin body trapped on the mattress. Her pale face seemed to have an angelic shine as her long eyelashes were resting against the bluish skin underneath her eyes.

‘You came,’ her smile welcomed him as soon as she felt his presence inside the warm room. ‘I was afraid you left me without saying goodbye…’

‘I would never do such a thing,’ Henry shook his head vigorously as he took her frail hand into his, wondering about the strength that still resided in her pale and long fingers. ‘I would never leave you, my darling. I will never leave your side. I love you.’

‘Then it must have been a bad dream,’ the girl smiled bitterly at the ceiling above. ‘Henry?’

He gulped at her calling. It seemed to come from the pits of an abyss, from the bottom of a damned soul.

‘Yes?’ He whispered, gulping and wishing to turn back time. And there were so many things he could have done, so many things he could have said. He could have found her earlier, learn how to love her without being terrified by the tragedy lying ahead. He could have learned how to love her much earlier. Only if…”  Jaelle interrupted her story once again and the guitar slowed down, following her like in a dream:

“What was summer like for