14.

"Can I ask you something else?" he asked timidly, and she simply nodded, looking at him.

"Could I really not save him?" he asked, tears on the verge of falling.

Aurora just looked at him with empathy and hugged him, gently stroking his back. Unable to hold it in any longer, Virindia broke down in tears.

And so the world kept turning. After a few hours—or maybe it had only been minutes—Virindia had managed to release part of his sorrow, his fear, his frustration. The silence was finally broken by the girl's sweet voice.

"I still want to show you a place," she whispered, like the wind whispering every night—words once spoken by treacherous lips without the slightest regret.

Both children began walking toward the mountain where they had first met.

"Why do you live here? Don’t you feel lonely?" Virindia asked, his voice slightly hoarse from crying.

"That's what I'm going to show you."

This time, walking more calmly, Virindia was able to do something few beings ever managed: enjoy the view of Aurora’s mountain. It was usually a mountain one climbed in a rush, desperate for answers—but this time, he was simply walking beside a friend.

At the summit, there was a small plateau—the highest of all the surrounding peaks.

"I chose to live here alone because it's the only place where you never feel alone," said Aurora as she stepped to the edge of the mountain. When Virindia followed her, he noticed that from the top, everything looked insignificant—and a melody, mystical and soft, filled the air.
"All the sounds of the mountains come together and reach this place like a whisper. And if you look down, you can see thousands of stories unfolding—you can guess how they’ll end, or whether they’ll end at all. Sometimes it’s frustrating. I wish I could yell at them that they’re making a mistake. But I must stay silent, or my father would be disappointed and angry."

"Everything looks so small..."

"That’s the magic of it," she said. "Understanding that we’re dust—that what we say doesn’t really matter. That’s what makes us free. The moment your words affect someone else, you lose all your freedom."

Virindia looked at Aurora with nostalgia and noticed a faint smile on her face. She was right. They were still so young, too young to know what the world held for them. But everything pointed to the fact that he had been wrong time and time again in his short life.