It seemed that eternal night had fallen over the city, but despite the thickness of the cloud layers, the rain that afternoon began to subside. The sound of falling water became more melodious and peaceful, and at sunset a certain clarity was even glimpsed on the horizon. The great tower was illuminated with a few furtive flashes of sunlight, which was setting outside the corner of the window of Alondra's house. She was afraid. It was a strange feeling that she had always denied. It made her sad to leave her house, the nest that had always contained her. The shadow of a rainbow appeared over the great tower. The contrast between the slender blackness of the great tower and the colorful unearthly beauty of the rainbow calmed her spirit and filled her with hope. She remembered the rainbow that she had designed for the decoration of the forest where the peripheral network meeting had been held. On that occasion, she had taken great care to ensure that the meeting took place right under the rainbow. Because even Alondra, who had lived a life of seclusion, knew that it was impossible to touch the fountain of the rainbow. For that same reason she had made the impossible possible in virtual reality, making those who attended the peripheral network meeting architects of the natural. Although in some sense it was a joke, or one of the many aesthetic games possible in virtual reality, its poetic value had the power to breathe emotions into people's hearts, and these emotions could not fail to have effects. The reality that had been created in the meeting of the peripheral network was not alien to the rainbow that Alondra had created. She thought that many people from the peripheral network could be seeing that same rainbow from their homes right now. Immediately afterwards she was filled with disappointment, remembering that this was physically impossible. Which rainbow was more real then, the one she was seeing right now over the tower, or hers?
The vision of the rainbow made Mirlo enter a kind of regression state. Or perhaps it was that having left the house had reminded him of the desire to move. He threw himself on the floor and couldn't stop messing around on the carpet, rolling and crawling all over the living room. Alondra laughed and didn't understand anything, because he acted as if he were two years old.
- The Rainbow? – said Alondra, and pointed her finger at it.
Mirlo was laughing and very agitated, but he did not utter a word. Alondra then decided to play with him and also threw herself on the carpet, rolling, laughing and crawling around the living room. They would climb on the couch and throw themselves from it on top of each other to tickle each other, grab each other, or simply use each other as a cushion to stop the impact. They looked like two feline puppies enjoying discovering their little paws. They played until nightfall. When they were tired enough, they laid catching their breath on the carpet, staring at the cracks in the ceiling.
– The book you like is more than two hundred years old. It talks about a distant future, in the year 3000. But there is a moment when it mentions a book from the 23rd century. I mean, now. And that book talks about a new beginning, and a person, Alondra.
Alondra didn't know if Mirlo was understanding what she was telling him, and looked at him. He looked at her too, and for the first time there was something more in his eyes than strangement at her words. At least, he understood that she was talking about the book, and her name, and he understood the emotion in Alondra's tone, and he understood that she wanted to say something more than what she was saying.
– Grandma liked that book. That's why she called me "Alondra."*
– Grand-mere? – Mirlo asked softly. Alondra felt as if a bright red ball began to melt in her throat, spilling a thick, sweet liquid all over her insides.
– Oui.
* Alondra means lark