The next morning, Vetranta woke with the smell of warm bread and the impatience of the markets. Nothing seemed different, except for a silence in the streets that was a little too attentive. Shutters clapped with delayed breaths, and the cats that usually insisted on meowing crouched still, their eyes fixed on the sky like illiterate astronomers.
I had slept badly. Fiora’s notebook had haunted me all night, its pages blackening and whitening like a shifting sea of ink. At dawn, I thought I heard the lighthouse ring, but there was no bell. Only the breath of the sea. So I pulled on my coat, took the notebook, and stepped outside.
In the streets, people walked with their heads raised, as if expecting an aerial parade. But the sky showed nothing. Not yet. Only a fragile white spark descended suddenly—a lone feather that landed on the cheek of an old woman. She burst into laughter, then into tears. The feather didn’t fall to the ground: it evaporated, leaving behind a formula scribbled in invisible ink on her wrinkled skin.
I understood: it had begun.
The First Feathers
The rain started without warning. All at once, the sky opened and thousands of feathers began to fall—slow, delicate, as if the air itself had decided to write a story by scattering its commas. Not a storm, not an avalanche, but a steady, obstinate, gentle rain.
Each feather carried something. Some, mere stains, as if from real birds. Others, words. Equations. Fragments of dreams. I picked one up. It vibrated in my hand, warm, and imprinted a drawing on my palm: three concentric spirals connected by a line. The same symbol as in the notebook.
Around me, the city reacted as if this were normal. A little girl gathered a cloud of feathers into a ball and threw it at her brother. The boy laughed, until the ball burst: inside, he saw his own adult face—bearded, weary, but smiling. He froze. So did his sister. And I noted that Vetranta had just added a wrinkle to his childhood.
Mara and the Bread of Dreams
I found Mara in front of her bakery. She had arranged baskets of braided loaves, and the feathers settled into them by themselves, fusing with the crust. She beckoned me over.
“You see? They’ve chosen their leaven.”
“What does that mean?”
“That some dreams must be swallowed to be fulfilled.”
I took a small loaf where a feather had embedded itself. On the surface, sesame had formed numbers—a string of primes. Mara smiled:
“Eat it. You’ll see what the numbers prepared for you.”
I bit into it. The crumb was soft, warm, but inside, the taste shifted brutally: iron, salt, memory. Suddenly, my eyes filled with images. A woman—Eleni—walked in a forest draped in ivy. Her hands stroked trunks as if caressing faces. She spoke to the trees, and the trees replied. The world was post-apocalyptic, ruined but fertile. And in her hand she held a feather—the same as the one I had just eaten.
Then it was gone. I stood again before Mara, mouth full of bread.
“Who is Eleni?” I asked.
“An answer that isn’t yet a question,” she replied.
The Mirrors of the Square
On Piazza dei Girasoli, the baroque mirror shop reflected the feather rain. But the reflections weren’t faithful. In the convex glass, the feathers rose back toward the sky. In the silver ovals, they turned into glowing fish, swimming through the air. And in a cracked mirror, I saw Fiora herself, writing with an identical feather, her fingers ink-stained. She saw me, raised her hand, and said—without sound, but I understood:
Don’t let Giulio burn them.
At that moment, a gust overturned everything. Feathers piled on the cobblestones, layering as thick as snow. Passersby sank their feet into them; each step released a melody, as if the feathers had memorized fragments of harpsichord. The entire city became an instrument.
And I heard one specific melody: the one Fiora had coded into her notebook. A score that opened a door.
The Message
The notebook vibrated under my coat. It opened. The feathers around me aligned like magnetized needles. And letters appeared, traced in white across the feather-strewn ground:
Meet at the port. At midnight. The sea wants to speak.
I froze. The sea. The beacon. The Architects. The lighthouse hadn’t lied: the feather rain wasn’t a miracle, but a notification.
Around me, the crowd adapted. Some fought feather battles. Others stitched them into coats. An old man swallowed one, swallowing his smile with it—he forgot who he was and simply sat on a bench, empty. No one seemed surprised.
Mara approached. Her hands still smelled of flour. She placed a feather on my shoulder. It did not dissolve. It stayed. A fixed feather, despite the wind.
“You’re anchored,” she said softly.
“What does that mean?”
“That you won’t float… but you’ll be heavier to carry.”
The End of the Rain
The rain stopped as abruptly as it had started. The sky emptied. The cobblestones remained carpeted with feathers up to the ankles. And already, the city sweepers rolled out their carts, whistling, as if they knew this had always been scheduled.
I raised my eyes. The lighthouse, far off, blinked again. Three flashes, a pause, three flashes. Morse code I didn’t know, but the notebook translated instantly:
Warning: the sea is resetting.
I clutched the notebook. My fingers trembled. The meeting was set. The next step was no accident.
And already, a feather floated before me, slower than the others, obstinate. On its fine shaft, an inscription, minuscule, which I read squinting:
Ivo Serra. You don’t have much time left.
Winners
SECRET
ECU
PEPE
GROWTH
