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Her eyes continued to stare at him, the gloom claimed his darkness, and yet she still saw him as a brief spark of light in a life-stealing eclipse.
His wife let out a sigh with a breeze that caressed Miguel's face. As if her soul kissed him before escaping to heaven. He tried to embrace her, to hold what he had left. He didn't want selfish death to take her away from him.
Days passed and turned into months and the bitter pill of mourning for the missing woman, made Miguel drink and get lost in the unreachable traces of intangible love.
Deep in the forest he can be heard crying, lamenting what happened, the liquor and the hours without sleep drove him to a point of madness, causing him to hear a spectral voice among the rocks near a lagoon.
Miguel, throw yourself into the lake and drown yourself to be with Nairuvis.
Indignant, life is not life without his other half, but if he were to die, it would mean reconciliation with death.
"I will not give you my soul, not at this time. But you are evil, you have already made them clear to me, I will look for you in the volcanoes or deep in the ocean to face you, perhaps pull a trigger and a bullet or the edge of a dagger will come out if I see your back."
He knew it was a hallucination, that his mind was playing a joke on him. Yet a part of him wished it were real, that there was a culprit, someone or something to take revenge on. Enraged, he waded into the water, feet smeared on the muddy bottom, snake branches hidden in the thousands of aquatic plants crashing against his legs, spiders on vines snagged on his body, until he reached the center of the shallow, murky lagoon. From the surface, a black hole was visible.
Where will this tunnel take me, what awaits me if I put my body in it, is it a trap set for me by death? A thousand things were going through the mind of the maddened man.
He dived, not as the act of a suicide, but as a challenge to death itself. The tunnel is narrow, his body would not bend if he wished to return, it is a deep one-way trip. The pressure made his ears squeak and his eyes glaze over. His body began to claim the air it lacked, but Miguel would not allow himself to die or return. His desire went further, with courage and bravery, he followed the swim into the darkness.
Miguel awoke on the shore, alive, rested and sober next to a jealous god.
"How can you love like that, not even my celestial beings love me as much as you love your wife?" asked the god.
"Because I gave my everlasting soul to her, and she gave me hers. And we own each other, it is a bond that neither hell nor heaven will separate."
That god saw him angry and said;
"I will bring her back to life, and you will love her as you claim".
The lake began to bubble and out of the water came Nairuvis, but she was not the same, she had grown old and was ninety years old.
When she saw her reflection, she covered her face. Miguel, seeing her reaction, said to her;
"Do not cover yourself Nairuvis, for me, you will always be beautiful".
Then he turned to the god and replied;
"When one loves to the soul, not even the greatest obstacle separates you from the other"
Their love remained strong and unchanged for a few years. Until Nairuvis became ill again. At a clinic history repeated itself, only this time she said;
"Don't ever snatch me from the hands of death again, don't ever do this to yourself again."
After his second departure, Miguel returned to the lagoon to reawaken the love that belonged to him.
That god stopped him again, he looked disappointed.
"Didn't she ask you to let her rest?"
Miguel did not turn to look at him, as he walked into the lake, he replied:
" She asked me to rest"
"If you go after her, you won't come back to life, I won't let you be together."
Miguel continued on his way to the tunnel in the lagoon. Now he knows he is not crazy, he knows that his love made a god angry, that death defied him, that beauty was worthless, he had defeated them all, his only challenge was to hold on to life in the tunnel of no return.
He sank back into the hole that had become narrower, which slowed his movements, his lungs trying to breathe with strong contractions and his palpitations buzzing in his ears.
Life was beginning to leave him.
"If I can get any lower, I'll die quietly" he thought.
He propelled himself with his hand into the dark depths that were devouring him completely, he could not see the slightest light nor the end of the road. His struggle was seduced by a dizziness that lulled him to sleep until he touched a hand, it was Nairuvis at the bottom of the lake encouraging him not to give up yet. With his remaining energy, he kissed her between life and death, in an unknown underworld.
The spectator and witness god envied them, for he would never be loved as they loved each other. Seeing their sacrifice, he would not allow such a powerful love to be extinguished, and with, some jealousy he touched the lake with his hand, transforming the couple into brambles that grew into trees intertwined like spirals. The waters of the lake became crystal clear and the shores filled with flowers. They continued to spread towards the firmament like a cloud of leaves in the sky. It was beautiful for the god, who, seeing the landscape, called that place the lake of lovers.