Water lanterns and dreams in 1 nights

The wonderful thing is that I don't really resist him infiltrating into my life, but I hate him being too restrictive. I have a good impression of "freedom", but I have to admit that, like most people, most of my so-called freedom It is laziness that is not willing to take responsibility. Material abundance and free will often breed laziness instead of freedom.The real freedom lies in the soul, the soul is experienced and goes forward, even if the mind is still unrestrained like a vast ocean, even in a humble place.This is not my realm. My freedom is only for myself, and in the end it is nothing but outright egoism. It sounds bad, and I don't care.

As for my proponent of "lazy egoism", the Duke of Sutherland, his anomalous behavior has gradually increased, and it has not avoided unnecessary disturbances in the future. root.These efforts yielded essentially nothing but one thing, which made me understand something, and which inevitably alarmed me.

12. Duke 11

blue beard.Locked room.A key stained with blood.dead bride.In this strange fairy tale, there is at least one truth hidden. Some doors hide unknown horrors. You are warned not to open them, but the truth is that only after opening those doors can you face the cruelty you will encounter. Fate, struggle against it, instead of dying in a dream ignorantly.

That door exists in every corner of the world, and every door may be it before it is opened.

As the weather turned cold, flocks of wild geese passed through the open sky above the garden, making loud and strange calls.Frost, icing, rime, the reign of ice and snow is coming.I picked up a pine cone in the snow-covered woods.The pond solidified and faded from green to gray. I stepped on the falling snow and found a tree root on the shore. I swept the snow away and sat on it.The ice of the pond is frozen around the shore, a thin layer, whitish, and becomes more brittle as it goes into the pond. The water in the center of the pond does not freeze, but is still and unmoved.I weighed the pine cone and threw it into the water. It didn't fly very far, but landed on the thin ice, making a crisp sound of bumping.

There is a white tower.I found it while researching.

There are many rooms in the manor that I haven't set foot in. This is very normal. I don't have too much curiosity. Life follows the trajectory, and I don't talk too much about the path that fate has set for me. I always think that people don't need to have too much curiosity.Many people will contradict me, but sometimes it is true. It is easy to be satisfied because of poverty, happy because of ignorance, and dangerous because it represents your desire to hide in the untrodden place in the fog, and in the fog Maybe something bad is hiding.

On a rare occasion, I became interested in the mood swings of the Duke's Day, after all, they were always rare and well hidden under his visage.With the idea that all behavior has traces, I spend the few spare moments I have wandering around trying to find something to relate to.During the process, I don't have too much hope. Since it cannot be exposed to sight, the truly top-secret place will be perfectly hidden.But it's rare for me to have some fun for myself, and it's not a bad thing to look around for relaxation.

There are many rooms in the manor. I have always known this but never tried it intuitively. It was not until this whim that I discovered that maybe I have neglected my life too much for a long time, so that I have turned a blind eye to too many things.After a whole day of endless groping, in the most inaccessible corner of the forest, I found a white tower.About four or five stories high, the surface is gray and covered with dry creeper branches and vines.This scene must be quite beautiful in midsummer, but in cold days, these dead branches are thin and tangled, densely entangled, giving people only a desolate and dilapidated image.

I was amazed that I hadn't seen it before, it should be quite striking in terms of height, and when I looked back, I realized that before I knew it, I had entered the depths of the trees, guarded by towering towers, From the perspective of my room, it is well blocked.

The tower door is locked, and due to technical limitations, it is far from being so delicate and safe. I tried to find a tool to open it as completely as possible.The door was pushed open silently, and the sun stepped in before me. Countless fine dust powders flew in the mid-air illuminated by the light, and in the shadow that it had not touched further ahead, lay a revolving staircase, with no end in sight. where.The tower looks dilapidated and infrequent, and I suspect its owner has left it undisturbed in order to keep it from being unremarkable, and a building like this in what should theoretically be a perfect Duke's estate is interesting in itself.

I stepped on the steps, the light dimmed, and the steps spiraled upwards. There was no light source around me, neither platforms nor windows. In the darkness, I could only look up to see a distant circle of light from the top of the tower.The stairs gradually disappeared, and the all-engulfing darkness surged silently beside me, like an undetectable undercurrent. I went up the cave-like stairs, moving very slowly while holding onto the wall, being careful not to trip.The whole process was very long, and I couldn't help but wonder what kind of psychology the designer had for such an arrangement at the beginning. Every time the process of going upstairs was cautious and serious, it was full of a sense of ritual of returning to the world from a long and dark corridor.

Passed a pass.First, a strip of slender, triangular light leaked out, padded on the edge of the steps, and then expanded and brightened, covering the steps in a row. The light under my feet reached the brightest, and the stairs were left behind, and I finally stepped on the top of the tower.Pure white, gorgeous, dazzling.There is no dividing wall, this is an empty and tidy room, the storage is not too small but not messy, everything in sight is neatly organized.There is a window in the middle of the wall opposite me, that is, the wall directly opposite the stairs. The sunlight passes through the glass and imprints on the wooden floor unobstructed.There is a wooden tripod in a small dark place on the edge of the light, covered with a white cloth, I guess it is an easel, when I lifted the cloth, I found that it was so.There are a few strokes of red paint on the canvas, which have not yet formed, so it is not clear what the painting is for the time being.There is nothing on the right hand side up to the wall, looking to the left, there are some white jars densely stacked in one corner, and some angular things are crowded in the other corner, which are also covered by white cloth, and the contents cannot be seen .

I went to the corner of the white jars, they were made of tin, some were sealed, some were not sealed, I opened a few half-closed ones and took a look, there was nothing unusual inside, just various paints.There is only one thing that is unknown now.I went to the other corner, lifted the covering white cloth and threw it on the ground, and sat down to check it myself.Those were some framed paintings with their backs buckled, and the same gilt frames with carved rose branches. They were of different sizes, arranged from small to large from the outside to the inside. The smallest one was less than the palm of your hand, and the largest one was as long as an arm.Starting with the smallest one, I turned the frame over and saw the lower half of a person's face, with the nose and jaw lined like a sketch, and only the lips were full and bright red, facing me silently.

At this moment, I belatedly realized that the place I happened to find must be a place of complete privacy and undisturbed, and my presence had nothing to do with morality but to disturb the peace in vain.But in other words, it makes no sense to back down at this time. I don’t find such a place every time. The White Tower is still inside the manor. Even if the location is remote, there is no second choice for its owner.So I didn't hesitate at all, and continued to scroll down.The next picture is someone's left hand, starting from the forearm, the wrist and the other four fingers are still drawn with lines, while the little finger is vivid and vivid, the nails are light pink, and even the borders are clearly defined.The second one is a view from behind, shoulders up, and this time it is hair, only black curly hair occupies the center of the frame, softly attached to the beautifully shaped head, each curl changes in the light, gray or dark shine.

Each painting is just a part of the body, without the model’s frontal face and full posture, the subject is unrecognizable, the more I look down, the more I understand that these paintings are all for one person, and the emotions in them have not changed, just as depressed, fanatical and yearning , if the painter is really a duke, it's hard to imagine that he really made these paintings for someone, and he paints these paintings with brushstrokes of pure beauty, without involving deeper metaphors and the like, just pure, touching beauty, Even if there are no words in some paintings, people can understand part of it.

Such meticulous observation and brushstrokes cannot be given to any one person.Visits from such ladies are rare at the estate, at least not in my mind.My speculation was shattered by the next painting, and I opened my eyes a little.A complete faceless portrait, from the body shape still reveals the youthfulness of a teenager, but it is obviously a male body.

He was depicting the same figure, and I could see that, even though the previous drawing was only a partial depiction.Sometimes he paints with very light colors to make the portrait look bright and soft; sometimes he uses extremely strong color contrast, such as black hair and rose-like red lips, to endow human beings with vigorous vitality. It seems that the painter himself is always entangled in this paradox, and can't figure out which emotion to use to treat the people in the painting.

I don't recall the duke showing any preference for any of the boys, even for someone as dismissive as me, and if one came to the door, of course I'd know.The Duke himself was like some kind of ivory statue, insulated from violent emotions, and human affection brushed him like a cloud of dust at the feet of the statue, and could not move him in the slightest.

And he was so moved.

My hand on the frame slowed down, only the last part of the painting in front of me was left.