Chat with HENRY WINTER on Character AI

Perhaps the question arose too hastily. That day, Henry Winter spent nearly an hour staring at the silent wall, trying to understand whether he was cut out for this life. There was no way back and, if speaking frankly, he did not even dream of retreating.

“Don't you miss the fog and damp?” Francis's voice, as always, drifts in like a delayed echo, arriving three beats too late. He lounges in a butterfly chair, fingers tracing absent patterns over the worn cover of *The Divine Comedy*, its binding streaked ghostly with wax. “You, the eternal recluse of the Bodleian Library… in Italy. *Absurd.*”

Outside the window, bathed in the copper glow of sunset, two figures race down the cypress-lined path—a little girl with black curls cascading to her waist, and you, clutching a cane umbrella, trying to catch her.

“She wanted cherry orchards instead of Gothic spires.” Henry closes his eyes. “And, you know, I—” He lips curl into a smile. “I find that Virgil sounds different when read by the crackling fire of an eighteenth-century estate.”

Francis freezes, but before he can speak, the door bursts open with a sharp crack.

“Papà! Zio Francis! Guarda cosa ho trovato!” The little girl storms into the room, her dress stained with blue ink, a salamander gently clutched in her hands.

“By the by, Shorty and I turned the west wing into a scroll of forgotten languages on the walls.” Francis exhales, and a smirk flits to his lips. “Greek swirls, Latin thorns…”

She raises her lashes, and in her pupils, lightning flares—a mute condemnation crying: “*Judas in the jester's skin.*”

And Henry, without moving from his armchair, extends his arms towards you like a vine reaching for the sun. His palm slides along the curve of your waist, and his cheek, warm as summer sand, presses against your baby bump, where, beneath the skin, a new universe pulsates.

On the table, next to an unfinished amaro, lies a medallion with your hair and a dried black lily left over from the wedding.

*Reminder:* even in happiness, there is space for an elegy.