The young woman carefully opened her tired eyelids, closed them again for a brief moment in order to gently wipe the remaining sleep from her hazel-brown eyes with the balls of her hands, finally sat up after extensive stretching and froze as she saw her surroundings for the first time since she woke up: while her carefully groping hands recognized the soft, dry surface of the moss, her searching eyes saw an unknown part of a time-honored, dense, dark deciduous forest in one of its clearings. A single, warming ray of the purest sunlight broke through the tops of the trees, which were blurred in the dizzying heights of the firmament, and illuminated a rose bush growing in the center of the clearing, the branches of which entwined themselves in the sun like a dance, creating the only contrast in the playing light to offer to the gloomy glory of the closely lined up oak trees.

That same black-haired woman watched in amazement the visible blooming of the rose bush in the light of the sun and slowly approached the spectacle of nature until she reached the warm sunlight that penetrated into every pore of her body to warm her heart, the wonderfully blooming red one Petals seemed to swell like them, with a feeling of deep contentment. With a silent smile she closed her eyes and for a second in eternity forgot the meaning of herself, so that the image of the steadily growing rose bush bloomed before her inner eye, the image of two threads, connected to each other, growing into the distant regions of the highest mountains , ensnaring and yet never touching, but suddenly the rich blue of a branch faded and left nothing but a faintly pulsating red in the midst of the blackness of her inner eye.

The young woman hurriedly widened her eyes as the warm feeling of affection seemed to seep from her body like the water of the river of oblivion to water the fading rose bush, and she with a soulless, cold void in the middle of a black room, its impenetrable walls threatening to penetrate her from all sides, which made her shudder with despair, not knowing how she had come to this dark place; but as she tried to remember it, she realized for the first time that she couldn't remember how she got into that sun-drenched clearing, but now she knew that something she seemed unable to grasp was inconsistent.

Slowly the young woman closed her eyes to distract herself from the unbearable silence of the darkness and tried to recall the events of the last day, her time of solitude on that hard, cold stone, hers forced by the first snow of winter Self-knowledge, the proud smile of her Master, which caused a blazing flame to burn before her inner eye, which transformed her blood, which billowed with inexplicable warmth, into a boiling river of fire that kindled the weakly glowing embers of her heart, so that the dangerously licking fire in her heart drove the fire-breathing flow of her blood into every pore of her being, and warmed her body, freezing with winter cold; and then she realized: how could she be in a warm, sunlit clearing when the first snow of winter had fallen?Even while her mind was trying to process the knowledge she had gained, the black-haired apprentice believed she could hear the distant clatter of thousands of iron-shod horse hooves, and turned her head so that her closed eyes looked into the deep blackness of the room and there for a terrifying moment the towering battlements believed to see a city unknown to her, besieged by knights without history, until she opened her eyes a third time in shock and thus finally broke the magic of her dream.

Confused, Akane stared at the wooden ceiling of an unfamiliar room before yawning sleepily, stretching herself sensually, and finally sitting up comfortably, leaning her back against the wooden end of the straw-filled bed in which she had slept. A comforting shiver ran through her body as she felt the warm woolen blanket slip from her body, revealing a brown coat that did not entirely cover the white dress she was so fond of because it was unbuttoned while she was in looked around the strange room. The stone walls of the room, adorned with wooden shelves full of strange books, were only exposed by a glass window that revealed a view of the frozen lake, the layer of ice covered with powder snow that glistened in the light of the rising sun, glinting through the dense cloud cover, and interrupted by a thick wooden door, opened a crack, through which the strange voice of a woman penetrated the room.

As her sleepy mind tried to understand all the stimuli that crashed on the young woman, to separate reality from dream, a hazy thought in the depths of her being took on more solid contours, and although she did not know why, she struggled with it all strength against the memory of the previous day, which, however, fueled by the fire in her heart, won the senseless fight and got the young woman's hearing. Clearer and clearer, but at the same time blurred with every attempt at precise recognition, like a rainbow shining in all colors of the visible spectrum that seemed so close and yet would never be reachable, Akane remembered the gentle kiss she gave her Master and blushed to the ends of her hair, although not entirely sure whether she had dreamed.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir, but Master Ranma does not reside here at the moment," the soft, cheerful tones of an unmistakably feminine voice tore the young woman out of her confusing thoughts. Curious, since she had never heard Ranma speak of another woman, she climbed out of the soft bed and crept silently to the ajar door, so that she could poke through without being seen herself.

The sight Akane saw was so strange, however, that she almost gasped and then had to suppress a growl by biting her index finger: in front of the thick wooden door of the hut, the young woman saw the coarse, scarred face of an impressively large one and the muscular knight, whose body was completely hidden in shiny silver armor, on the side of which hung a brown, leather scabbard, which indicated an enormous, one-handed sword, and whose shoulder-length, dirty brown hair was loose from his head, which was only visible When the knight had taken off his helmet and was now holding it in his hand, he fell down; but it was not the sight of the mighty knight who put iron chains around the young woman's chest so that breathing became difficult, and poisonous arrows shot into her heart that threatened to cloud her mind, no, it was the sight of young woman standing on the doorstep of the house who gave Akane those hurtful feelings.The young woman's long, full, reddish, auburn hair, which fell like a cascade from her delicate, narrow shoulders, covered the deep blue outer dress, which hung loosely but firmly over her shoulders, down to her emphatically feminine hips, which clung to each other The outer garment opened forward to reveal the white petticoat that reached to her supple ankles, which also covered the bare skin of her arms up to the elbows, of which white, silk gloves covered the rest of the arm and her hands with soft fabric . The young woman was of such unsurpassed beauty that Akane wondered how the knight could not succumb to her charm at once, since even she could not take her eyes off her, and so could not hear the man's softly mumbled reply Was able to.

"No, sir," replied the tempting woman with a flattering smile, "this is just one of my master's many possessions. Unfortunately, I don't know which of his possessions he is currently in, but the master is happy to look after him wait if he wants. "

"No," the man muttered in his deep voice and turned around abruptly. "My men and I ride on immediately. We have to report to our liege lord. Tell your master we were here."

"Of course, sir," she assured him and followed his huge figure through the door, which she immediately closed behind her. "If the Lord will allow me, I will accompany him to the edge of the forest."

Akane slowly crept back to the bed and dropped onto the soft straw as her mind raced and her heart beat painfully fast. Thousands of questions shot through her mind, questions about why she slept in his bed, where he was, who she was, and even though she knew it wasn't her business, that she couldn't allow herself to tell her Master about explain, or even forbid, that she was not allowed to harbor any feelings for him, she, whom she could only be his apprentice through his grace and good-naturedness, and yet her heart threatened hundreds at the thought that he was having fun with this woman Breaking pieces apart. The young woman furiously slapped the soft pillow, only to bury her face in it shortly afterwards in the daring hope of calming the raging storm in her heart a little, while hot tears seeped into the coarse fabric.

After a few desperate moments of loneliness, however, she remembered the all-encompassing silence of the forest, the seclusion of her confused thoughts, which she had so laboriously learned to control, and closed her heart to the storm of her feelings, so that the source of her tears dried up. and she could think quietly. She knew he wasn't hers, she knew he could do what he wanted, she knew he had a life to devote to when she wasn't in his house, and had been fearful for days that there was a woman in his life too, and she knew she couldn't blame him for her feelings, so she reluctantly decided to keep her feelings closed, to forget him even though she would spend every day with him .Slowly the young woman turned her face, adorned with tears, to the window, so that she could begin the hopeless undertaking of banishing the glass pearls of her pain for all eternity to the diamond palace of her heart, and looked longingly through the glass at the cloudy sky, thinking of the new world she had opened through her self-knowledge, which she was now allowed to enter. This comforting thought of her new experiences only held her for a few moments