Elara's diary, with its revelations of a love that had known doubt before blossoming, now rested next to the trunk. Lysandra felt she had barely scratched the surface. The jaguar's energy, that ancestral vibration that now seemed a dormant but active part of her being, urged her not toward rest, but toward deeper exploration. Her hands returned to the interior of the chest, searching among the bundles of letters and small objects wrapped in silk.
She found a cedarwood box, flatter and wider than the others. As she opened it, a different aroma greeted her: the chemical, slightly sour smell of old photographs. They were stacked, some loose, others in cardboard albums with gilt corners. They were a treasure of frozen moments, of youths past.
She took the first photograph. It was black and white, the edges slightly yellowed. It showed an incredibly young Julian and Elara, perhaps barely out of their teens, standing in front of a towering waterfall, their faces blurred by laughter and the spray. Behind it, barely visible, was a note written in her father's hurried handwriting: "First adventure. The whole world ahead. E. still thinks I'm crazy. Maybe he's right." Lysandra smiled sadly. The photo echoed pure youthful effervescence, the excitement of mutual discovery and a vast and promising world.
She kept looking. Photos of her parents in bustling markets, on misty mountaintops, in shabby cafes in unfamiliar cities. In each one, there was a vibrancy, a rawness that surprised her. And then, she found a series of color photographs, the tones slightly faded by the passing decades, that made her catch her breath.
They were from Calakmul.
Lysandra was well acquainted with the majesty of that ancient Mayan city, lost in the heart of the Campeche jungle. She herself had visited it years before, marveling at the Great Pyramid rising above the tree canopy, the haunting silence of its abandoned plazas, and the cries of the howler monkeys who were the sole guardians of its secrets.
In one of the photos, her parents, Julian and Elara, posed smiling in front of Structure II, the Great Pyramid. They were young, tanned, dressed in explorer gear, radiating a trust and complicity that transcended mere appearances. Julian wrapped his arm around Elara's waist, pulling her toward him in a possessive yet tender way, and Elara leaned slightly against him, her face turned toward Julian's with an expression not only of love, but of an almost devouring fascination. Their eyes, even in the faded photograph, seemed to glow with an intensity that Lysandra rarely associated with the serene romanticism of later letters.
But what truly captured Lysandra's attention wasn't just the image of her parents. Slightly removed from them, on one side of the composition, appeared two other figures, also young. She vaguely recognized the features of her paternal aunt, Amelia, Julian's sister, and beside her, a man she assumed was her husband at the time, her uncle Ricardo. Both were smiling at the camera, but their smiles were strained, forced. Amelia's eyes held a hint of… concern? Disapproval? And her uncle Ricardo looked uncomfortable, almost out of place, his shoulders stiff, his gaze shifty.
Lysandra turned the photograph over. On the back, in the same faded ink as the first, a brief note from her father: "Calakmul. Under the gaze of the ancients. A. and R. don't understand 'fever'. We do."
"Fever..." Lysandra whispered. She looked at the photo again, this time with different eyes. The way her parents looked at each other, the way their bodies seemed to gravitate toward each other, had an almost electric quality, a palpable tension that went beyond the simple joy of a trip. It was a visceral, burning connection. The echoes emanating from the photograph were complex: the majesty of the place, yes, but also an undercurrent of intense passion between Julian and Elara, and a palpable dissonance coming from her aunt and uncle, a mixture of discomfort and something Lysandra couldn't quite identify, but that made her skin crawl.
She looked at other photographs from that same trip. In all of them, the same dynamic: Julian and Elara, immersed in each other, their gazes alight, their gestures filled with a bold, almost defiant familiarity. And Amelia and Ricardo, always a little on the sidelines, their expressions tense, their smiles fragile. The notes on the back were equally cryptic: "Jungle nights, shared secrets." "The energy here is... primordial. E. feels it too." "Some bonds are stronger than blood."
A new understanding began to form in Lysandra's mind, one that left her speechless. Her parents' love, at least at that early stage, before she
Born, before they had settled into the more formal life she barely remembered, it hadn't been the tender, thoughtful romance that Julian's now-married letters had painted for her. It had been something much rawer, more vehement. An overwhelming passion, an almost animal connection, a consuming "fever" that seemingly perplexed and uneasy made those around them, even their own family, feel perplexed and uncomfortable.
This revelation didn't diminish her love for them, nor the image of their union. On the contrary, it added a layer of complexity, a fiery humanity that made them even more real, more fascinating. But it also raised new questions. What had happened to that "fever"? Had it transformed into this more serene love, or had it simply lurked beneath the surface? And what role did her aunt and uncle play in this story? Why this discomfort, this apparent disapproval?
The night wore on, and the trunk continued to offer fragments of a past that was far more intricate and vibrant than Lysandra had ever dared to imagine. Each photograph, each note, was a new door into the unknown, and the need to keep exploring, to understand the true nature of the bond that united Julian and Elara, and the secrets her family had kept, grew more pressing with every beat of her heart.