In the city whose name I forget, the sidewalks sweat pale mist and the streetlights stutter shadows; right there, is where Julia's story meanders like a pent-up sigh. It was Wednesday, or maybe Sunday: time there languished like a dress forgotten in the world's attic.

"Why does the shadow insist on slipping where I don't call it?" Julia murmured, wrapping her words in cold coffee vapor.

"Why doesn't it cling like hair to the temple, like the fear of childhood?"

^{Bing AI}

The shadow spied on her, always one step before or after. Never on par.

The phrase fell to the ground like a coin no one picks up: "even to the shadow itself." Julia looked at the reflection of her eyes in the window and found not a flicker of habit in her pupil.

The clocks, blind from spinning so much, didn't strike the hour when Julia realized her shadow had learned to untie the knots of her body. Suddenly, she saw it leap from the wall to the ground with the ease of a sleepless child. The shadow winked at her with an eyelid of absolute blackness and continued walking.

"Don't you dare," she thought.
But the shadow knew how to dance the waltz of daring.

The streets, filled with hollow voices, felt something being snatched away with the gentleness of an expert plunderer. Julia—nerves "like the taut strings of an unplayed guitar"—chased the shadow through squares and alleys where cats believe in the miracle of rooftops. The shadow was free: Who had let it go? Her? The night?

Like a detective in unsolved tales, Julia spun the plot of silent betrayal: her shadow had acquired its own voice. And sharp words.

She followed it, yes; but she never managed to catch up with it. At every turn, the shadow invented a new abyss, a geometry of absence, an impenetrable riddle. Sometimes it was a man with a dark cane; sometimes, a rootless tree; at other times, a simple flash of lightning in the eyes of someone who never looked back.

But the shadow fell silent, multiplied, elusive, damp like sleep before dawn.

Julia, exhausted, understood the magnitude of the abandonment.

In the farthest corner of a circular plaza, the shadow turned. "Did you expect me to come back?" the fierce hollow beneath the lamppost seemed to say. Julia, invoking the dignity of those who have lost everything, smiled as only the happily defeated smile.

A shiver, Frayed, it crossed the time that bound Julia to the ground. Her feet didn't obey her: Julia floated.

And then, the reader would think they were imagining anything: the reunion, the reconciliation, the awakening. However, in a turn as abrupt as a flash of lightning in a photograph, Julia saw how the shadow tore that worn silhouette from her skin and became her.

"Even the shadow itself," whispered the old shadow, now Julia.

"Even the shadow itself," replied the new shadow, who had previously been called Julia. And she disappeared into the crowd.

On the bench in the square, no one saw the change. The city, with its unlit stove and unwound clocks, didn't notice that it was the shadow, now incarnate, who would observe the world from the corner of its eye. Julia was no longer Julia.

Thus, the mystery of the shadow that chose to do what it wanted—even its own shadow—was left hanging from a lamppost, where no one sought answers, where only the questions matter, and where the end is merely the beginning of another doubt.

Come and participate because you still have, time: @cayitus63, @cirangela, and @lanzjoseg.

I noticed that I wasn't mentioned as a participant in the previous post #28, and that the @hive-164241 account has muted me without explanation, despite my request. Still, I'm doing my part for this new initiative.