''Nymphomaniac Fantasia''
-PROLOGUE-
The silence was complete, all around. It was barely possible to hear the sound of the wind rustling through the leafy trees, that were slowly swaying.
The sun was shining high in the sky, even if its rays penetrated hardly through the branches, lighting just spots of the ground below.
She turned the discolored pages of the book she held, slowly, enjoying the contact with the coarse, dusty paper.
As the story goes, Echo, a Nymph, one of the Oreads who lived in the mountains, used to talk and sing a lot. Her malicious aptitude aroused the fury of Hera, who punished her by taking away her voice, except in the repetition of the last syllable from the words addressed to her.
Her hand shook a little. For a moment she stopped herself from reading, observing the mute words on the page. It was possibile to hear her breath, almost kept, before a new page was turned on.
But the sad story of the Nymph wasn't over. It happened one day that she met the young Narcissus, a man of an incredible beauty, but, alas, pleased only with himself. Echo approached him, trying to show him her love...
She turned a new page, fratically, and it seemed like she had stopped herself from breathing, so closely she followed the words, her eyes running along the page.
...but the boy, who already despided every maiden around, seeing that dumb girl, he laughed, and chased her away. Echo, desperate, wandered along the mountains, pining away, until the only thing that remained, from her, was her voice, heard from a hidden cave, still moaning for her fate.
A tear fell on the page, wetting the bottom of the white paper in a perfect circle; then, she brusquely closed the book, that dropped on the ground, as she ran away, through the wood.