I stared at the stars in the sky and told myself that the celestial vault was a spectacle no human being would ever be tired of. Nobody wanted to think about the tons of toxic gas freed in the atmosphere which were forming a hole in the ozone above us. People only focus on the constellations and the deep blue canvas that unifies it all like an astral ocean extended to the horizon. No-one was supposed to think about the pollution or the rain or the end of the world- only the beautiful things.

"What are you thinking about, honey?" Adam asked me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

I turned my head away from the window and snuggled in the blankets, smiling.

"I was thinking I was glad to be with you. And I'm lucky the both of us are where we are today."

He smiled, letting me see his white teeth sparkle in the moonlight. I went closer to him and buried my face in his neck.

We should never remember the negative things, even if they are the ones we remember at best.

Adam is happy with me. I know it; he even told me himself several times. I made him happy so I have nothing to be ashamed of. I don't regret to have cast that spell and I wouldn't reverse it for anything in the world even I knew how to do it.

I'm 21 and I worship a goddess even though it doesn't give me any superpowers like in video games. I didn't have any before this and I never will. It's the only spell I ever casted as a priestess of Venus. A few years ago, I would have laughed at that term because it is also an old expression for prostitutes -which I'm not, of course. However, I grew up; I matured: I took off my posters of beautiful young male singers and dancers and learned to know real ones, boys of flesh and blood- disappointment, clumsiness and bad taste too. And, finally, I wholly devoted myself to the cult I worship: love and its incarnation, Venus.

In the meantime, I also met Adam.

A soon as I became a part of this cult I could read dozens of pages of centuries-old books. My best friend Viviane and I would borrow them from the oldest of our sisters who was quite fond of us. It was very instructive as well as the starting point of my stories. The pages were so old and fragile they would almost detach on their own from the binding. I interpreted it as a sign: when the sister and Viviane weren't looking and I saw the last page of the last book which contained the spell I was interested in remain in my hand, I immediately folded it, stuffed it in my purse and closed the book. Neither of them realized what happened.

I casted the "Prince Charming spell", as it was called, on Adam, my boyfriend at the time, in his sleep. I was nervous but, as a model student, I followed the instructions strictly and everything fell into place after that. Ever since then, he was perfection made man.

First of all, he was gorgeous, which he already was before. I loved to glance at his face with grayish blue eyes and his seductive smirk, his brown hair with reddish reflections and a rock-star haircut, his long slender hands, his muscled arms that opened on pectorals I could rest my head on and listen to the music of his heart, beating for me.

Then, he never expressed nor hid any pain, sadness or bitterness: they had all vanished from his heart- by magic. His character was peaceful, just like the life I lived with him ever since then. He liked to be surrounded by friends as much as he liked to be alone with me. He also naturally tended to be funny, always enthusiastic and, most of all, deeply sincere in his love for the people close to him. As such, I was glad to be the closest to his heart.

He was basically the Good side of Adam, the one who only thought about spreading around him the light that was warming him from the inside.

The problem was that that spell was a double-edged sword, which I only realized after I turned the page of the spell: unlike what I assumed, it wouldn't destroy the negative part of the enchanted being. Instead, it separated it in a completely different one. So now there were two Adams, one of whom I had to fear more than anything else.

That day, I had no problem to distinguish them: after they got disunited, that Adam tried to hit me while the other Adam protected me and kicked him out of his home. I had no idea what he had become since then. Since we had to call him something, we first named him "Z-dam" as a joke. The name stuck since then.

Z-dam was everything Adam hated in him: he was a coward, sly, aggressive, vicious, sad and awfully lonely. It was also easy for me to differentiate them since he had bilious yellow eyes, ghostly pale skin and raven black hair. His charm would only reside in the looks he kept from the original Adam.

But it didn't matter. I was happy with Adam and it was all that mattered.

This is what I was telling myself that night, cradled in his arms in the starlight.