The odor had settled in the dining room. It wasn't unpleasant, like a mushroom or mold, but it was sharp, a dry scent of forgotten leaf, and for Belinda, it was intolerable. The Fire spell had given her the clarity that a secret existed, but the price was restlessness. Her first magic had brought a persistent smell, as if a lie had acquired its own physical consistency, concentrating precisely in the place of family conviviality.
She decided that the excess of Focu chi Bampa (Flaming Fire) needed to be balanced with the opposing energy: Air and Water, the breath of thought and the flow of emotions. For this, she needed Samuele.
Samuele, known to everyone simply as "the Griffin"—a nickname given to him in middle school for his aquiline nose and enigmatic mind—was her oldest friend and the unofficial custodian of her soul. They had known each other since they were children, back in nursery school. Samuele was well-educated, with a degree in Art History, and his knowledge of magic and esotericism went beyond curiosity: it was a historical science that he mastered with grace. Belinda had the books, Samuele had the context.
His homosexuality was part of his discreet, refined, and self-aware elegance. He lived with Andrea, an engineer who, in a curious parallel to Elia, represented the most rational and methodical part of their couple. Samuele was the emotion, Andrea was the formula. For Belinda, Samuele was the safe harbor where spirituality required no justification.
"I feel like I lit the fireplace and the smoke, instead of going up, condensed in a corner," Belinda confessed to him over the phone, skillfully glossing over the fire elf and the Grimorie.
Samuele immediately understood the need. "Then we need wind and salt. I'll meet you at the beach in an hour. Bring nothing, only your breath."
They met on the winter beach, a few kilometers from Palermo. The sky was a cold blue, framed by clear clouds pushed by a light wind—the Air element in its most purifying form. The waves crashed with a measured rhythm, a ebb and flow representing Water, the emotion that comes and goes.
Samuele, wrapped in a camel wool coat that contrasted elegantly with the grayness of the sand, asked no questions. He knew Belinda was there for an act of grounding.
They sat on two smooth boulders, almost at the water's edge. Belinda closed her eyes and focused. She didn't use the Wand, trusting the intrinsic power of the place, a power Samuele had always taught her to honor first.
The meditation began. She focused on her breath, the Air, letting it fill her lungs with the purifying force of the sea wind, sweeping away the obsessive thought of the odor and the secret. Then, she tuned into the sound of the waves, the Water. The tears she hadn't shed for the restlessness and the words she hadn't spoken to Elia were replaced by the oceanic rhythm, which brought everything back to flow, to the acceptance of the tide.
After a long silence, it was Samuele who broke the enchantment, with a low voice, typical of someone who has been observing things for a long time.
"Look at the sea," Samuele said, without turning around. "It's not a storm. It's not angry. But do you see how the waves don't fully withdraw? They are too heavy. They are holding something back, Belinda. It's not rage, it's accumulation."
The phrase was a flash of light, the missing piece of the puzzle. The sharp, dry odor was not an evil entity, but the accumulation of an unspoken truth, of a repressed emotion (Water that doesn't flow) that her Fire had forced to manifest in the Air (the smell). The spell for clarity had found the Truth being held back.
Belinda opened her eyes. She looked at Samuele, her Griffin, who offered the secular interpretation of a magical problem. "It's something that is drying up and consuming itself, Sam," she whispered.
"Then let it go," he simply replied, picking up a flat stone. "You can't force a tide that is retreating. You can only breathe and accept that the accumulation must dissolve on its own, with time and the wind."
Belinda closed her eyes again. She inhaled deeply the salty air (Air) and used the intention of her breath to dissolve the sharp odor in the dining room, asking that the secret be no longer "held back" (Water that stops), but "let go" (Air that moves).
When she returned home, the odor was gone. The air was clean. The spell had been balanced. The tension, however, had not vanished: it had retreated, now concentrating on the metal box in Elia's closet. Belinda had balanced the energy, but the choice—whether to seek the truth or respect the silence—was still entirely hers.