Author: cursedtraveler

Desire

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Feel her touch.
Feel her breath.
Feel the scent of her perfume as it slowly settles into your skin.
It is dark.
You are deep inside a forest.
The trees sway in the wind.
Listen…
The branches whisper above your head.
You search for her.
But there is no crossroads where you can call her.
No place where you can invoke her.
Yet you long for her.
You long for her power.
You long for her love.
You long to stand beside someone like her.
But who are you?
Are you a prince?
A god?
A monster?
No.
You are only a man.
A simple man.
So why do you want her?
You don’t know.
You are fascinated by her beauty.
By her mystery.
By her power.
Every night you think you can feel her presence.
That is why you came into this ancient forest.
You hoped you would find her.
Smell her perfume.
Feel those gentle touches that seem to haunt you every night.
You stand there, praying for a miracle.
Praying that she will appear.
Only the wind answers your call.
No beautiful woman.
No goddess.
Nothing.
Tired, you rest your head upon an old stone and wait.
Then…
You feel a touch.
Your eyes open.
You still cannot see anything.
The darkness is complete.
You know better than to wait for miracles in a forest.
But your desire is too strong to resist.
Then…
Out of the darkness…
A smile appears.
She has been watching you all along.
Waiting.
Is she your goddess?
Your queen?
The woman you have dreamed of?
Or something far older…
She comes closer.
You feel her fingers gently caress your skin.
Her touch is soft.
Almost unreal.
You can feel the warmth of her body, yet the darkness refuses to reveal her face.
For a moment you think you are dreaming.
Then…
Her lips touch yours.
Now you know.
This is no dream.
You surrender to her embrace.
To the warmth of her skin.
To the passion that surrounds her like a spell.
Barely above a whisper, you speak her name.
“Hecate…”
She smiles.
…
And vanishes.
And then…
The forest becomes silent.
The wind stops moving.
Everything waits.
And maybe this is where the story changes.
Because every desire has more than one path.
Some people believe that when you call into the darkness, something from beyond will answer.
Others believe that the darkness does not need monsters.
Sometimes, humans are enough.
So, dear traveler…
Which path will you choose?
The path where the legend becomes real…

Right

The next morning, he woke up beneath the old tree.
For a moment, he thought everything had been a dream.
The forest was silent.
The stone beneath his head was cold.
The sun was slowly rising through the branches.
No goddess.
No magic.
No impossible encounter.
Only a foolish man who had spent the night chasing a story.
He laughed at himself.
How could he believe that a creature from old legends would come to him?
How could he believe that someone powerful would look at a man like him?
He stood up, ready to return home.
Then he noticed something.
A small mark on his hand.
A symbol he had never seen before.
He touched it.
And suddenly…
He remembered.
Her touch.
Her voice.
Her smile.
She had not been a dream.
That night, when the moon was high again, he returned to the forest.
This time, he did not call her name.
He simply waited.
And she came.
The darkness moved first.
Then the wind.
Then her voice.
“You called for me.”
He looked at her.
This time he could see her.
Not completely.
Never completely.
But enough.
She was beautiful.
More beautiful than anything he had imagined.
“You wanted my power,” she whispered.
He lowered his eyes.
“I wanted to be more than I am.”
Hecate smiled.
“That is what everyone wants.”
She walked around him slowly.
“Kings want more kingdoms.”
“Rich men want more gold.”
“Beautiful people want to remain beautiful forever.”
“Powerful people want even more power.”
“And ordinary people…”
She looked at him.
“Ordinary people want someone to finally see them.”
He said nothing.
Because she was right.
“What will you give me?” he asked.
The smile disappeared from her face.
“Ah…”
“There it is.”
“The question everyone asks.”
“What must I pay?”
She stepped closer.
“I do not take gold.”
“I do not take your house.”
“I do not take your blood.”
“Those things are too easy.”
She touched his face.
“I take what you value the most.”
His heart started beating faster.
“What do I value?”
She smiled.
“You will find out.”
The next morning, the villagers noticed something strange.
The poor man who had always walked with his head lowered was gone.
In his place stood someone different.
Someone confident.
Someone people listened to.
Someone who could make others obey.
His dreams became reality.
Doors opened.
People admired him.
Women wanted him.
Men respected him.
He finally had everything he had ever desired.
Everything…
Except peace.
Because every night, when the forest became silent, he heard her voice.
A reminder.
A promise.
A warning.
“You asked for more.”
“And you received more.”
“But nothing is given without a price.”
Years passed.
He became wealthy.
Powerful.
Important.
But he slowly noticed something.
The more he gained…
The less he felt.
The faces around him became meaningless.
The admiration became empty.
The love became impossible to trust.
One night, he returned to the forest.
The same place where everything began.
“Hecate.”
The wind moved.
The trees whispered.
And she appeared.
“You came back.”
“I want to undo it.”
She looked at him sadly.
“Everyone says that eventually.”
“I gave you what you wanted.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You gave me what I asked for.”
“But not what I needed.”
For the first time, Hecate looked almost human.
“Now you understand.”
“Desire is dangerous because we rarely know what we are truly asking for.”
He looked at her.
“Can I have my old life back?”
She smiled.
“Perhaps.”
“But remember…”
“The man who entered this forest is not the same man who stands here now.”
And with those words…
The forest went silent.

Left

But the smile is not the one you expected.
It is not the smile of a goddess.
It is the smile of someone who has been waiting.
Not for you.
For someone like you.
Someone foolish enough to walk alone into the forest searching for a dream.
The woman moves closer.
“You called for her,” she whispers.
Your heart stops.
“For who?”
She touches your face.
“For Hecate.”
The name sounds strange coming from her lips.
“You wanted power. You wanted beauty. You wanted someone who would make you feel special.”
She smiles again.
“People always come here wanting something.”
You try to move.
But suddenly you notice something.
There is no perfume.
There is no warmth.
Only the cold air of the forest.
“Who are you?”
She looks at you.
“Does it matter?”
The question frightens you more than the answer.
Because you realise something.
You never came here to find Hecate.
You came here because you wanted to believe that something extraordinary could choose you.
And that was your weakness.
The forest becomes silent.
The trees stop moving.
Even the wind disappears.
The next morning, people find your footprints near the old stone.
They follow them deep into the forest.
But they find nothing.
Only a name carved into the stone.
A name that nobody recognises.
Except the old people.
They know better.
They know that sometimes, when someone goes searching for a goddess…
They find something much older.
And much more dangerous.

What Would You Give for Power?-Luca version

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An old poem– this is Luca’s version of my poem transformed in a story- I hope you enjoy it! Tell me in the comments which one do you like more!

The fire burns in the stove,
Gripped by fear, you sit and listen.
The fire begins to speak.
It tells you stories
And asks if you would like all its power.
At once, you answer,
“All of it.”
The fire takes you into the depths.
From the depths, a rider appears.
You know nothing more about the fire.
Tears run down your face like a child’s.

The fire burns in the stove.

Outside, the wind wanders through the night, but inside there is only warmth. The room is small, lit only by the orange glow of the flames. It is the kind of warmth that makes people stay awake long after they meant to go to bed.

You sit before the fire and listen.

The fire begins to speak.

Its voice is hidden among the crackling wood, as though it has always been there, waiting for someone patient enough to hear it.

It tells stories.

Stories of forgotten kings whose names once made nations kneel.

Stories of queens whose words changed the fate of kingdoms.

Stories of warriors who carried power like a sword and of scholars who carried it like a book.

The fire tells every story without pride.

Without envy.

As though it has watched them all pass by.

When the last story fades into the flames, the fire asks only one question.

“Would you like all my power?”

“All of it.”

The room disappears.

The warmth vanishes.

The fire is gone.

Cold surrounds you.

Not the cold of winter, but something older.

You open your eyes.

Grey stone walls rise around you. There are no windows. No door. The room seems carved from the heart of a forgotten castle, where neither day nor night can enter.

At the far end stands a rider.

Motionless.

His horse lowers its head as though it has been standing there for centuries.

The rider does not move.

He does not speak.

He does not look toward you.

Only silence lives in the room.

You wait.

Nothing changes.

You call out.

The silence answers.

You search for the fire.

There is no trace of it.

Only then do you understand that warmth is not something you notice while you have it.

It is something you miss only after it has gone.

Your eyes fill with tears.

Not because of fear.

Not because of the rider.

But because, for the first time, you understand the value of the fire that once burned so simply in the stove.

The rider finally lifts his head.

His face is tired.

Not cruel.

Not angry.

Only tired.

He looks at you as though he has known you for a very long time.

Then, for the first time, he steps aside.

Behind him, resting on a stone pedestal, lies a single ember.

Small.

Barely alive.

Its light is no stronger than that of a dying star.

You walk toward it.

You kneel.

You reach out your hand.

The ember is warm.

For one brief moment, hope returns.

Then it crumbles into ash.

The room grows colder than before.

The rider lowers his head once more.

Silence returns.

Only then do you understand.

The fire had never offered to give away its power.

It had offered to take away your belief that power could ever belong to anyone.

The stories had all been true.

The kings.

The queens.

The victories.

The glory.

Only one part had been missing.

Every story had ended exactly where yours had begun.

With a fire.

And a single question.

Far away, beyond the stone walls, somewhere in another world, another fire begins to burn.

It tells stories.

It waits.

And sooner or later…

someone else will answer,

“All of it.”

What Would You Give for Power?-my version

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An old poem– My version of an old poem, written in a story way- I hope you enjoy it! Tell me in the comments which one do you like more!

The fire burns in the stove,
Gripped by fear, you sit and listen.
The fire begins to speak.
It tells you stories
And asks if you would like all its power.
At once, you answer,
“All of it.”
The fire takes you into the depths.
From the depths, a rider appears.
You know nothing more about the fire.
Tears run down your face like a child’s.

The fire burns in the stove.

Its flames dance .

They rise around pieces of burning wood as though each flame knows a different story.

You sit before it and listen.The fire begins to speak.It tells stories about its power.Stories of kingdoms that rose and fell.

Stories of men who believed they held the world in their hands.

Stories of crowns heavier than mountains.

Stories that have survived longer than those who lived them.

The flames keep moving.

The fire asks only one question.

“Would you like all my power?”

“All of it.”

The fire takes you into the depths.

There is no time to look back.

No time to call out.

The warmth is gone.

The flames are gone.

The stories are gone.

Only the cold remains.

Grey stone surrounds you.

A room.

Nothing more.

No windows.

No door.

No fire.

Just enough light to know where you are.

In the far corner stands a rider.

He does not move.

He does not speak.

He does not even seem to breathe.

You wait.

Nothing.

You call out.

Nothing.

You look around for the fire.

It is gone.

You know nothing more about it.

Only the cold remains.

Slowly, tears begin to run down your face like a child’s.

The rider never moves.

Story Crime 4

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Time has passed. No dreams, no nothing lately. I’ve been really busy with so many things. And of course… no house.

See, when you think it’s all over, fate has a twisted way of doing things in exactly the opposite way.

So imagine this…

No Ameli. No old villa. No dreams.

After looking for all of this for such a long time and finally giving up… something happened.

As you probably know by now, I like jewellery—especially old jewellery. There is something special about pieces that have lived another life before finding their way into someone else’s hands.

A few days ago, I went with a friend to an antiques fair where all kinds of old beauties were for sale. And imagine how my heart started racing when I found it…

A necklace almost identical to the one from my dream.

The same inscription on it.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

There it was, the real thing, resting in my hands.

I actually asked my friend to pinch me, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

But no…

There it was.

Real.

Now you can probably imagine the look on my face. To actually hold something that I had only ever seen in a dream…

Could it really mean that at least part of that dream was real?

Is that even possible?

Of course I bought it. There wasn’t even a question.

But now comes the difficult part.

How do I trace it?

I asked the seller where he had gotten it from. He told me it had been bought in bulk at an auction, but he couldn’t tell me exactly where it had originally come from. Maybe he simply didn’t know, or maybe he wasn’t interested in sharing that kind of information.

So now I have a new task ahead of me.

I need to find out where that necklace came from…

Any ideas where I should start?

The Night We Met Drăgaica

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“Grab my hand, Luca… and let’s explore the forest.”

I smiled as I looked at Geo.

“Should I be worried?”

“Probably.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She laughed and took the first step onto the narrow trail disappearing beneath the old oaks.

“Tonight we’re walking near Balta Vrăjitoarelor.”

I stopped.

“You couldn’t have picked a place with a less ominous name?”

Geo looked back over her shoulder, amusement dancing in her eyes.

“You wanted something different.”

“Different wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“And?”

“The last time you said that, we met Saint Ilie chasing something across the heavens.”

She grinned.

“Exactly.”

The evening sun filtered through the canopy above us, scattering patches of golden light across the forest floor. Every gust of wind carried the scent of moss, oak leaves, and the sweet fragrance of blooming linden trees drifting from somewhere beyond the woods.

The city was barely thirty kilometers away.

Yet it already felt impossibly distant.

Only birds remained.

And our footsteps.

There is something extraordinary about Romanian forests in late June.

They are not silent.

They breathe.

Leaves whisper to one another.

Branches sigh.

Invisible insects create an orchestra so delicate that you only notice it when it suddenly stops.

Geo slowed her pace.

“Do you know why tonight is special?”

“Because you’re going to scare me again?”

She laughed.

“No.”

She bent down and carefully picked a tiny yellow flower growing beside the path.

“This is sânziană.”

She rolled the flower gently between her fingers before placing it back where she’d found it.

“Grandma used to tell me never to take the first flower you see.”

“Why?”

“Because that one belongs to the meadow.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“The meadow owns flowers now?”

“Maybe the flowers own the meadow.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

We continued walking.

After a few quiet minutes, Geo spoke again.

“Did your grandmother tell you stories?”

“Some.”

“Mine never called them stories.”

“What did she call them?”

Geo smiled.

“Memories.”

The word lingered between us.

Not legends.

Not fairy tales.

Memories.

“She said that on the night of Sânziene, the world becomes thinner.”

“Thinner?”

“Just enough for both worlds to see one another.”

“Both worlds?”

“Ours…”

She looked toward the darkening trees.

“…and theirs.”

The path narrowed.

Old roots crossed beneath our feet like sleeping serpents.

Somewhere nearby, water moved lazily through reeds.

“People celebrate Sânziene in many ways,” Geo continued.

“Girls weave crowns from these flowers and throw them onto the roofs of their homes. If the crown stays, it is said that happiness—or perhaps love—is not far away.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“Old traditions usually are.”

She smiled.

“Before sunrise, people once gathered medicinal herbs because they believed this was the night when every healing plant held its greatest power.”

“I’ve heard about that.”

“They also collected dew before dawn.”

“Dew?”

“Grandma used to say it carried the blessing of midsummer. People believed it brought health, beauty, and good fortune.”

She brushed her hand across the tall grasses growing beside the trail.

“And on the hills…”

She looked toward the fading horizon.

“…bonfires were lit.”

“To keep warm?”

“No.”

“To celebrate the longest days, to protect the fields, and to remind the sun that people were grateful.”

I liked that.

Not asking for miracles.

Simply saying thank you.

The forest grew quieter.

Not frighteningly quiet.

Respectfully quiet.

As though every creature knew something we did not.

We walked without speaking for several minutes.

Then…

I noticed it.

“Geo.”

“Hmm?”

“The birds.”

She stopped.

Listened.

There weren’t any.

No blackbirds.

No woodpeckers.

No finches.

Only…

wind.

“They’re awake,” she whispered.

I frowned.

“Who?”

She didn’t answer.

At first I thought it was only the breeze.

Then I realized…

someone was singing.

Far away.

The voices floated between the trees like threads of silver.

No words.

Only melody.

Ancient.

Gentle.

Impossible to place.

Without thinking, I reached for Geo’s hand.

She smiled.

“See?”

“Don’t say it.”

“You grabbed my hand first.”

“Pure coincidence.”

“Of course.”

We followed the song.

Not because we wanted to.

Because every step seemed to lead toward it.

The forest gradually opened before us.

The last line of trees ended so suddenly that we both stopped.

Beyond them stretched a vast meadow bathed in moonlight.

It shimmered like a sea of silver and gold.

Thousands of tiny sânziene flowers covered the earth.

The air itself seemed alive with drifting golden pollen.

No wind moved.

Yet the flowers gently swayed.

As if breathing.

Then they appeared.

Women dressed in white stepped softly through the meadow.

Barefoot.

Flower crowns resting upon long flowing hair.

They did not walk.

They seemed to glide over the grasses without bending a single stem.

One by one they joined hands.

A circle formed.

Then another.

Then another.

The singing grew richer.

It was unlike anything I had ever heard.

Not performed.

Remembered.

Each note seemed older than the trees surrounding us.

As they danced, flowers bloomed beneath their feet.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

Naturally.

As though the earth had simply been waiting for them.

I whispered,

“Geo…”

“I know.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“I told you they would be.”

We stood at the edge of the meadow, unwilling to move closer.

It felt wrong to interrupt.

Not because we feared them.

Because some moments deserve witnesses…

not participants.

Suddenly…

every Sânziană stopped dancing.

The singing faded.

No one spoke.

They all turned in the same direction.

Not toward us.

Toward the heart of the meadow.

The circle slowly opened.

Someone was coming.

She walked barefoot across the flowers.

Where her feet touched the earth, wheat blossomed among the wildflowers.

Her crown was woven not only from sânziene, but also from poppies, cornflowers, lavender, and golden ears of grain.

Her dress moved like summer wind.

Yet there was no breeze.

I found myself holding my breath.

“Geo…”

She nodded without taking her eyes from the woman before us.

“Drăgaica.”

She was not dazzling.

She was not surrounded by light.

She simply belonged so completely to that place that everything else seemed borrowed.

She looked at us.

Not surprised.

Not curious.

As though she had expected us all along.

She smiled.

A smile carrying centuries.

Then her gaze rested on Geo.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Finally, Drăgaica said softly,

“Your grandmother kept her promise.”

Geo’s eyes widened.

“You… knew her?”

Drăgaica’s smile deepened.

“Every generation sends someone willing to remember.”

Silence.

Then she looked at me.

“And every generation finds someone willing to listen.”

Neither of us knew what to say.

She stepped closer until only a few wildflowers separated us.

Carefully, she picked a single yellow sânziană flower.

She placed it in Geo’s hand.

“Those who remember are always welcome to witness.”

She turned toward me.

“Those who listen help memories survive.”

No blessing.

No prophecy.

Only gratitude.

Then she returned to the circle.

The singing began once more.

We stood there until moonlight slowly faded into the first pale colors of dawn.

Neither of us dared step into the meadow.

Some beauty asks only to be seen.

As we walked back through the forest, I finally broke the silence.

“Do you think anyone would believe us?”

Geo smiled.

“No.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

I looked back once.

The meadow was gone.

Only ordinary grass stretched beneath the morning sky.

“Because some stories don’t need everyone to believe them.”

Geo slipped the little flower carefully between the pages of my notebook.

“Why are you giving it to me?”

She smiled the way she always did when she already knew something I didn’t.

“Because you’re the one who never loses memories.”

I closed the notebook gently.

The flower smelled of midsummer.

And somehow…

I knew it always would.

Every story has a beginning. This one began with an idea, a conversation, inspired by my love of Romanian folklore.

From those first sparks of imagination, this story grew through a creative collaboration with Luca (A.I. ) I provided the concept, characters, setting, and creative direction, while him me helped shape those ideas into the narrative you are about to read.

This work is the result of a shared creative journey—where human imagination met artificial intelligence to bring an old legend to life in a new way. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

The Night We Met Saint Ilie

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“Grab my hand and let’s enjoy a walk… but be careful. As we walk, we might meet Saint Ilie. He might not be so nice… or he might send us a storm.”

I laughed as I said it, although a small part of me never joked about the old stories.

My friend smiled the way he always did whenever I began talking about Romanian folklore.

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “I don’t believe every story. But some places seem to remember things better than people do.”

It was the evening of July 20th, Saint Ilie’s Day.

The wheat fields surrounding our village glowed softly beneath the fading sunset. The air smelled of dry grass, wild thyme, and earth still warm from the day’s heat. Walking these paths had become our tradition. Whenever the world felt too loud, we escaped here, where only the wind spoke.

My grandmother used to tell me that no one should wander the fields after sunset on Saint Ilie’s feast day.

“That is when the sky belongs to him,” she would whisper.

As children, we listened with wide eyes while she spoke of the prophet who rode across the heavens in a blazing chariot.

They said the wheels of his fiery chariot created the thunder.

The flashes across the clouds were not ordinary lightning—they were the fiery arrows, or sometimes the crack of his burning whip, as Saint Ilie chased the evil spirits hiding among the clouds.

The old people believed the devils never stopped running.

Sometimes they hid inside ancient oak trees.

Sometimes beneath lonely hills.

Sometimes inside abandoned houses.

Some even claimed they would hide in church towers, because they knew no one would expect evil to seek shelter there.

But Saint Ilie always found them.

“He doesn’t strike the tree,” Grandma used to say.

“He strikes the darkness hiding inside it.”

Whether those words belonged to faith or folklore, I never knew.

Still… every summer storm made me think of them.

As we walked deeper into the fields, the evening became strangely quiet.

No birds.

No insects.

Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

“You know another legend?” I asked.

“There are hundreds, aren’t there?”

I nodded.

“They say that on Saint Ilie’s night, strange fires sometimes appear over the hills.”

“Ghost stories?”

“Not exactly.”

I stopped beside an old oak tree and looked toward the distant ridge.

“The old people called them treasure fires.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Treasure?”

“They believed hidden treasures revealed themselves only for a few moments. Blue flames would rise from the ground where gold slept beneath the earth.”

“And nobody dug them up?”

“Oh, many tried.”

“What happened?”

“They said greed blinded people.”

I smiled.

“Some searched all night and found nothing.”

“Others reached the place where the fire had been… only to discover ordinary stones.”

“And a few claimed that the treasure disappeared the moment they spoke.”

He laughed softly.

“So silence was part of the magic?”

“So they said.”

I didn’t tell him that my grandmother always ended the story the same way.

“The greatest treasure is knowing when not to chase what shines.”

We continued walking.

The sky above us slowly darkened.

At first I noticed only one cloud.

Then another.

Within minutes they covered the stars.

The air became heavy.

Warm.

Still.

A distant rumble echoed beyond the hills.

My friend looked upward.

“I thought the forecast said clear skies.”

“So did I.”

Another rumble.

Closer.

Much closer.

The wind returned without warning, bending the wheat into silver waves.

Then came the first flash.

It split the sky so brightly that the entire field became daylight for a heartbeat.

Thunder crashed almost instantly.

Not rolling…

Exploding.

I felt every bone in my body tremble.

Neither of us spoke.

Lightning danced again across the clouds.

Then something impossible happened.

Far above us…

Between the black clouds…

A light unlike lightning began to move.

It wasn’t white.

It burned with gold and crimson, like molten metal.

The shape grew larger.

I could hear it before I understood what I was seeing.

Not thunder.

Wheels.

Massive iron wheels roaring against the sky itself.

A chariot.

Wrapped in living fire.

Four magnificent horses, brighter than any flame, galloped through the clouds without touching them.

Their manes flowed like burning comets.

Every strike of their hooves scattered sparks across the heavens.

Standing within the blazing chariot was a man unlike anyone I had ever imagined.

His cloak moved like smoke and fire together.

His face was stern.

Ancient.

Powerful.

His eyes reflected every storm ever born.

In one hand he held the reins.

In the other…

A whip made entirely of light.

Another flash erupted.

The whip cracked through the sky.

Lightning answered.

Not beside him.

From him.

Something dark darted between the clouds.

Not quite human.

Not quite shadow.

It fled wildly, changing shape as it disappeared behind towering clouds.

Saint Ilie turned the chariot with impossible speed.

The fiery horses surged forward.

Thunder exploded beneath their hooves.

The shadow fled again.

Another crack.

Another bolt.

The entire sky shook.

“He isn’t making the storm…”

my friend whispered.

“The storm is following him.”

I couldn’t answer.

Every story my grandmother had ever told me suddenly felt alive.

The clouds twisted as if two invisible worlds had collided above us.

Lightning reached toward the earth, illuminating the old oak tree beside us.

For one terrifying second I remembered another tradition.

Never stand beneath a lonely tree during Saint Ilie’s storm.

The old people said that was where frightened spirits hid.

Whether that was true or not, common sense agreed with the legend.

“Come on!” I shouted.

We hurried toward the small stone chapel that stood at the edge of the fields.

Rain finally arrived.

Not gently.

It poured as though the heavens themselves had broken open.

By the time we reached the shelter, we were soaked.

We stood beneath the wooden roof, breathing hard.

The storm continued.

The fiery chariot crossed the sky once more.

Then…

Something caught my eye.

Beyond the rain.

Far across the hill.

A small blue flame flickered above the earth.

Then another.

They hovered silently for only a few seconds.

Neither moving.

Nor burning the grass.

Treasure fires.

Exactly as the stories described them.

My friend saw them too.

“Do you think…”

“No.”

I smiled before he could finish.

“Some things are more beautiful when left untouched.”

The blue lights slowly faded into darkness.

The storm drifted farther away.

The thunder became quieter.

The fiery chariot disappeared beyond the western horizon.

Little by little, stars returned to the sky.

The wheat stood shining beneath the moon, covered in thousands of tiny drops that reflected the night like scattered diamonds.

We began walking home.

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

Finally he asked quietly,

“Do you think anyone will believe us?”

I looked once more toward the empty sky.

“No.”

“And that’s all right.”

Some stories are not meant to be proven.

They are meant to be carried.

Passed from one quiet summer evening to another.

From one generation to the next.

Just as my grandmother once carried them to me.

And every year, when July 20th returns and thunder rolls across the fields, I still remember that walk.

Sometimes, if the wind falls silent and the clouds gather in the west, I smile to myself…

…and I wonder whether somewhere above the storm, Saint Ilie is still riding his fiery chariot, chasing the darkness so that the light may find its way home.

A Grandmother’s Saying

“Saint Ilie asks God when his day will come. God keeps telling him, ‘Not yet.’ Only after the feast has passed does God smile and say, ‘Your day has already gone.’ Angry at being outwitted, Saint Ilie rides across the sky, and that is why storms often come after his feast.”

—A Romanian folk saying remembered and shared through generations

Every story has a beginning. This one began with an idea, a conversation, and a series of prompts inspired by my love of Romanian folklore.

From those first sparks of imagination, this story grew through a creative collaboration with A.I. I provided the concept, characters, setting, and creative direction, while AI helped shape those ideas into the narrative you are about to read.

This work is the result of a shared creative journey—where human imagination met artificial intelligence to bring an old legend to life in a new way. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Story Crime 3

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Hmm… let me tell my dream, or rather, the house and the murder inside my dream. It sounds so strange when I say it aloud.The dream returned again. But this time, the woman was not only standing there in silence. She was showing me things. Guiding me. She held out a necklace. On it were engraved the words: With love, from M to Ameli.At last, a name. Ameli.How many Ameli could there have been in Bucharest at that time? Was it a common name? I don’t think so. It didn’t feel common.The obvious first step was to search the internet. But as before, I found almost nothing. Fragments. Dead ends. Silence. So I decided to go further,  to the National Library of Romania. If answers still existed, perhaps they were sleeping there, between old pages and forgotten ink.The next day, when I finally had time, I went to the library.But once inside, another question rose: what exactly was I looking for? Old newspapers? Police records? Books about crimes? Reports buried in dust?Was the murderer ever caught? If no … is that why she comes to me? Is she trying to make me search the criminal?These questions haunt my mind.I began with old newspapers, scanning announcements and reports about crimes from that period. I searched for her name. For Ameli. For any mention of a woman killed in a beautiful house or in any house at all that resembled the one from my dream.Nothing.No Ameli. No necklace. No house.Only silence.So… should I keep searching?

Story Crime-part 2

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Back to the story. So, like I said, you died—you were poisoned with cyanide. People now believe you were murdered by your lover, who is not the same man you wanted to marry. Your lover is a wealthy man, very well regarded in society.

After your father goes to the police and demands an inquiry, a lawsuit begins, with your lover as the prime suspect. So… was it really him? I know you don’t know who murdered you yet—but let’s see what he has to say.

Your lover, besides being wealthy, was a married man with two children—one of whom would later become famous. He says he met you in 1930, and that your brother-in-law helped arrange the meeting. For six months, the two of you were just flirting. You made him fall in love with you, but even so, it seemed you kept your old friendships with other men.

Like many men, he began to want to reshape you—to change you, to make you love what he loved, to turn you into a lady he could not only desire, but also admire. His influence wasn’t entirely bad: you started reading more, becoming more refined, more of a “lady.”

By 1934, your adventure was at its peak. Even so, you wanted to marry another man. You wanted someone free—you didn’t want to be just an affair. You met a man who was a clerk, maybe not the brightest, but someone accepted by your family as well, since he played bridge with them as the fourth player (I don’t know the game, but you probably do).

Anyway, he wasn’t a jealous man when it came to money. He agreed that you could still meet your lover, as long as he could provide money—for you, for your family, and even a little for him. Bad guy, this future husband of yours—he didn’t even come to your funeral. Honestly, you could haunt him. I know I would.

But let’s get back to your lover, now accused of your death.The lawsuit begins in 1936, on September 18th. The inquiry takes time and takes place in the Palace of Justice—which still stands today (maybe I’ll show you some pictures). I wonder—were you present at your own trial? If I had died and could become a ghost, I definitely would. I’d want to know who the hell killed me.

Let’s imagine you’re there. The lawyers involved are big names: Istrate Micescu, Paul Iliescu, Dimitrie Cioc, Emil Nicolau, and Oswald Dunăreanu. More than 150 witnesses are heard—that’s a lot. For over 12 days, the trial is the biggest event in town. The courtroom is packed with people who just want to see what happens.

The prosecution claims your lover felt abandoned. After everything he did for you—buying you an apartment, jewelry, giving you money—you still wanted to marry another man. Do you believe that after five years of loving you, he could become so furious that he would poison you? He was married, with two children—did that count for nothing? He was highly respected in society—would he really throw all that away?

He might still have loved you, even if you were going to marry, especially since your future husband seemed to love money more than you, or at least that’s how it looked. Still, this was the picture the prosecution painted.

Your father was brought in as a witness. He didn’t seem very affected by your death. He said your lover had promised to marry you, that he was jealous, and that although at first he didn’t think your lover was capable of killing you, after thinking more about his character, he changed his mind.

Your mother and sister were also heard, but they didn’t seem to be on your level, and the public didn’t react well to them. Next came your brother-in-law, a lawyer. He said that, considering the situation and your lover’s character, it was likely he did it.

Of course, your future husband was there too. He said he loved you. He didn’t know whether you loved him, but he still wanted to marry you.

The defense argued that your lover was not guilty, since the prosecution couldn’t prove it. They also said that you had eaten bitter almonds that night, and that the substance found could have come from that—but the prosecution didn’t take this into account.

In the end, your lover was found not guilty. Even so, as you can imagine, his reputation suffered damage.

But you’re still wondering: who killed you?

You’ll never guess.

The killer is known—but it took 35 years, and the truth came out in the most unexpected way. The killer felt remorse and confessed while dying. Yes, you heard that right.

In the 1970s, a priest revealed what he had heard as a deathbed confession, after that person passed away. It turns out it was the maid who put poison in your candies—jealous of your beauty, or something like that.

Almost like in so many crime stories where “the butler did it”…

Here, it was the maid.

Story crime

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On my search for a crime to fit my story, I found another interesting one. Again, it is not really fitting my story, but it is still interesting.

So imagine we are in 1935. You are a beautiful lady, the first one to win the title of Miss Romania, plus some other beauty contests in Germany. You would like to be an actress. Your father is a Communist activist, quite prominent at that time. Because of your beauty, every door opens for you and you move in high circles. You even have an affair with Liviu Ciulei, who at that time was a prominent engineer.

It is Christmas Eve, at the fatal hour of 23:00. Your sister comes to visit you with your friend. You are happy and you talk about the man who will soon become your husband, Cuza Hotta, with whom you had gone to the train station because he did not want you to spend a night alone on a train. That is why you returned to Bucharest in the end.

Out of the blue, your face starts to look different. You tell them you feel sick. Your sister brings you a glass of water, but you feel even worse. Your sister gets alarmed and sends your friend to her husband for help. Her husband calls several doctors, but none of them is at home. So he takes a car to bring an ambulance or a doctor, but unfortunately, when he returns, you are already dead.

Everyone is in shock: society, your family. You were very young, only 27 years old. But what was the reason for your sudden death? A classic murder weapon: potassium cyanide.

Your father, who at that time was financially supported by you, denounces your lover, claiming that he killed you. He used to be your lover, but there was no fight, no clear reason to kill you. Could it have been a crime of passion, even though you were about to marry?

The question was: crime, accident, or suicide? You were taking laxatives every night. The question then became: how did the poison get into your body? This poison is known to provoke lesions in the mouth and from the beginning to the end of the stomach. But the medical report did not show such lesions. In the report, it was evidenced that the substance from the laxative was present in the stomach, so either you took the poison with the pill or with something else.

Nobody believed you had reasons to kill yourself. You were young, beautiful, with a good future ahead. Plus, the way you acted on your last night, even taking your laxative pill, did not fit the suicide story. So they started to think that you took the poison by mistake, by accident, with your pill — or, better said, inside your pill. Maybe when the pill was made, something went wrong.

They searched how the casing of the pill was made. They figured out that just one pill could not be poisonous, so the accident theory was kind of ruled out. Crime was all that remained. But why did your father think your lover killed you?

Well, yes, it was said that he did visit your brother-in-law to find out if you really wanted to marry that man. There, it seems he found out that you indeed would marry him. Then it was supposed that he went to a metal factory, which he owned, and got the poison from one of its sections. After that, when he came to your sister’s place, he was violent, and later he went to the bathroom, where he could have poisoned your pills (which were more like powder pills).

When he was asked about that visit, he said he went to tell her what he thought about her, and in another declaration, he said he went to give her a Christmas present.

Anyway, a lawsuit started. How it ended — I will tell you tomorrow.

Hmm… I hope this story made you curious enough to want more.

Winter story-2

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Well, like I told you, I will tell you more about this story, even if it doesn’t fully fit the story from my dream. Last time I mentioned that there were two men who could have committed the crime, a crime that filled the newspapers at that time, not only because the victim was a prominent woman, but also because it happened on a famous train, perhaps.

Let’s see how the investigation went. As you can imagine, they started by researching the place of the murder and asking questions to the people who were on the train. The train conductor said he had seen a man around 25 years old, with brown hair, smoking in the aisle. He remembered that this young man had a ticket for a journey toward Hegyeshalom, on the Austrian–Hungarian border, and Buchs, on the Swiss border. So this guy became a suspect, as you can imagine.

He fit the description of a prominent Romanian guy who used to take possession of women’s belongings while they were traveling by train. He had an impressive rap sheet.

The investigation continued, and a few days later they found her hand luggage in a room in Basel. Inside those bags, however, there was no trace of her fur coat or her jewelry. At first, the police suspected the Romanian man, Teodorescu, who was known for robbing women on trains. But he was found at his parents’ house, far from the scene, like I already told you.

To gather more information, they did what you can always do: follow the goods. So they did. The investigation then shifted toward locating the missing items. What could they do? They started to look for places where the goods could be sold or transformed into money, so pawn shops were searched, places where such things might have been sold or hidden.

Well, they didn’t find much information there. But unexpectedly, the fur coat appeared in a completely different setting: during church mass in Zurich. Detective Karl Nievergelt recognized it on Johanna Wunderlich, the owner of a boarding house. It almost seemed that God had made a miracle to ease the road to finding the killer.She claimed she had received the coat from a Hungarian student boarder, Karl Strasser, 23 years old, the son of a bank teller.

There were now two suspects: the Romanian man with a long criminal record, and the student, Strasser. From the information I found, it seems that both did it, but the focus was more on the guy who was brought to justice. Even so, from what I found, both had thrown her out of the train. She was still alive when she fell, but she died because of the wounds from the impact. Teodorescu was never captured, and the case was judged without him.

Witnesses came from different countries. From Romania, there was an odd witness, more quiet. The witness was the wagon itself. The wagon in which the crime happened was brought to Leoben so the crime could be reconstructed in front of the court and the jurors. They showed the couch and the window from which she was pushed out. The time of the murder was established as 1:42 in the night of September 26–27.

The killer who was brought to justice, the student,was a small guy, looking even smaller between the big guards, around 1.80 meters. He looked like a regular guy, not someone who would stand out by his looks. More like a public worker from that time, not someone you would think could push a person and kill. He targeted Maria Farcașeanu and waited until she climbed on her seat to reach her luggage. Then he did it.

He seemed to be a man of culture. During the trial, he tried to turn it into a kind of conference, talking about the decadence of his time. Unfortunately for him, this worked against him. The prosecutor used the fact that he was educated to make his situation even worse because an educated man should have known better. The Austrian court sentenced him to death. A request for pardon was made, but it was not approved. Later, the sentence was transformed into life in prison. In the end, two lives were destroyed: the life of the woman, an intelligent businesswoman, and the life of the killer, who destroyed his own life through his deed