Excerpt from a non-existent novel 5

-I want to ask you a riddle, said the Garnet Girl.
-Go ahead, answered Chris.
Garnet Girl: -They say that in a distant, dark world there is a stone, the one who raised it repents, and the one who put it back repents.
Then the Garnet Girl began to whisper lines from her favorite poem?
Nightingales in the cypresses, a moon on the lake,
Black stone, white stone, much wine I have drunk.
- Time is up, Chris, answer, the voice of the Garnet Girl seemed to wake Chris from sleep.
-Well, this is Good, as soon as you take it in your arms, Love comes and asks, "Do you want me to help you too?" and you answer, "Yes, of course." Is it possible to refuse Love? And then Love will say, “I will make those to whom you do good, do you harm.” Then, you repent the first time, for taking Goodness into your hands…
-Then, as soon as you put Goodness back where you took it from, you will suddenly remember - Garnet Girl rounded off Chris’s answer - that you did good, not for the sake of those to whom you did good, you did it for the sake of Love, and then, you repent the second time, that you put Goodness back in vain.

Then she began to quietly read the end of the verse again:
One alone sings loudly, about nothing at all:
The world’s the light in a friend’s face, all else shadow!

Iltifat Heydarov
07/31/2025.