"Water washes everything, except shame"

"Water washes everything except shame" – a quote carved into a fountain I read years ago, during a school trip. Our teacher loved this fountain so much that she made us write a nice essay about its meaning.

Water, here understood as Time, can sink anything sooner or later, but for the sculptor and for many of my peers Shame, as Grave Sin, always remains engraved on those who committed it. Unicorn Wars often talks about Shame: the Bears feel it after being kicked out of Paradise; Azulin taste it after killing his Mother and also Gordi experiences it, since he is ashamed of his body, compared to many other beautiful bears, and on different occasions and for different reasons.

At the time he joined me to the chorus of my peers, thus giving reason to this fatalistic and rigid vision, but with the years and with a greater capacity for introspection, perhaps we could understand that the Shame we feel does not always belong to us. Not entirely at least. And sometimes, it shouldn't do it one bit.

--------------

Narrator

Gordi was visibly devastated. He had desperately searched for his brother Azulin, who had fallen from a ravine after colliding with a pair of Unicorn foals, and there was no way to find him.

The horror gripped the mind of the chubby bear: that the waters had dragged his brother to the bottom, to bury him in a tomb of perpetually wandering water? That there was a waterfall ahead, which would end up plunging the lifeless body back into a further abyss? That Azulin had become entangled in some shore and something, anything, could have grabbed him to have an easy meal?

All these questions deprived Gordi of the strength to continue the research, combined with the tremendous physical exertion that was now afflicting him. He decided to return to the top of that murderous ravine, in order to have a raised view again, while caustic tears ran down his face, broken by continuous spasms and gasps of pure sadness. These verses covered those of another living being, also in the grip of the most blinding agony: a young filly now lay on the ground, unable to move given the wound to the hoof and above all to the great gash in the intercostal area caused by the sharp blade of Azulin, inserted with murderous fury among her flesh.

Gordi squinted his eyes, he had completely forgotten about it. He had in front of him the animal that had killed, in all probability, his little brother. The one he was supposed to protect, as he promised his Mother. He then cautiously approached the beast, noticing that the other smaller specimen seemed to have vanished. It was just the two of them, then. An easy job: it would have been enough just to stab her firmly in the throat. Sergeant Caricias at Camp Love had shouted at him dozens of times. An easy job... right?

No matter how obliged he felt to do so, no matter how much he felt he had to avenge his brother, he couldn't. He didn't want to snatch such a young life, guilty only of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gordi, on the other hand, felt guilty about many things about what happened: he also heard the neighing of the two fillies and it would have been possible for him to reach his brother even with a cry to dissuade him from attacking the two animals. He saw even the smallest Unicorn charging Azulin from behind, but he couldn't intervene, stammering and curling up behind a root, letting all this happen.

A desperate and evanescent neighing brought him back to reality, however: the young Unicorn, increasingly bleeding, was now losing consciousness, which until then had remained nebulously focused on the rosy bear that had approached her, while the world around gradually blurred. Gordi then approached her to gently take her muzzle so that it would not fall to the ground. It was an instinctive act of love, of care, which blossomed in him almost naturally. And perhaps because of the great tension, a revelation suggested to him what to do, however crazy and devoid of all reason this may seem.