Sweet Romance18 min read
A Pomegranate Promise
ButterPicks14 views
I remember the heat first.
"Why would they burn a tree?" I said to the smoke when I still had leaves.
"They wanted to chase a shadow," a small voice answered from inside the palace yard.
"I was a pomegranate tree," I told the world. "A thousand years a plain tree, and then—fire. Fire like a child's tantrum."
"You didn't deserve that," the voice said.
"Who speaks?" I asked.
A small boy ran beneath my charred branches, rubbing his hands on his robe. "You moved," he said with such wonder his mouth opened like a round moon. "Are you a fairy?"
"I am not a fairy," I snapped, because pride is what little trees keep. "I am a tree who wanted to fly."
"Will you fly now?" The boy's fingers brushed my blackened bark. "Can you be my sister?"
His fingers were warm. He called me sister and did not recoil from my scars. I laughed, which must have been absurd for a burned trunk.
"Fine. Sit," I told him, and buried my roots into the ground of his childhood bedchamber. I let a little of myself breathe through a pot of bright pomegranate blossoms where servants could see.
"Come play," he said. "Come tell me stories."
"Don't be foolish," I warned. "You are human and loud. You will break whatever calm I have left."
"You promise?" he asked.
"I promise nothing," I said.
He was eight then, plump and earnest. He asked endless questions, as kids do when they only sense the world as puzzle pieces. He tugged my skirts—my skirts, since that first shape-shifted night I had tried being human and found it interesting to wear a dress—and his small hand closed like a sun on fabric.
"Are you a fairy?" he asked again, eyes wide.
"I am not a fairy," I repeated.
"Then be my sister," he said simply.
I tried to be cruel. I tried to be the ancient thing that remembers loss. I pulled my skirts back from his fingers and smoothed the cloth with a cold precision.
"Go to bed," I told him. "Sisters sleep alone."
He pouted, the way a child does before surrender. He curled up like a peach and hugged my leg. "Can you sleep with me?"
"No," I said. "Be a prince. Sleep in your bed."
That night I turned back into a pot of pomegranate and watched him close his eyes, so small and trusting. I thought, "How easy to be cruel to a man who will be king."
Years moved like seasons. He grew. I let him re-pot me in an ornate container carved with dragon scales. "Sister," he said with new weight in his voice, "I will not let you leave my side."
"Good," I said. "You can feed me sunlight."
He did more than that. He stroked my leaves as if tucking them into a sleep. He tucked the pot near his desk so sunlight caught me every morning.
"I will give you my essence," he promised one evening, quiet like a closed book.
"You are young for such promises," I teased. "I nurish on wind."
He grew darker in the eyes. "You promised once," he said, voice shrinking into a memory. "You promised to stay."
"I never promised," I said, but the old comfort of his closeness made the truth softer in my mouth.
We struck a bargain. I would let him borrow me—my presence, my spirit—for a day every month, while he attended to the heavy world of the court. He would let me grow stronger. "It's fair," I told him.
"Indeed." He smiled at me like a blade that chooses to be gentle that day. "I will keep you near, sister."
We traded favors like children swap shells. He gave me dragon-breath nights, nights when power whirled through the palace and warmed my core. I kept watch. I asked little things, and he told me secrets I tucked like seeds in my heart.
"Am I selfish?" he asked once, under paper lamps. "I want something no one else can give me."
"What is that?" I asked.
"A child," he said simply. "For the throne."
I had always been able to create life. Pomegranates are careful things; we hold many small worlds in our red seeds. A tree like me—rooted, patient, foolish once—could do what many could not. I looked at him and saw the boy who once asked if I was a fairy. "I can help," I told him.
"Will you?" he asked, voice small.
"I will," I said. "But I am not your mother. I will not be your wife."
"You will be my sister," he said, meaning devotion with no rules. "You said you'd stay."
"Words are light," I said.
So I did what pomegranates do. In a quiet hour, where lamp light hid from gossip, I taught a subtle spell that let his lineage grow within me.
"It won't hurt much," I told him, steadying his hands one night.
"It hurts," he whispered after a while, teeth clenched, the edges of pain like wind against him. "It hurts, but I will do it."
"Good," I said. "Endure."
He closed his eyes and breathed through it like a child. The palace held its breath with him. I tended two small lives inside my hidden seed-core. I told myself I would leave as soon as they were whole. I would wash my hands and float away to the high gardens where other small deities stitched clouds.
But I had underestimated the heart that loves like a wound.
"Don't go," he said one morning. "Stay. Stay with me. Stay by this bed, this pot, this small corner of the world."
"I will not be your prison," I said, but I paused when I saw him, eyes rimmed with sleepless nights and the bruise of ministers.
"Promise me then," he whispered, and the way he said it made my sap run warm.
"Fine," I said. "A half promise."
He was not subtle. He tied golden cords around my little vase the morning I thought to leave. "You said you'd stay," he said, and bound me like a beloved book to the desk.
"You bound me," I scolded, pretending outrage. "What is this?"
"You vowed you would not leave," he said gravely. "I am only asking you to honor that."
So I was trapped, trapped by the softest hands of a man who had once set me alight as a child.
"I thought I was being kind," he told me once, face a map of regret. "I didn't know—"
"You burned me," I said simply.
"I know," he said. "For that, you should not forgive me. But will you let me try?"
He tried. He tended me with a care that made my branches hum. He sang to me at times like a low wind. He was different at night—gentler, remorseful. He became a man who would not let me go.
Then the court rose up. Ministers murmured about heirs and succession. The palace suddenly smelled of scheming. "Give him a wife," they said to keep the bloodline safe. They brought girls with petals in their hair and promises in their sleeves. The emperor—Calvin Gordon—who had been a small child had become a ruler with sharp edges. He still loved me with a fierce, clumsy tenderness, but he did not understand the world as delicately as a tree. He was blunt in his justice.
"Can you bear them?" he asked once, cruel in his bluntness. "Can you make me heirs the true way?"
"I can make seeds grow," I reminded him. "But I will not be your hidden shame."
Heaving sighs and courtly airs. I let myself be used for a while, for the children, because the dragon-energy he fed me was the quickest path to healing. He offered his life in crumbs; I took them.
"I will not leave you," he said again. This time, his fingers were not for binding but for pleading. He meant the words. There was a softness he never showed anyone. "Stay."
"All right," I said. "I will stay until the seeds are full."
When the day came and two boys lay on the bed like white pebbles of light, I thought I would be free. I rose like mist, ready to climb toward a sky of green work and higher tasks. I felt the air pull. Freedom tasted like clear rain.
"Go," he begged, corners of his mouth trembling. "Please."
"I will go," I answered.
He reached out with a golden chain and caught my ankle. "You promised you'd stay."
"I promised nothing," I said, and plucked at the chain.
"You cannot leave me," he said, voice cracking like old wood. "If you go, they will take you. If you go, they will tear you apart because they fear what they do not know."
"It is only a small jump," I muttered.
He pulled me back into the room and wrapped the chain twice. "Stay," he said softly.
I could have exploded with anger at his need. Instead I stared at the two boys and the way the palace buzzed with gossip. "Fine," I told him.
"You will never regret this," he said, and he meant it so much his chest shook.
So they kept me. They turned my branches into a throne of pomegranate and called me their blessing. I watched the court from a vase on a desk. I listened as ladies whispered. I listened as one woman—Monika Diaz—put on a sweet face and made notes in a fan.
"She saved your life once," Monika would say, eyes narrowing when she thought no one watched. "She must be favored."
"She is merely...useful," the ministers replied. "And a curiosity."
Monika's smile hid a sharpness. She had once been a friend—no, a rival—who learned how to play gods' games with a knife behind a fan. She had a history with the imperial family and with my old friend who had taught him mischief. She was dangerous because she was clever and because she wanted the things certain people think they deserve.
I had an inkling of that danger, but not the shape.
"It is not enough," Monika murmured when the two boys slept in a floor above my pot. "Not enough for some."
"Not enough for what?" I asked once, too curious for my own good.
"Power," she said and smiled. "You should be careful. Some gifts have strings."
I ignored her and lived on dragon-breath and sunlight. Years passed. Love grew, subtle as moss. The emperor—Calvin—came to me in the evenings with small bread and honey. He would sit and brush my leaves, and sometimes he would take off his robe and cover me from a draft.
"You're always cold," he complained once, holding his war-scarred hands above the pot. He did not know he was the one warming me.
"You are ridiculous," I said, and in the way a long-lived thing can, I found myself softened by the weight of care he offered.
"You are the only one I trust," he said. "You understand me when all the rest are a swarm."
"I understand you because you are simple," I said.
"Simple?" he laughed, a low sound. Then he grew quiet. "I am not simple. I am sorry for what I did."
"You cannot undo fire," I told him. "You can only water the roots."
And he did, washing my pot as if washing his own hands of guilt. He whispered to me, and sometimes he wept when he thought no one watched.
Those were the heart moments: his willingness to be gentle when he had been cruel, his hands taking mine like a small benediction, his smile at the first time he saw me laugh and understood what laughter meant.
"Do you remember the first day?" he asked once, voice shaking. "You were a sapling and I was a burning child."
"I remember," I said.
"You forgave me."
"I did not say I forgave you," I corrected, because old things like dignity are stubborn. "But I decided to let go."
He laid his head on the desk near me like a tired man and closed his eyes. "You are my whole world," he said.
"You are ridiculous," I repeated, but my fingers twined around the pot like roots seeking warmth. "Do not be endless in your need."
"I will be endless for you," he promised.
I could have left then. I was still a tree that could take the sky. But love is not always the fierce blaze of autumn; sometimes it is the soft green persistence of spring. I remained.
But the court is a hungry thing. Whispers became arrows. One night a crowd gathered at the bedchamber door, a sea of faces jutting knives with their speech.
"Who is this woman who sits on the emperor's desk like an idol?" they hissed.
"This is witchcraft," another said.
"An old tree with favors," a third spat.
They wanted to tear what they could not understand. Monika Diaz, with a smile like a closed trap, stood at the front and bowed.
"You see," she sang to them, "she is not a pomegranate at all. She is a spirit. She meddled. She must be punished."
"She is an abomination," the court murmured.
I had been tired of the palace's small cruelties, but I had not expected an onslaught. The emperor's face grew hard. "Leave," he ordered, voice a blade. "This is my court."
They did not leave. They shoved and they shouted. Monika's eyes looked at me as a predator might look at a wounded doe.
The accusation was simple: I had used forbidden methods to fly and thus my ascension was invalid; I must answer before the gods.
"I did what was needed," I said when they forced me out into daylight and presented me like a curiosity before the city's people.
"You broke rules for power," Monika proclaimed loudly. "You took dragon essence that belonged to the realm!"
"You sent fire years ago," a minister shouted suddenly. "Who burned the temple grove when you were young?"
A breathless hush fell. I had always known the child's arson would come back like a shadow. I had thought it was over.
"You!" they cried. "You, tree, take your leave!"
I was supposed to be judged by law, by ritual. The court was a stage.
Calvin stepped forward, face white. "She has borne my heirs," he said, and every eye caught in their throat. "She did what the law forbids, yes. But are we so blind we will punish the mother of two boys?"
"Two boys!" a voice shrieked. "Where are their rights? Who will ensure the throne?"
"It's not the throne you fear," said Monika with a calm that tasted like metal. "It's the favors you received."
The crowd broke into two: those who hated what they could not understand, and those who simply loved the small comfort of a man who once had nothing.
"It will not end in whispers," Monika declared. "She must be stripped of her gift."
I would be taken to the heavens and punished shortly. I felt it like a bruise forming. I thought of escape. I did not feel brave.
And then the heavens struck.
Light hammered down—light that is not the sun but judgment. The sky folded into itself and thunder rolled like the sound of breaking wood. I felt a pain not only in bark but in bone. I fell under lightning that split me as if claiming my thousand-year debt.
I heard someone scream my name. "Sister!" it wailed through the static.
I tried to reach for it. "Calvin!" I called, but the thunder drowned me.
The next memory is a whisper of the heavens. I stood at the threshold of a place where angels kept their ledger. I was being asked to carry the debt, to suffer for unnatural ascent, to give up the small bright bone in my chest that made me more than tree and less than god.
I thought of the two boys asleep upstairs, soft as seeds, and of the emperor who had bound me with golden cord.
"I will stay," I said weakly, defiant in a way trees can be. "I will accept whatever comes."
Then I felt hands. They were not the hands of the court. They were not harsh or polite. They were hands that trembled.
"Not her," a voice said. "Not again."
I looked up through the pain and saw his face, white as moonlight and carved by tears. Calvin Gordon knelt before me in the open square under the watching faces and took my pain.
"No," he gasped. "I will take it. I will repay what is mine."
"Stop!" I tried, but sound was small beneath thunder.
He wrapped his arms around me, and beneath his hands the lightning leaned. He closed his eyes and the sky seemed to weigh his life against mine.
"Please," he whispered. "Let me atone."
He took the punishment meant for me. The heavens marked him. He died there on the marble, life peeling like a leaf.
"Sister," he said, and moved his lips, and I heard it as a bell.
I fell then, not into heaven but into a small hut of wood and wind. When I woke, the world was smaller and my body weaker. In my chest there ached a hollow like rainwater.
There was a letter folded with his seal. "If you cannot find me again," he had written with hands that had been so brave, "forget me. Be free."
I did not. I loved him so badly the word collapsed inside my ribs.
"Why did you do it?" I whispered to the empty room. "Why would someone like you accept my pain?"
"He was never small," the letter had told me. "He did wrong as a child. He sought to fix it as a man. He loved you."
Alone, I drank tears like dew. I thought of revenge. I thought of going up to the heavens and shaking the ledger until the stars fell.
"Find him," a murmured idea said in my mind. "Bring him back."
So I did what few dare. I went to the place the dead are kept. I bargained with gatekeepers and spent years of my own growth in exchange for a single lamp that could catch wandering pieces of a soul.
"It will cost you a hundred years of your green," the judge said. "Do you understand?"
"I do," I said. I gave.
Months passed, then years. The lamp flickered and stayed dark. My savings dwindled like leaves in winter. Monika watched with a smile that had claws. She fed me poison in words and left me in the ocean of despair.
I fought. I scraped. I learned the names of a thousand small prayers. When the lamp finally jerked, it glowed with a small stubborn life.
"He's here," the lamp chittered.
I ran as one who remembers how to outrun guilt. I brought the pieces together with sticky fingers and prayers. I saw him, like a child's shadow, breathing in and out in the lamp's gold.
"Calvin!" I cried, and the lamp broke with such a sound as when fruit splits open.
He came back—like a drowned thing pulled free. He came bleeding and bewildered, but alive.
"Why?" he asked, voice thin as a reed.
"Because," I said, "you gave me everything."
We were together but not whole. The world still had the trace of thunder on our skin. Monika had not been satisfied. She had pushed and pried and made enemies.
The final thing she did was cruel and public, as cruel hearts do. She stood before the court and the gods and claimed that I had stolen the emperor's heart only to keep power. She unrolled a tapestry woven of lies and called for a sentence.
"This ends today," she declared, voice silk.
I stepped forward. My voice was small.
"You will tell the truth," I said. "I will no longer be silent."
"What can a tree know?" she scoffed.
"I remember the fire," I said. "I remember who urged a boy to light the wood. I remember who taught him mischief. You were there, Monika."
The hall was vast. Gods bent and looked. People leaned forward like they wanted to catch a flame. Monika's face did not move. She smiled, predatory.
"You will pay," she said. "They will see your end."
"Then let them see," I said.
We brought the matter to the celestial tribunal. The hall was carved from clouds and old bones of the world. Angels and minor gods sat in the audience like weather. When the judge called order, the murmurs quieted.
"Monika Diaz stands accused of instigation and regicide by proxy," the judge intoned. "She stands accused of leading a child to burn the tree and of later manipulating the heavens to strike down another's chance at ascendancy."
Monika's veneer fell away like paint.
"That is slander," she hissed. "You have no proof. We speak in rumor."
"Do not obstruct," Colette Roy, who had once been a concubine and later a witness of my small kindness, said. "I stand here to say she saved me when I was beaten. She pretended to be grateful."
"You saved me," I added. "You untied my bonds. I returned your kindness when I could."
"Not enough," Monika sneered. "You took the dragon-breath! You consumed what was not yours!"
"I took nothing I did not need for the good of a realm that trembled without heirs," I said.
"Silence!" Monika roared, and at that shout her composure cracked. "You were jealous—jealous of what I had. You stole glory from me!"
"Why did you plant the fire?" I asked, and the question was a quiet that made the hall lean.
Monika's mouth trembled. She had wanted it kept small, a trick that would be whispered. She had not wanted a god to die for it. She had not wanted me to be loved by a king who would kill himself in a square for a tree.
"Why?" I asked again.
She laughed then, a sound brittle as thin glass. "Because I am tired of watching you grow while I wear a smile. Because when you fly, I drown. Because I have plans and you were in the way."
There was a pause like a breath before a storm. Then evidence went up: a servant came forward, hands shaking, and told of a night years ago when Monika had given a boy a secret paper and a promise of approval. A dozen small steps coalesced into a path.
Faces in the tribunal shifted. Whispers rose like smoke.
Monika's smile died. Her steps faltered. She tried to say it was false, that the servant was paid. She tried to brand me a liar. Her voice rose and fell.
"I did not—" she began, then stopped. The judge spoke in a voice like winter.
"Stand forth," he ordered. "You will hear your charges read. If found guilty, you will be stripped of name, rank, and sight. You will be bound to a pillar and asked to watch what you desired burned."
Her eyes widened like a startled bird. "No," she whimpered.
"You may speak," the judge said.
Monika's face twisted through stages: scorn, denial, anger, then shock. "You—how dare you—"
Evidence continued. The servant who had come forward wept but stood firm. Another woman, once a friend, testified about Monika's whispered plans to remove rivals. The tapestry of lies monika had spun began to unravel in front of the whole court.
"Do you have any defense?" the judge asked.
"I—I am innocent," Monika said at first, and the word sounded thin. "I was only safeguarding the realm's future. I never meant—"
"Mean?" Colette's voice rang. "You meant to hurt. You meant to make others small so you could be bigger."
I had been silent so long I had forgotten how to speak for myself without the tremor of shame. "You set fire," I said plainly. "You taught a child mischief. You later poisoned the judgment of the tribunal and stole the chance of redemption."
"That is not true," she wailed.
"But it is," said Bowen Moreau, a witness who had been taught to read the signs of courtly deceit. He had been near the scene and had recognized Monika's hand in the plot.
The crowd stirred. Someone took a step forward and called her by private names she had believed were hers alone. The more she denied, the more splinters of truth fell into place like tiles in a mosaic.
Monika's face shifted: at first it was the tight mask of a woman who thinks her public self is enough to hold a lie; then the shock as accusations found match after match; then denial; then a desperate grasp at the truth no one would give her back.
"You lie!" she shrieked. "You lie!"
"Do you repent?" the judge asked.
"Repent?" She laughed hollowly. "Why should I? I only wanted power. Why should that be a crime?"
"Because men died," Colette said. "Because you gambled with lives. Because you stole a child's innocence and a man's chance at peace."
There was an intake of breath—public witness, the most painful crucible for the sly. People around her whispered, and those whispers became a roar of condemnation. Fingers pointed. Servants took out their tablets and began to record. The gods leaned forward to see.
Her expressions were a stage. At first, triumph—she thought she could dance around the truth. Then shock as threads unravelled. Then sly attempts to buy loyalty, to call old debts and callers to her side. When none answered, she tried bargaining. "I can pay," she said. "I can give my wealth. What about my family? What about—"
"Silence," the judge said. "You will be punished proportionally."
They stripped her titles with a formal, ceremonial coldness. The robes so important to her were removed. They bound her to a white pillar in the center of the court—not to kill, but to expose. The cause of public disgrace is not death but the slow, cleaving clarity of shame.
"What will you do?" she squealed, suddenly small.
"Watch," the judge said.
They refused to look away. The gods and the mortals and the children who had slept like seeds above my pot all watched. Monika's face moved through a storm of reactions. At first pride—she had imagined she could face them with composure. Then fury at the betrayal of the witnesses. Then bargaining. Then horror as the weight of her deeds became visible in the eyes of people who had trusted her once.
"Is this enough?" she begged the court.
"You will be the lesson," the judge replied. "You will be shown what your actions have made."
They led out a small bundle—an old scrap of cloth from the night of the fire—then placed it on the altar. A servant who had once been sheltered by Monika came forward and said, "I watched while you taught a boy to hide matches. I thought I was protecting a friend. I was wrong."
The crowd gasped. Some covered their mouths. Others took out their devices and recorded. Some wept. Some spat. The world felt like glass.
Monika's voice cracked as the evidence climbed. "No—no—"
"Look," the judge commanded.
She watched. Witness after witness came, and the crowd weighed each word. People cursed. A few applauded quietly when the servant named the exact gesture Monika taught the child. A few of Monika's erstwhile allies turned from her faces like curtains closing.
When the final testimony ended, the judge pronounced her sentence: banishment from the court's favor, binding to a pillar for a year to watch over those she harmed, and the removal of her privileges and names. She would stand in the public square and be shown the truth of who she had been.
The moment she realized what that meant—standing naked of honor before everyone who ever touched her hand—the mask snapped. Her face broke, and she fell to her knees with the freedom of a falling leaf.
"Please," she cried. "Not in front of them."
"It is the only reach left," said Colette quietly. "You will suffer what your deeds deserve."
The crowd's reaction was a patchwork. There were cries of "Shame!" There were those who muttered, "Finally." Some shook their heads, unable to accept that anyone who smiled so lovely could be so cruel. Children clapped, shocked at the drama. Several people who had once been close to Monika looked away in shame. A few took photos, hands trembling.
Monika's change of heart was theatrical: from arrogance to denial, then to bargaining and finally to a raw, wet collapse. She tried to plead with those she had wronged, but few answers came.
"Why don't you cry for them?" she wailed. "Cry for the emperors, cry for the child, cry for what I have done!"
"Your tears cannot stitch the past," Colette said. "But they can show the present."
Monika was led away, bound to stand where people could see her and understand the cost of cunning built on other lives. The crowd dispersed with a thousand whispers, and some whispered, "Let that be the end."
I watched, breath held in my ribs. People came up to me in lines: some to spit, some to bless, some to touch my pot as proof that the tree had forgiven. "You saved us," said one. "You were the only true thing in the palace," said another. "You are a miracle," a third declared.
The emperor—Calvin—had not returned. He had given everything to save me and had left the world a letter and a memory. I held his promise in my hollow like a lit match.
After the tribunal, the gods softened their strict ledger. Many small hands reached to help me heal. Bowen Moreau, who had testified, gave me a stone to keep at my roots. Colette tended the boys and stayed by my pot.
"You cannot be forced into pity," Colette said one night, as she sat near my pot. "But you can be loved."
"I did not deserve such love," I told her.
"Did it matter?" she asked.
"No," I answered, and the word was simple and true.
We rebuilt slowly. The scar where the chain had held me remained like a ring on my ankle in memory. The children grew, and the palace learned that when a ruler loves, sometimes the rules bend. I learned what it means to forgive and to accept the cost of being loved.
Monika's punishment echoed for months. For a year she stood bound to the pillar, faces turning towards her like the sun. Her expression continued to change in front of crowds—sometimes a plea, sometimes a sneer—but mostly a hollowed, empty face that spoke of the price of reaching for what was not yours.
"Do you regret it?" a child asked once as he touched my pot.
"I regret many things," I said. "But I learned that love is not a ledger. It is a stubborn tree that grows even when wind tries to break it."
Calvin's letter remained folded in my soil like a small lantern. I read it often. "Do not forget how to laugh," he had written. "Even if I am made into memory, laugh. Live for me as well."
I laughed sometimes. I laughed when the children chased pigeons. I laughed when Colette told me gossip in the quiet when the court slept. I laughed when Bowen returned with strange tokens from the sea.
Years braided like vines. I discovered, late and bright and soft, that the ache inside my chest was a kind of love that was not shameful. It was warm and steady and possible.
"You are a stone that kept its spring," Bowen told me, as we walked the palace garden where other pomegranates bloomed.
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe I am just a tree that learned how to be loved."
"Either way," Bowen said, smiling, "you kept your seed."
At night, when the moon spilled like milk on the palace courtyard, I would press my pot against the corner of the desk and remember the first small boy who had asked if I was a fairy.
"Do you remember?" I would whisper.
"I remember," a voice in my memory answered. "I always will."
The mark on my brow, a purple pomegranate blossom stamped by old curses, faded slowly under the care of friends. It never fully left—the world keeps its scars—but it softened enough for me to hold both pain and joy at once.
So I stayed. Not because I was trapped, but because I wanted to watch over the sons who slept like seeds and the memory of a man who had once burned a tree and later, without hesitation, took its lightning.
"I will watch your branches grow," Calvin had promised in the last line he wrote me. "Grow for me."
I did.
The End
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