Prelude
Inside looked outside at something unexpected. Outside looked inside at a face of false familiarity. And there they stood, inside and outside; two worlds of wonder, two worlds apart.
A questioning sound pierced through the silence from without.
An answer reached back through time from within.
From outside, “Is he here?”
From inside, “It depends on where here is.”
The step of a woman crossed the barrier into a known unknown. This place had grown cold, dark, and lifeless, and her voice followed timidly, not quite sure, out of bounds with a former reality. She looked at the sentry as she passed him by, and drove deeper into her (some other) destiny.
Before her appeared the figure of the man she was seeking, a form she had once known, and yet now could not comprehend.
No words could move him, no tongue implores, no touch extends renewal. Her eyes sought help from the figure’s guardian who sifted through the ashes of a once proud and noble state. Gone.
Now, that which remained was merely a ritual of what she could only guess the meaning.
An icon spread of Virgin hues.
A prayer in broken languages alien to those lips.
A cross clenched in prayerful fists, begging for relief from the mother of his invention.
A song scratched by its player, a reminder of a tomb neglected.
Tears began to reign as the figure removed to an upper room.
At a corner table the figure sat to inspect the work that alone filled his mind. From above his shoulder her eyes reached to find white soaked pages blackened with staffs and measures. She gleaned a title from the first sheet, “Una Calorosa Brezza Estiva.” But what could it mean in this time and place. These were not his words, she knew. This was not his voice, as a song began. This was not .... as the notes stretched across the pages before her.
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe now you will.”
A harp ascended to the lips of a trembling madness, of a haunting dementia. Into the night drifted note after note. Into the night trapped and taken. Here, the mystery could be known. Here, the secret would be uttered. Here, an opera now began.
