He sits at his desk, this place of peace surrounded by the pounding of metal and the sawing of wood. He turns the crank on the little treasure box that plays a tune he hasn’t heard in person since his childhood.

“Ho finito con il mio cuore senza grazia. Stasera ho intenzione di ritagliarlo e poi ricominciare…”

A whore’s lament, pulling at heartstrings. The heart of the Mask and Shield. Compassion for the lowest, the broken.

He begins to write –

“Sir Emeric,

The moment when the music took me was so surprising. I have been transported by music before, but I also saw the tears in your eyes. I could see how you were tied to Mankind then, how you have shouldered the Chains of Fate to bear the burden, to steer the course. I saw your true power then, unbeholden to the forces of the world that reinjure the already broken.

I have selfishly allowed myself to be misread, in my anger and my pain. I have allowed myself to prejudge those who might be allies in the healing of the world. I thought I would need to be well known to have the power to change lives, but I was squandering my work where the work itself would have been enough.

You and I will disagree more often now than ever, I’m afraid, my new brother. But trust that it will be from love, that it will be about tactics and not about the Grand Event. I am more comfortable amongst the sinners of the world than the saints, and it is in the places where people have hidden and hardened themselves to protect their Meaning that I will be found.

Thank you for your Tears,

Alonzo

———-

The music box plinks along merrily – “Scuotilo, Scuotilo, Scuotilo” Alonzo sighs, touching the blank white mask that always sits near when he is writing, turns it over to see the writing of his mother, the writing he’s written on other masks in his own time – “Diventa chi devi, rimani chi sei”

Turn, turn, and turn again.