This actually takes place after the fire at the Opera Populaire, and Erik is fleeing across Europe anywhere he can. Please critique as this was just a spur-of-the-moment piece and I would like to know how I did.
As the tall, cloaked man swept through the streets, passers-by generally avoided it, an air of menace surrounding him. Erik smiled at the discomfort he created, the rest of the party-goers at Carnival blowing it off as some nonsensical dread. His mask was unnoticed, as Venice was in the full thrall of Carnival and no one went anywhere without a mask. However, while those around him were full of life and color, reminding him of the infamous masquerade, his remained the same, impassive, draining happiness from the atmosphere. As he listened to the sounds around him, he felt a slight tug on his cloak, causing him to stop and turn back. Looking to the ground, he saw a child beggar sitting on the cobbled street, looking up at him with large green eyes.
"Signore?"
"Leave me be, child." He said condescendingly. "Here." He tossed her a coin and began to walk away.
"No, signore, stay!" He reluctantly turned back to her. "Would you like to hear my music?"
"What makes you think I care?"
"Because you have music in your soul, signore. It flows through you like lifeblood."
"You speak of things you do not know, child."
"I hear it in you, pounding, strong, overflowing-"A look of amazement came into her eyes. "Pardon me, signore. I overstep myself."
"Music…such an elusive spirit, the muse…" His eyes focused on something in the distance, gazing into nowhere.
"Exactly, signore! You understand my, my struggle! No one else understands this movement within me! My parents did, before they were taken from me, but you! You capture another part of music and cling to it, not selfishly, but possessively. It is you."
Erik sat, cross-legged, beside the girl, facing her with a questioning look in his eyes. "Continue."
"I can't!" Her face twisted in anger at herself, and she ducked so that he would not see her cry. When she looked up again, she faced him with a ferocity and put a hand on either side of his face, not minding the mask.
"Signore…come with me." She dragged him to his feet and into an alley, surprisingly clean by Venice's standards. He didn't resist when she sat him down on the ground and sat across from him, feeling his face with her hands. "Who are you, signore?"
"No one of importance."
"But your mask! You must-"
"Leave me be!" Angrily, he stood, but as he did so, she removed his mask, exposing his face.
"Demon! Wraith, you spawn of Satan!"
"Signore… "she sighed, a look of wonder rather than horror on her face. "Your face…"
"Is an abomination, and I don't need gutter scum like you reminding me of it!"
"But don't you see? Without your face you would have become like the pompous fools anywhere else in the world, devoid of purpose or meaning! But instead…you have become music, incarnated, your beauty overwhelming anything else."
"If only everyone saw it in that way." He paused, her words…comforting him in some small way. "May I have my mask back?"
"But you do not need it, signore!"
"Please, child." Reluctantly, she gave it back to him, her face still awed at his presence.
"Go, signore. Bring the beauty to the world I have yet to learn. I will write a song for you, signore! A beautiful, eternal song!" she called out as he exited the alley. He quickly joined the mass of people pressing along the narrow streets, but his heart remained forever changed by the simple yet powerful words spoken by the diamond in the rough, the glimmer of hope in his world of darkness.