Prologue
The candle light flickered dimly, casting large shadows against the walls of the bedroom. There was only one candelabra creating them, and it stood upon a small table in the center of the chamber.
It was at this table that a man was writing.
The candles' light cast the dimmest shadows of all across his face, making it glow as if he was a supernatural apparition or ghost. His eyes, one hidden behind the protection of a half-mask on his face, glowed like dying embers in a fireplace upon the sheet of paper he scrawled upon. He seemed wholly concentrated on his work, scarcely moving save for the hand he wrote with and scarcely breathing save for infrequent, somewhat determined sighs of impatience that escaped from his nostrils. As the night wore on he wrote on page after page without ceasing, until finally the wicks of all the candles in the candelabra melted down to nothing more than small pools of wax and the rays of the early morning sun shone through the bedroom windows.
It was then that the man at last set down the quill pen he'd been writing with and slowly began to examine his work in silence. He looked upon the pages in solemn wonder, as if he'd only just now become aware of what it was he'd written.
It was music.
Sheets and sheets of music.
With careful deliberation his eyes pored over every single note and measure of the composition, as if looking for some kind of error in its structure. But when his eyes reached the bottom of the last page of music, the man set the pages down slowly upon the table. Standing up from his chair, he went to stand at the window. The dawn was slowly coming up over the horizon of the forest in the distance. As it's orange light poured into the chamber, he murmured almost inaudibly to himself, "So at last it is finished, Christine…at last it is finished…"
