London, 1910.
Pain fills him.
His life, the soul of his music, the breath of his being – gone from him, gone in a flash of golden hair and the blue, blue, blue of her eyes.
The perfume of her voice remains in his ears. He holds his head in his hands, closing his eyes, feeling his heart thud; having known despair for so long before her light shone and died, the returning numb feeling is almost sweet to him.
After all this time, her kiss still burns.
.
A thick night mist creeps up the still street. A figure enveloped in a dark cloak moves through, glancing swiftly from one side to the other. The figure stops at a door, looking up at the sign.
THE WRITER
Inquire Within.
He hesitates for a few seconds before doing something odd.
He knocks.
A silence; the door opens. He steps inside.
The room is darkened and warm. The walls are stacked, ceiling to floor, with shelves and books of different colors and sizes; some volumes are in piles on the floor.
The only light is coming from a corner, where someone sits, writing, at a desk. She looks up; the room seems to brighten.
"The Writer?" The man speaks in a low, harsh voice.
"You knocked," the Writer muses. "You knocked. That is very interesting."
"I was told you could help me," says the stranger. "The Persian –"
"I know who you are," the Writer says.
"They shunned me – hated me," the man says, venom running in his voice.
"I know," the Writer answers.
"They made me hate them."
She does not reply; only looks, looks with her wide-set eyes, sees into his soul, reads what is written there.
He whispers. "I wanted to kill them all for what they have done to me."
"And then," she says. "And then what?"
"And then – they would be sorry! Then they would wish they had never been so cruel!"
"Would that make you happy, Erik?" she says quietly. "Truly happy?"
Erik stares at her.
In a kind of frenzied, desperate gesture, he rips the mask from his face.
"Look at it!" he thunders. "They thought I was a monster! She thought it! Do you not see it?"
The Writer looks at him reflectively. "I will tell you what I see," she says. "I see a mouth that speaks, ears that hear, eyes that can gaze upon beauty and drink blessing from it. I see a mind that thinks and retains knowledge like any other. I see skin, muscle, teeth, hands, feet; what you think makes you a monster I think is only a small part of the human you are, and I think, Erik, that the curse you speak of can and will be broken by yourself."
The words that have always come so smoothly to his mind, to dance in his music under his pen, have suddenly gone from him.
The Writer crosses the room. She stands before him, takes his hand, and places a kiss gently on his forehead.
He staggers; gold, flashing and burning and tumbling with twisting light, roars through him. The light, which he so long has pushed away, is beneath his fingertips.
Christine's kiss is still sweet and silvery, but the Writer has caused the bitterness to slightly fade; and with a tiny, wild, daring hope, he has begun to live again.
The Writer is pulling a red volume from a pale green shelf.
He looks at the empty pages falling open. "You are…sending me somewhere?"
"I am," she replies.
"Where?"
"To a place where a great battle is raging.
"You are standing now at a fork in the path; dark and light stretch before you, waiting. I am sending you to a place where you will take up arms for Good; you will triumph and live fully; your disfigurement will not be frightening or even abnormal to most. They are not unused to such things there."
"What is this place called?" he asks, wonderingly.
The Writer sits at her desk and takes up her pen. She smooths the page and begins to write.
"It is called Middle-Earth," she says, and the Phantom disappears.
.
Suggested by Angel of Love and Fluffy Stuff (distant relation to the Angel of Music?)
Be aware: I have not read the book (yet) so please correct any kind of error I might have made.