XXIII. "teach me passion, for I fear it's gone"
He comes upon yet another revelation: for so long she has been the focus, the object, the inspiration of his work. For what now shall he compose? Could there ever be a sweeter muse?
And then he recalls how his earliest melodies grew like blackened flowers from a barren garden. These were raw and dark and stained with the blood of years, and their harmonies were like shadows under the moon, disturbingly black against their possibility of light.
He smiles grimly, in spite of himself. His early music was full of greys and blacks and wraiths of misery; that which he wrote for her was laced with a midnight loveliness. The two combined, this new pain entwined with the old, shall make the finest, the most beautiful, and the most terrible music he has ever created.
