The next morning he found Oro in his usual spot on the bank of the creek. Erik sat beside him silently, hesitating a moment before leaning his head onto his grandfather's shoulder without prior encouragement for the first time. Oro smiled to himself and glanced down at Erik. He had his eyes closed and looked nearly as though he were asleep, though Oro knew he was not. He reached around Erik and pulled his grandson into a light embrace. He did not stir, seeming content to play possum for a moment longer.

"I am far too old to be this confused. Nothing makes sense."

"Life would be dull if everything were predictable."

Erik opened his eyes to watch the water passing in the creek below.

"Why did I follow Tess, grandfather? I should be dead now, laying forgotten underneath the Parisian opera house that I designed and built. It would have been a fitting end."

Oro pulled Erik imperceptibly tighter to himself and sighed.

"I do not know, Erik, but I am ever grateful that you are not. And to be forgotten anywhere is an end that fits no one."

"At least it is an end I could understand. Everything I thought I knew seems highly questionable. All my life, there were several immutable truths I could always rely upon. Now, they have proven less than steadfast."

"Such truths as?"

"That I am meant by fate to be alone and despised. That which is evil is ugly and that which is good is beauty…"

"It is rarely advisable to approach life in such strict black and white terms. And you are certainly not despicable nor should you be alone. You've been alone far too much, in my opinion. And while you may be no stunning beauty, I, at least, do not find you ugly by any stretch."

"And what of Evil?"

Oro sighed with a deep mental fatigue.

"Erik, if your mother were here right now, I'm afraid I would have to slap her senseless for planting this asinine idea into your head! You are not evil! I know you say you have done evil things in the past, but no one, Erik, no one is completely innocent. We all have regrets."

"Tess said, last night… She said I was vain. She said that I loved Christine only because I wanted her beauty to make up for my own ugliness."

"Hm."

Erik waited for Oro to say something other than 'hm' but he did not and Erik grew impatient.

"Grandfather, is she right or is she wrong?"

"Erik… I honestly cannot say for certain. You have not told me much of your relationship with Christine. I gathered from your rambling that you taught her to sing and that she would not marry you when you asked. I know little of your motives on the matter. It is up to you to decide whether or not Tess's words hold any truth."

"You do not think I am vain, then?"

Oro sighed again.

"Erik… You are clearly preoccupied with a certain definition of beauty to a point that is arguably rather unhealthy. This poisonous obsession of yours seems to seep into every aspect of your life and especially how you think about and judge other people and yourself. That is all I can say. If it is any consolation to you, most people are quite vain, though not always about the same things. It is up to you to decide if you are and if you wish to change. I cannot do that for you."

Erik sat silently with his grandfather, watching the creek slither past for some time. Could Tess possibly be right? Did he love Christine only because he wanted her 'feathers' for his own? As a young child that still believed God listened to his prayers, he'd prayed every night before bed that he would wake up the next morning and at least be normal, if he could not actually be beautiful. Then maybe his mother would have given him the affection he'd wanted. If only he'd been as beautiful as her, she would have loved him, right?

If everything else about him had remained the same, only that his face were fair, his mother would have loved him. Tess did not seem to notice or care that his face was ugly. His skeletal body was a merely another oddity to be studied and deconstructed on paper to her. His grandfather did not find him ugly at all. Yet his mother had denied him even the slightest scrap of warmth and family because of his appearance. Was her rejection of him truly based on something so shallow, so purely physical? He must be evil. There must be something else wrong with him. He had to be evil, otherwise…

Erik shivered and Oro pulled him closer. Erik hid his face against Oro's chest.

"Why did my mother hate me so? What did I do wrong?"

Oro stared down Erik thoughtfully before replying, giving weight to his response.

"Absolutely nothing. What she did to you is not your fault, Erik, in even the slightest measure."

Erik closed his eyes tightly, trying to hold back the quiet tears that seeped through to dampen Oro's coarse robes. How could a mother throw away her only son because he was ugly—just ugly? So maybe the circumstances of his conception had been violent, but it's not like he had asked to be born in such a manner.

"If I did not look like Ohte, if I had been born looking completely human—"

"If you had been born looking like a full-blooded Tellurian, she may well have been kinder to you. Or perhaps she would not have. There is no way either of us will ever know, Erik, and you will only torment yourself further by wallowing about in maybes and could-haves. At this point, perhaps it is better if you simply accept your past and forgive your mother's childish fear. There is nothing you could have done to change it."

Erik tugged sharply at the loose thread on his robe he had been worrying, and broke it. He tossed it into the creek and watched it disappear.

---

Tess was actively avoiding him. Running from him, in fact. She'd duck into room or up a tree when he approached, and he would catch just a glimpse of her long hair flipping around a corner. He had spent the entire day following his row with her and his conversations with Oro reexamining his own life and by the end of it, he had resolved to apologize for his earlier insult, however much she had earned it. Tess, though, seemed determined not to give him a chance to do it.

He was somewhat insulted by it at first, but by the third day, he was merely tired of it and when she flew up a tree near the creek like cat, he swung up into the branches after her, chasing her to the thinnest branches that would still bear her weight. She glanced across at another nearby tree and as he reached up to pull himself to her level, she hunched her legs under her and leapt like a monkey toward it. She grabbed onto a branch, swinging toward the trunk. It suddenly snapped before she could grab hold of the trunk and she fell several feet, breaking branches beneath her, before grabbing onto a solid one and stopping her fall less than five feet from the ground.

Erik dropped from the tree he was in swiftly as Tess slowly lowered herself to the ground, shaking from the sudden shock of her fall. As soon as her feet touched solid ground, she sat down, curling over herself. Erik knelt beside her. He tentatively reached out, and after hesitating a moment, laid his hand on her back.

"Are you injured?"

She shook her head in the negative against her knees. Erik gently pried her hands away from her legs and she slowly straightened her feet out in front of her, but did not look up. Erik looked her over. She was scratched up across her arms and face, a particularly deep one across her forehead oozing blood down her face and leaving a stain on her knees, but she did not seem severely injured. He pulled a clean handkerchief from a pocket and pressed it firmly against the cut, holding it there. Her shaking ceased a moment later and she seemed to have recovered, for the most part. She was feeling well enough to be cross with him, anyway.

"There was no reason for you chase me like a dog after a cat you know."

"If you do not wish to be chased, perhaps you should not flee like prey. There was no reason for you to make that foolish jump. I have no intention of harming you."

"How the hell was I supposed to know that?"

Erik sighed and ground his teeth.

"Have I ever given you cause to believe that I would hurt you?"

"Yes, actually. That time you tried to strangle me, for example. And you made your opinion of me quite clear a few days ago."

"I was not in my right mind when I attacked you. As for my comments…"

Erik pulled the cloth back and checked the cut. The bleeding had stopped, mostly. It did not look like it would need to be stitched, or whatever served for stitching on this world. Tess watched him skeptically.

"As for my comments… you are not an ugly little toad. Merely an occasionally irritating one who nearly kills herself jumping across trees"

Tess's gaze dropped to her lap and she rubbed at the sticky blood from the scratches on her arm. She did not respond to his admission.

"I, however, may well be a great ugly fool and an old peacock. Oro… I have found that Oro is often right about many things. You and he seem to see… certain things… in a similar fashion. Loathe as I am to admit it, you may both be right in your assessment of me…"

Tess fidgeted under Erik's sudden humility, guilt seeping into her mind.

"Erik, I didn't mean that... And I shouldn't have made fun of Christine, I know you love her. I've never even met, her, so I don't know what she's like."

Erik dropped the bloody handkerchief onto the grass rubbed hard at his eyes. The past few days had left his mind in turmoil as he was forced to face his own shortcomings and the flaws in his perception of reality.

"No, you have no right to speak ill of a girl you do not know. You do know me though, and are not entirely wrong in your judgment of me, however."

Erik picked up the red-stained cloth and climbed down the bank to the creek to wash it, pulling Tess after him and sitting them both down on one of the large flat rocks. He proceeded to use the wet handkerchief to wipe the blood from her face and arms. Tess surprised him and herself by not protesting. He sighed and decided at that moment that he would tell her what happened. If she decided then and there that she never wanted to speak to him again, then so be it. If he were to be damned, for once he would be damned for precisely what he was and nothing more or less.

"Christine was not spoiled. She was many things, but not spoiled. I saw her first as child, you know? She was about eight or nine years old, I suppose, when she joined the opera, first as a ballet rat, then a couple years later as a chorus girl. Her father was a Swedish violinist, reputedly very talented. He had died only a week before she came to the opera. It was obvious from the beginning that she had inherited all of his talent and more. Her voice, even as a child, was something to behold. I am sorry to say, I took full advantage of her powerful imagination, hiding behind a mirror in her dressing and playing a story her father had planted in her head of the Angel of Music for all it was worth. I only wished to train her voice, you know. I did not set out to seduce her, not at first. I merely thought it a waste to leave her under the tutelage of morons when her voice was clearly meant to be in the spotlight. She would have been frightened of me if I had approached her in any other way, even with the mask."

Tess sat quietly listening, afraid to speak lest she cause him to loose his nerve now that he seemed inclined to speak of his past.

"She grew more and more beautiful as each year passed, and her voice grew in strength and quality under my guidance. If there was an angel of music, she was the angel, not I. I made her into an angel of music… and I soon wanted to keep her all for my own. That was not to be, clearly. She had another suitor. A young nobleman whom she had known in her childhood. A nice enough chap, I suppose. A bit weak, if you ask me, but who am I to judge a woman's choice of husband? She saw something of worth in him, obviously. At any rate, playing at being her Angel worked only so far. She unmasked me the very evening I brought her to my home on the lake and no matter how I begged her to stay, no matter how I pleaded that I would treat her gently, she would not stay. She was terrified of me, and rightly so. I resorted to kidnapping her outright and threatened the life of her little chap to gain her consent. She gave it, in the end, after much grief, if only to save her little suitor. She kissed me, you know. The first and last kiss I was ever given."

Erik gazed into the light playing on the surface of the water and wiped away the errant tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Tess watched him, waiting for him to continue as understanding sank in.

"She didn't leave you then… You let her go."

Erik barked a sound halfway between a laugh and sob.

"Yes, I let her go. I could no more keep her there in the darkness with me than I could cage a nightingale and expect it to live. She would have died down there, living in hell with me, in spirit at least, if not in body. How could extinguish that brilliant light and live with myself? No, I let her go, and her little chap. I suppose they are married by this point. Perhaps she has a new baby by now, a perfect little baby she and her chap will love and spoil. Their children will all be beautiful, as they should be."

Tess wrung the wet handkerchief in her hands. Life was highly unfair, she thought. Why should a genius be forced to hide behind a mirror and pretend to be an angel just to share his knowledge with another? It was stupid. Damned Victorians and their stupid arrogant men and stupider uneducated women…

She still did not like Christine, but the venomous envy left her as she realized the futility of trying to worm her way into this man's heart. It was likely sealed off forever now, hidden behind more walls and barricades than could be counted. After going through something like that, she knew if it had been her, she would probably never let herself love another soul. Not that she had ever loved anyone in the first place…

Erik pulled the damp cloth from her hands and stood, waiting for some kind of response from her. Would she still desire his thoughts or his presence? He doubted it. Tess stared up at him, waiting for him to do something. Would he want her around, even as a friend? Why was he even telling her these things?