I woke in a bed of satin and velvet, my ears flooded with the airs of angels as filtered through canopies of spider-web lace. I stirred a little, feeling oddly light, and realised slowly that I was not clad as I had been. I was dressed in something white and filmy, like an underdress, and-- nothing else. I shivered, suddenly aware of the cool damp of the cavern about me.

The music stopped with a jarring, dissonant chord. my breath ceased in my breast for a long moment as all I heard was the sighing of some stale breeze in the flickering lamplight, and the soft click of heels on stone. And then it stopped.

For a while we stared at each other, the masked figure at the end of the bed, framed in the black lace of the curtains and myself, aware of my own terror and a dim sense of betrayal. The expression I felt seemed mirrored in the blankness of his domino, and in the twist of his lip, the half I could see. His eyes were not fire now, but black pits in the mask-holes, empty and yawning, like hope feels far from home. I knew the feeling. Curiously, I suddenly felt the urge to laugh, to laugh and laugh and never stop laughing. I sat up on my elbows.

"Stranger than you dreamt it?" I sang at him. He clasped his hands over his ears and staggered back,

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" He wailed, and I sat up a little straighter. Really! Such pointless Tenor dramatics.

"Christine..." He whimpered. But by now, I knew no fear.

"A castrato." I said.

He winced, and cringed away from the bed, almost huddled with his back to me. Any lingering tension or anxiousness I might have felt melted away at that instant, replaced by something curiously like pity. I knelt forward on the bed, and reached out to touch his shoulder, but with my hand just a few moments away the Angel wheeled again. He had removed his mask.