Beautiful Disasters

*♪Heavy and hard is the heart of the king*

*King of diamonds, king of shades*

*The heart of a king who loves everything*

*Like the hammer loves the nail*

*But the heart of a man is a simple one*

*Small and soft, flesh and blood*

*And even that hardest of hearts unhardened*

*Suddenly, when he saw her there…♪*

The bard strummed their lyre with all the delicacy of a butterfly upon a fresh spring petal. The tragic tale of the two lovers who ventured into the underworld, only for one of them to return, had passed from rumor, to folklore, to myth, and now legend. It was the first one Arlecchino had heard, a fleeting moment of blissful wonder amid a sea of troubles. To the young wretches, music was all that could sate their hunger; the band’s grand choruses, the thunderous applause, and even the occasional hot meal all became dust and ashes to them once all the color and joy had been beaten out.

When those days in turn ended in dust and ashes, the performer had only their music as a friend, the melodies and arias all they dared nurture any true affection for. Before, when all Arlecchino could play were dull, discordant riffs between the sound and fury of tight-rope walking and lion-taming, the ringmaster was the true owner of this lyre. Now it belonged to Arlecchino, who yearned to tell the story they had heard a thousand times and would sing a thousand times more.

*♪The sun on her shoulders, the wind in her hair*

*The smell of the flowers she held in her hand*

*And the pollen that fell from her fingertips*

*And suddenly he was only a man*

*With the taste of nectar upon his lips…♪*

It was subtle at first. A stray beam of sunlight caught in the breeze so that whenever the melody came from their lips, brightness - tangible and real - would illuminate the darkened room. The gentle swaying of grass whistled in harmony with the song, lending it a curious microtonal and polyphonic quality. And suddenly, the echoes of a single raindrop would carry on for miles and miles until it was ensnared by the music, and you could swear that if you listened closely, the lone bard’s voice was joined by another, and then another, until it was but one part in a heavenly choir whose songs could tear down even the mightiest walls of stone.

So it was that whispers abound of a wandering minstrel whose sweet nectarine voice could move even the hardest man to tears, rouse the spirits of those souls who had never known happiness, and in turn break the hearts of passers-by who, after hearing a single note, felt like their world unraveled and they now beared the sorrow of a thousand tragedies. It was magic, but not the kind with which you and I would be familiar. It was old magic, great and terrible in the beautiful disasters it could wreak, and one not heard since mournful Orpheus, the only mortal to enter and leave the underworld unscathed, was finally reunited with his love. It was his salvation and his doom. And now the young bard, naive to the ways of the world, would sing that self-same song once more.

*♪So what has become of the heart of that man*

*Now that the man is king?*

*Now that he has everything?*

*The more he has, the more he holds*

*The greater the weight of the world on his shoulders*

*See how he labors beneath that load*

*Afraid to look up, and afraid to let go*

*So he keeps his head low*

*And he keeps his back bended*

*He’s grown so afraid that he’ll lose what he owns*

*But what he doesn’t know is that what he’s defending*

*Is already gone…♪*