“Don’t just stand back there, Long Ears: come sit with us!”

Amadeus had shouted back to me the moment I set my foot beyond the threshold, without reserve despite what the social graces should reasonably require; as if he had been waiting for my entrance all along. The mass had not yet begun despite the darkness which prevailed beyond the monastery doors, but the nave was filled from the foremost pew on to the back, and I was hardly the singular person in attendance that might otherwise be compelled to remain on their feet!

The retired legionnaire’s blusterous behavior naturally drew a number of eyes upon the both of us, and ire from Beatrice in particular, who stood without a single place for someone of her stature to sit. Her blazing eyes looked as if they might surge into flame at any moment, and they scored disgust so deeply into the back of his head that his wispy hairs might soon come aflame under the sheer intensity of her directed hatred!

But Amadeus was never one to wilt or wither before the weight of communal acknowledgement, and it would seem that he did not feel a shred of regard for her scathing judgement, as he could be seen — and very much heard — animatedly ‘requisitioning’ a space for myself to sit from poor old Gerald! It was always a wonder to me that he was so susceptible to Amadeus’s selfish designs, but I liked to theorize that he had been sorely lacking in company ever since Susan’s passing, and was thus relieved of his loneliness by the presence of another such busybody in his life.

A sigh slipped through my lips of its own accord, as I was weary enough already without having additionally been made party to this developing arrangement, and while I was rather thankful that Beatrice had not yet turned such burning eyes upon myself: the few gazes that did linger upon me carried with them rather more pressure than I might have strictly appreciated. I had arrived rather later than I had originally intended, so I should have preferred to have remained nearer to the entrance, perhaps in a quiet alcove so that I would not block the flow of people, but actually refusing him in a lengthy shouted exchange over the heads of the congregation was simply unacceptable!

Even if I were to adamantly ignore this ‘request’ of his: it was all too likely that he would once again disrupt the mass in repeated calls for me to join him! With his meddling personality, he might even interrupt Father Nico’s blessed sermon for such a reason as mere camaraderie! So in a hurried rush, I took my feet away from that doorway, and ran right past Beatrice’s unregistering eyes as I beat my best civil pace down the center aisle toward the recently appeared space in between those two old men.

“Glad you could make it, Long Ears! What took you so long?” Amadeus chortled as he turned to greet my approach with one of his banal jokes. If only I were as imperceptible to him as I was in Beatrice’s aether-soaked vision, for all the troubles he caused me, and I was unfortunately unable to prevent him from once again blasting out so unrestrainedly. I felt a frown form as I came to face his cheeky grin, but I nonetheless provided him with an answering word as I bent to sit beside him,

“Alexander.”

Amadeus paused for a moment to evaluate the implications inherent to the name, and then he shook his head as if to dispel from it the tragic conclusion he must have come to. He must have surmised that the boy had survived to live another day from my tone of voice and generally unaffected expression, but in truth it had been a rather nearer miss than I might have preferred. I would certainly tell him more when he next asked, but it seemed that further discussion had been tabled for the future as he brought his fingers to a pondering tedium above his knee.

Given his relative silence, I turned my attention back forward as best I could in preparation for the coming ceremony, but a needless grumbling distraction from my other side made my ear twitch with its incessant intonation. Though I had striven to keep them from my mind as I had come to sit: it was impossible for me to fully ignore the queer oaths Gerald continued to deliver from under his breath for having been pressured into moving over for, as he aptly put it,

“No goddamn reason, the fresh git.”

Defying my pointed intention not to look back in Amadeus’s direction for the duration of the mass: in my periphery it seemed that Amadeus’s grin had returned, and was even further widened with mirth as Gerald grouched in his half-quieted tirades — likely making his very best efforts to contain the bitterness inside him to a manageable level while he was in church — but the legionnaire soon nudged me for my better attention, and my traitorous instincts had me turn enough to see him pointing toward a door that lead to the dormitory wing,

“That’s where our beautiful girls are coming out from, you’ll see. I’m not letting you miss how sweet my Elissa’s dressed up for tonight.” he said, and then with a proud laugh upon his lips he boasted of his daughter, “You’ll want to keep her for yourself, but I won’t let you! She's all mine, Long Ears!”

I could only shake my head at this assault of fatherly love that burst out from beside my ear, but this must have been at least Amadeus’s third overly disruptive outburst this evening, and I knew a trend toward terrible conduct when I saw it, or in this case: was made to hear it. If I were to now allow him to uninhibitedly gush over how wonderful his daughter was: he could well natter on up until Elissa’s performance, only to then continue singing her praises long after it was over!

He was such a doting father, so it seemed that the peace and sanctity of this holy day depended on my swift, decisive, and conclusive action! I immediately moved to preempt his overwhelming enthusiasm before it could spread to myself,

“I am certain that she will look right lovely, Amadeus, angelic even. But I, and I should think many others present, should rather appreciate it if you would endeavor to contain your effusiveness for the duration of this hallowed mass.”

Amadeus hesitantly nodded his understanding before lifting his chin in his hand, but his eyes still sparked with mischievous intent. His fingers tapped a rhythm against his cheek in contemplation, as if he were inclined to explore the possibility that I had left him with a particularly interesting loophole to exploit. It was truly a waste of his efforts, but then Gerald, having never been a man to leave a good telling off lie, snorted out a giggle from my other side, and garishly condensed my statement,

“Think that meant ‘shut it, please’, Centurian.” 

“And you!” I snapped with unexpected amusement pulling upon my lips, for his impropriety had somewhat tickled me, but I restrained my ill-forming humor and nonetheless reprimanded him, “There have been quite enough of your foul utterances already! You are in the Lord’s house, and while here you will act in a manner better befitting of this holy place, or else… well, I suppose I might… tell Olga on you.”

I whispered that last and cradled my forehead in my hands to regain control of myself, for these old men's’ insistent humor was an infectious thing, and as was usual after a long and tiring day: by the end I had given in to it myself. Though he had been previously mollified by me, Amadeus now bore a tremendous smile that nearly split his face, and he struggled to contain his laughter as he leant in around me to speak to Gerald directly with his index finger waggling,

“Don’t look like she’s bluffing, old boy. You’d best be careful!”

Gerald’s fingers signed a cross over his chest as he affected a clearly fallacious shock upon his face. Would that he had left it at that, but he then made show of an elaborate clasping of his hands in mock prayer, and finished with his own grin,

“I’ll stay, and sin no more.”

A laugh puffed out through my nose despite myself as Amadeus absolutely hooted on my other side, bringing me to blush in the embarrassment of possibly being publicly associated with such troublemakers as these, but I was thankfully spared from any further antics as the aetherlights above us dimmed to signal the beginning of the mass.

I hurriedly rectified my lacking posture, and the chattering that still traded about became quieter as their conversations went to end. Amadeus still smirked brightly from beside me, but he was quiet aside from his humour-affected breathing.

A few whispered words were still bandying about when all at once they came to an abrupt end, as the dimmed light suddenly erupted vividly from behind the stained glass windows, and cast every colour they had contained forth in long draping bands that stretched across every corner of the room. I thought that it was beautiful, and I was certain that if I had any aether of my own to engage I might have wept to have seen it, but I had something far more wonderful enter my sight.

For my eyes, there was only my princess, whom I could see standing just inside the dormitory’s entranceway in the newly brightened environment. Her red dress glittered as it reflected some of the radiance she had brought forth, like many small stars brought to dance along the whole of her in as many prismatic colours as surely existed. But still more pleasant to look upon was the way her wavy locks flowed like a river of gold down to her waist, and there fluttered as if wind were blowing through the tips of her hair despite the stillness of this sanctuary.

She had said that she had meant to surprise me with what she would be wearing, and I had to wonder just where she had gotten her hands on such an extravagant dress, for it seemed tailored to fit her with an exactitude uncharacteristic of the frontier. In all, it terribly suited her to be so gorgeous, and when she finally caught sight of my silent appreciation for her appearance: a stunning smile formed in pure joy upon her glossy lips.

I swallowed, for she had dressed up so elegantly as she had been in our very first meeting, more than twenty years past. She appeared overlaid with her earlier self in my mind, and it was as if the dress she now wore had come from another life, when she had appeared like the sun in that dark and gritty place where I lived; such a knotted warmth tied up my breathing to look upon her like this.

Even down to the colours, the frills, the ribbons: her dress was so elaborate that most who saw her should likely think that she was simply unable to make up her mind as to the theme of her dress. But I was uniquely armed with our history, and I knew that she had meant to appeal to my memory.

Her success in this could not be overstated, and she seemed to glow with elation as she basked in the recognition that floated in my eyes, as she called back upon the moment she had swept me away with uncontrolled aether. I knew by the ambitious gleam in her smile that she had meant to win my adoration for her all over again through demonstrating the perfection she had now achieved in her arcane prowess.

Unfortunately, her excitement had leaked through her focus as her fingers trembled from the urge to wave to me in welcome. This caused a brief flickering in the lights, so she resolved her longing with a playful wink to me, and returned to pulling upon the invisible strings of her magic with her utmost focus, bringing her attention fully back to her aetherial orchestration as Father Nico finally appeared from the sacristy.

He stepped forward with a moderated pace as he looked over the gathered host, and all sounds in the nave had hushed in anticipation as he arrived behind the lectern. After a moment, he spoke to the silent room,

"In the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was God.”

He paused a moment to greet members of the congregation with his eyes, and the aether left them for long enough for him to nod to myself as well, but he continued to recite the first verse of the Eternal Book to us,

“All things were made by Him, and in Him was light, and life, and the love of man.”

The vivid colours behind the stained glass seemed to brighten and solidify as if they had altered the true image of all that they touched, but this spell was shortly broken as cold seemed to seep into the monastery, and the aetherlights began to flicker as if they were trembling under some incredible duress, sending the coloured bands to war with one another as each achieved a momentary flash of dominance, and Father Nico spoke amongst it all,

“But man did not love God in return, and so man abandoned God’s light, and took life into his own hands as he sought to remake God’s world in his own image.”

At his final word, they were all at once snuffed out, and a total and complete darkness spread throughout the monastery. Regret filled my chest as the darkness took away my vision of Arianna, but I took heart in that I should surely see her again the moment her role in this event was complete.

Some of the newcomers expressed shocked exclamations at having been so suddenly plunged into blackness, as just this much had become our tradition in recent years, but they were brought again to ease as a lonely pillar of light appeared on the stage.

It shone upon a young child who wore a buttoned up white cloak that stretched down beyond his ankles and gathered into a rumple on the floor. Damien — if it really was him underneath those orange-rimmed black sunglasses which covered his eyes and half the rest of his small face besides — must have taken the place of Alexander for this mass, and he held a brilliantly blue clipboard in his hands, and raised it into the air before his face.

“I am remaking this world,” his light voice was carried gently into my ears like soft waves lapping against a lakeshore, “into a won- a wond-, line!”

I winced as he shouted that last word, and I could just imagine Olga’s frustrated visage at having suffered such a mistake in the first ‘act’, regardless of how recently Damien had come into the role. But Father Nico was the very picture of patience, and he calmly entered the spotlight and whispered to Damien what words were to be said next, before again exiting.

Damien nodded with a confident air to himself, and he restarted as if there had been no interruption at all, “I am remaking this world into a wonderful city! Of towering light and metal, and I shall bring the whole of it to life through engine- engineerin!”

Damien finished his lines, and then he bowed so deeply that he more resembled a mound of white cloth donning glasses than a small child, and he disappeared among chuckles back into the darkness. A radiant city shortly appeared where he had stood, banishing the blackness from the monastery in an instant, and almost blinding many in the audience whose eyes had immediately stared into it.

“And man succeeded in this.” An older boy’s voice alighted every ear in the congregation, though its source was obscured in the haze of shadows cast by the brilliant city behind him, “He built towers of glass that pierced into God’s sky, and he dominated and consumed much of God’s nature as he sought to banish the vast darkness with his own two hands. But it wasn’t to last.”

The city changed as the boy spoke this; the glass from the towers shattered and rained down in glittering golden shards, and the shining silvers of the metals turned to rust as the city’s lights flickered and dimmed, until at last the only light which still shone upon the city was as the sun from above it. A spotlight again shone before the city, and there appeared an older child dressed in red undercolours and well-fitting brown leather protectors that rose around his neck and ran thick all down his arms, which were inlaid with rusting metal.

Vitali finished his act somberly as the towers began to soundlessly crumble behind him, “While man’s works are but a spark in the darkness: God’s majesty is eternal, and all things will return to his design in the end.”

As an image of the sun shone brightly over the broken city, nature grew up and across the toppled towers. Dull brown mosses were the first to arrive upon every sheer metal incline, then bright green grasses and small bushes spread their leaves to the light from inside the ruined buildings, until finally lofty trees had taken root upon the very tallest of man’s remaining towers and reached with their branches toward Heaven as if in worship of its light!

Small images of birds began to fly across the sky of the destroyed city, and a few deer stepped here and there along the greenified pathways to graze in what still remained of the city’s ancient streetways. These places were dangerous to explore even when they were so empty of Foul influence as this one, as here and again a tower would still find itself crumbling, only for life to overtake it once more.

Vitali saluted in the manner of a legionnaire, and he faded along with the city behind him into the darkness amidst the applause that swept through the congregation; some surely for Damien and Vitali’s performance, but I also heard some approving murmurs of Arianna’s incredible transforming city.

I had myself been astounded by the sheer detail she had been able to work into her aetherial construction, for the quality of her visual creation was as if I were back in Roma itself, where some illusionists and street magicians had dedicated their entire lives into creating such incredible visual feats.

Father Nico’s voice returned like a candle in the darkness to end the first lesson,

“In this manner, His light shines upon us all, and shall forever reign supreme on Earth and in Heaven. We must never forget this truth.”