Dreamer


 I am the dreamer.

From within my folded hands, from behind my cast-down eyes, I make pictures. Can
you glimpse what I am weaving for you? See the horse with his arching neck, his
mane of starlight.  He has a gentle, noble face beneath his pricked-up ears.  He
is decorated with planets all along his coat, but he stands very still in quiet
obedience.

See the girl whom he allows to perch on his back.  She is somehow languid as she
leans back into the arms of her paramour.  He holds her almost swooningly as he
reaches up on tiptoe to clasp her.  Her dark hair sweeps his cheek, his lips graze against
her mouth.  They are so entwined that they exist only for each other.

Do you want to know their story?  What happened today, before the pointed canvas
rooves behind them in the garden - garden?  Or forest?  Or field? - before those
curved and decorated shapes sank into the darkness, their edges silvered by the
moon?  Did these two young people fall in love today?  Or is it an old affair,
a desperation, forbidden, weighed down by other ties?  Has it been building
little by little so that only now has the pressure burst into an embrace, or is
it new, instant, impulsive?

Well, I will tell you.  And then you can guess whether they are saying hallo to their
lives, or goodbye.

She is called Silvana.  Her husband is ringmaster - not simply of the circus, also of
her.  He, the young man now intertwined with her, is called Flavio.  He saw her for
the first time today, and she filled his soul on the instant.  He came with a message
from his employer:  a summons.  Let the Starlight Circus come to such-and-such a castle
tonight, to set up in the grounds, and bring their magic and their gaiety to a private
party!   Even for the performers, there would be quails eggs to eat, and soft asparagus
in shining butter, and candied fruit in sugar-edged jewel colours.  And there would be
applause - much of it - and, of course, money!

So the performance is over.  Now, it is afterwards, and Silvana and Flavio meet by
secret arrangement.

Is it a goodbye?  Or an elopement?

It shall be as you choose.  So, which?





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