As Pinocchio was visited by a stranger, Adone reacquainted himself with the stranger within through Cecilia. The fire sputtering between their touch burnt away the layers of their soul until two became one in ecstasy. That dark spirit returned to him, the spirit that loved the scent of blood, the electricity of aggression and the intoxication of lust. In moments like this, he was able to recognize himself, recognize a part of him that he could never uproot. But in those same moments, there was a fiery euphoria in feeling uprooted through and by desire, finding his breath and blood in her lungs and veins. All the stars in the universe danced in her eyes and balanced on her rosy lips as his soul drowned itself in her cosmos of flesh and fire. The language of touch was the only way he could truly speak to her, and she knew that it was the only way she was able to truly communicate with anyone, especially to him. No sound of the tongue could penetrate as deeply as his calloused hands combing through her hair or his scarred lips worshipping her visceral shrine with a sea of kisses. Drowned in the origin of the world, he rediscovered a paradise untouched by life and eternal with the heavens above it aflame, bathing it in the light of desire. 


Words dissolved between their lips with every kiss and touch of body and spirit. He held her body tightly, wrapping her with bundles of muscle that had the capacity to tear her to shreds. But all the violence grew refined in acts of sharp tenderness, perfuming her soul with all the ways he showed his love. As embodied fire, he became a kaleidoscope of desire, devouring her universe of stars with all the colors of his passion. He drank the untamed fire blazing beneath her skin with a primordial thirst, sinking what became claws and fangs into her thighs, leaving footsteps of his restless soul’s wanderings. By now, they have traversed all her hills and valleys and explored every corner of her desire rich with the blood of her soul. Yet, in the restlessness that pervaded every corner of his universe, he never grew tired in hers. To him, that was the greatest betrayal towards his soul, who gave him all the space he could ever desire but failed to see. 


When ensconced in one another, he couldn’t see Cecilia anymore in the way her eyes twinkled or her cheeks glowed. Her slightly parted lips greeted him like an abyssal cavern where a warm wind whispered out of, the same sweet wind her soul breathed into her. The beast in his breast thirsted for that also, drinking her breath as if it gave him eternal life. As they drank each other’s souls, the borders between their bodies wove into one another, enmeshing themselves with the raging fires of their passion. Drunk on the darkness, they bled light from every scar they opened and closed through acts of affection. She was no longer he and he was no longer himself, and the faint ember of awareness embraced him, reminding him that this was the only place he can call home. 


Yet, even in the noontide of love, he was still reminded of himself through his screaming scars. To his surprise, however, Cecilia hadn’t commented upon the excessive lacerations nearly his whole body, accepting it as a part of him. They were merely another means of enmeshing herself with Adone, another path that led to the gates of paradise. Only after tasting his lips after so long did she travel down his jaw and neck, passing her lips across his collarbone to anoint it with her fiery breath. She wandered along the hills and valleys of his muscles and the memories carved onto them, tasting every one of them to capture the flavor of his soul in the hopes of it staining hers. The dark dance in her sensorium alchemized the tears of the abyss buried in his wounds with a resplendent euphoria, burning time’s torment to ashes with her insatiable desire. There came a point in her conquest of his flesh that she couldn’t tell what exactly she wanted in the first place, but no such goals mattered as the future echoed the past in a formless present. All that was right beneath her skin and wrapped around her body. 


“You know, you don’t have to go. We are finally free, free to do this as much as we want whenever we wish. Stay.” 


From the way she groped the back of his head and buried her face in his neck, he could feel her desperation pierce through his skin, burrowing into his nerves and deeper into a place where he was able to taste the depths of her hungry heart. But none of it touched him, or sunk its teeth into him like before. It was like a whisper silenced by the wind. Slowly, it turned into a howl until a storm appeared, striking his mind with a cerebral fury he couldn’t tame. What he heard was not the song of love, but the echo of that same torment he wished to be liberated from and now had the power to. That fire of freedom cried out in laughter and pain at the intention behind her words, flooding his flesh with lightness and weight he could only tame through the language they both spoke fluently. 


Like a cat, he scooped her off of him from below her shoulders and put her on her back, moving over her with serpentine grace. There was a strange sensation in the flesh of his prosthetic side he tried to ignore as he arched his body to give her a kiss so deep that it set fire to the marrow of her soul. His hands and lips set foot on every corner of her velvet meadows until he drank the honey from paradise. There was an abstract satisfaction in drawing out such a sweet melody from the depths of her heart. He nearly became drunk from the euphonic nature of it as he heard his entire body and soul harmonizing with the primeval song bleeding from her own body and soul. There was nothing more beautiful in the whole universe to him than hearing the blood of her soul trickle through her voice. It was a sound as ancient as the stars yet timeless in its grace and ability to melt the cosmos in a symphonious crucible of ecstasy. In the amniotic warmth of silky chaos, two became one within the flames of paradise.  


As the faylights in the room darkened, their spent bodies became wrapped in a Gordian knot of love. The crackle of their scorched paradise whispered through their breathing as they sweat the embers. The soft light of the room turned her beads of sweat into stars and her lips, enrobed in darkness, still blossomed with the radiance of moonlight. Her beauty soaked into his mind, encumbering his already encumbered thoughts with traces of her. Under the weight of it all, Adone saw a million memories dance through her like waves on the sea, drowning himself in the silence of eternity. Even the pearly glow of her teeth in the light sheltered behind an ebony smile aroused his heart to cry itself to pieces. But he was already made of memories stitched together by tears that wove a tapestry articulating a primal howl only the stars recognized. They were both still as they understood the song of the silence between their melodies. 


Her mask melted and tears rolled down the bridge of her nose and her cheekbone, falling to the fabric like a whisper of rain. No matter how much he sometimes loathed her or loved her, all he could do was weave his fingers through hers and hold her hand. The warmth of her hand tended to a wound within him that was nearly impossible to reach. When it did, he understood that he was able to find this same warmth in the hearts of others without needing to burn to ash. There was a warmth in that realization, in the enlightenment of his own power to command his fate. He no longer felt like the frenzied dance of flame trying to escape itself, but the light blooming and bathing every corner of the dark. Face to face with the broken pieces of his heart scattered in the abyss, he pulled her close and gave her a gentle kiss that made a river of honey flow through her spine. And then a shy death washed over them, drowning their mind in the realm of dreams. 


In the eyes of the harlequin, it didn’t matter where he was, for he was always submerged in a grotesque swamp of memories. The only difference was that in dreams, he was able to see the full picture of himself, one that would turn to ash whenever he woke up. But there was no hope of waking up, of a way out, when he was steeped in his dreams. All he could see was himself, dressed in his eccentric gladiator attire, and a hall of mirrors that stretched on infinitely, twisting like a spiral. He walked on, looking at every angle to see the walls decked with mirrors. More than being overwhelmed by every shade of himself, he was overwhelmed by the obscene lack around him. Even if every mirror captured him, it still seemed empty, emptier than if it was without him inside of it. The versions of him walking through the spiral hall of mirrors were like mirrors of their own, capturing everything around them while lacking things within to show. 


Torn to pieces by the silence and eviscerated by emptiness, the myriad of harlequins ran towards Adone’s mirror and began to strike it with their fists. It was then where he realized that the harlequins all wore full face masks which depicted a varying array of things. As Adone’s heart and feet quickened, he saw the faces of Pinocchio, Cecilia, Mangiafuoco, Martino and all the others he had once seen in his life. Even images of cities and meadows and sunsets were presented on some of the masks who now began to be struck against the mirrors. A cacophony of desperation grinded his soul like sandpaper as he was deafened by every color of his deepest cry. The faster he ran, the more of himself he saw and the more he saw the mirrors shatter and bleed with a suffocating black. The cacophony of cries turned into howls and screams as one particular Adone shattered a mirror with a mask depicting himself, summoning a sea of shattered mirrors from every corner of his universe.  


Unable to find any ground to walk on, he began to fall through the spiral, together with the shattered pieces of the endless mirrors. As he fell, he could feel the halls contracting and expanding with the rhythm of a heartbeat. That same sound swallowed the noise and perfumed his entirety in ataraxy. There was no wind to claw through his clothes or its roar in his ears, but only the sweet rhythm of life strumming his soul. Before he knew, his entire world was full of darkness and glittering shards of broken mirrors, decorating the abyss with every part of him that shone like stars. The endless sea of emptiness and fragile lights enveloped him in the full image of his existence, of a primeval wound of which he was the blood seeping and sputtering from. Away from the chaos from one side of him, he became enveloped in another flavor of chaos. It was a tender horror that demanded no escape, it being all that will ever be. Drowned in darkness, Adone saw the starlight of what were memories and memories to be made, twinkling with the certainty of the past and the uncertainty of the future. Hope pierced Adone with the light of every broken star, making him bleed despair as despair pierced him and made him bleed hope. Devoured by radiance in the heart of the abyss, he was no longer able to understand himself, thereby understanding all of himself.  


Ataraxy hummed through his veins as he awoke from the dream, confronted by the grace radiating from Cecilia’s sleeping face. With all the clarity he had, he saw how her beauty blossomed in many corners of the world, in the fire of dawn and the dance of butterflies. Even the profundity of their intimacy was not lost, it being pregnant in the eyes of many souls. And even if it had another flavor, it would be sweet in its uniqueness. All his memories of her still cut through him like shards of the mirrors, devouring him in monstrous grief. With all the calmness in his soul, its fire still screamed through the checkered scars on his body and in his mind. Carefully, he listened to the melody of tranquility and torment, weaving both to strengthen his resolve and dress himself to leave for good. 


Before he went into his room, he took a moment to walk outside and taste the coolness of night on his skin. On the cobblestone road, he felt the fires of passion receiving the kiss of the night, taming the untamable. When a million thoughts bubbled in his mind before, the moment he stepped foot into the night, all of it vanished. It seemed to understand the depths of his pain and silenced it with its tender emptiness, its own excessive vulnerability. As he looked down at his prosthetic arm, he felt the rest of his body adopt that same numbness, that same strangeness. But in the arms of the night, there was a sublime comfort in that hollowness. And the stars twinkling above him reminded him again of all the opportunities there are and possibilities pregnant with mystery. Even the scars on his body ceased their crying with the night’s velvet lullaby, giving his soul a taste of true rest. 


Pinocchio’s rest began with him waking up on a boat. The faceless ferryman stood like a tree at the front of the boat, gently moving the long oar in the star-bespeckled waters. The wooden boy stretched his neck to see how the ferryman wove the stars on the river with their gondola, pulling it up to scatter pearly butterflies in the indigo darkness. Slowly, the rest of the landscape became clear to him, as if a painter brought it to life with the darkest shades of blue and purple.  As his dream blossomed with the mysteries of his soul, he noticed the foreign appearance of a man sitting by the feet of the ferryman, wearing the mask of a fox. The longer he became aware of his existence, the more he heard their clothes crackle with fire. Embers sputtered from their body as they laughed, echoing through every dimension of Pinocchio.