My friend’s kid gave me pinkeye and I have been on a particularly fuckt up sleep schedule about it and dreamed an entire Italian Opera on the themes of heaven and hell and the power of love and recognition of the self in other and the tragedy of loving the idea of something rather than the thing itself and the dream ended with the phrase “-And then it was banned EVERYWHERE.”
The plot starts off with a hybrid of Cinderella and the Taming Of The Shrew where a woman with her own daughter marries a Duke who has an older daughter, and then the Duke dies under “Mysterious circumstances”.
But he leaves in his will that his fortune won’t be disbursed until his daughter (the elder one) marries.
The elder daughter (like, 20ish?) is refusing to get married because her step-mother is trying to set her step-sister (age 12) with IDK A Medieval Italian supreme court judge?? (Age 65) , but the marriage can’t go through until the Duke’s fortune disburses and the mother can pay the dowry.
Other thing about the Eldest Daughter: She Always Speaks The Truth. Not only does she refuse to lie, but kind of like a retroactive Cassandra, everything she says is True. As you can imagine, this is not terribly popular In Fantasy Medieval Italian High Society.
The mother, big mad about being stuck with this stubborn, awkward girl, gets a Lawyer and a Bishop and a bunch of other authority figures to modify the will so that “Should the plague take my eldest, we will not be bereft *wink*” AKA if the eldest just dies or disappears without getting married, the mother will get the money anyway.
(They all know she’s going to kill the girl, but they’re getting a cut.)
The Step-Mother then, in true operatic fashion of Going Way Too Hard tortures the Elder daughter, and locks her in the basement to bleed out and die.
There, in the darkness, abandoned by God and the Law and Family etc. the daughter turns to the last thing she has left.
BLACK MAGIC
(Come on, it’s Opera. Everybody knows Black Magic)
He appears to her in the darkness- And is immediately terrified and transfixed because even though it’s totally dark, she’s looking right at, and through him, and Can See Him Exactly As He Is.
Which is Spooky, because he’s been having some serious self-esteem issues lately- Demon has his own problems, you see- He’s a Prince of Hell and thus he’s the victim of Hellish Politics and beset by all his fellow demons. And he’s Terrible at machinations and scheming because he too feels an attachment to The Truth and it’s making him feel Demonically Inadequate, even if he’s got the Wrath and Violence part down pat.
…So He’s been lurking on the material plane to get away from it all and been watching her suffering, because he too feels the kinship of being betrayed and hunted by all that ought love him and telling The Truth no matter how easy it would be to lie.
So now, here he is in the darkness, and his crush is looking RIGHT AT HIM and he’s genuinely frightened because he’s never cared about someone’s opinion of him before.
His aria about this is pretty great, but THEN:
She reaches out to him and says
“There is something wrong with you
There is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me
What is this kinship I feel with you? The affliction grants you Grace and Beauty, and leaves me a Hobbling wretch
Yet I believe we share some kinship- I know the fear in your eyes, for I see it in every mirror”
(I know the first two lines are from a poem in Mirror Traps by Hera Lindsay Bird, but this is what my eye-pain-delerium brain supplied me with)
He goes down on one knee in front of her and promises to do anything she wishes- He’s seen how she suffers and If he cannot have his own recompense, he will have hers- -For what price?
You are wise, and I am weary- I am a Demon and there is but one currency we trade in. Give me your soul, and I will give you everything you desire.
She thinks about it for a bit, and he makes every offer he can- I will torture your stepmother as she tortured you! The Judge lusting after your sister? I’ll make his dick explode! That bishop that has his head up his ass- I’ll make him shove it up there so far he turns inside-out!
-Love me. She says. The suffering of others will do nothing to ease my own, though some bitter part of my would thrill to see it. Love me, Truly love me as neither of us have been but deserved, and my soul will be yours.
…If I were to Truly Love you, then my soul would be yours.
-Would that be such a terrible thing?
…It would not. He says, and promptly spirits her off to his palace in hell, and explains his situation as he tends to her.
{{archivist’s note: the next paragraph is in a larger font size and a fancy cursive font}}
[At this point my brain extensively hallucinated some real smutty hurt/comfort, because I am hurting and need the comfort]
Once they understand each other, they decide to do a strangers on a train-
He goes to Earth where the mother is planning to marry the younger daughter off to the creepy old judge and tricks everyone into betraying everyone else in disguise as a simple manservant, and spirits the younger daughter away back to Hell to play with Hellhound puppies all while making sure he Never Tells A Single Lie, because it’s not a sin for a demon to be honest- it’s a demonstration of his Mastery that he doesn’t NEED to.
Meanwhile, She goes to the royal court of Hell and goes around to all the Demons and tells them The Truth about themselves, which they can’t stand as all their power is based on a sense of self-importance and secret rules that don’t actually have anything to do with reality. After losing most of their power to The Divine Wrath Of Autsim, they scamper off to Earth to get more power from their humans, who are all in a tizzy because there’s some kind of political thing going on, and the Elder Daughter and the Demon play off each other’s work to get everyone ready to fuck up each other’s shit.
(This part of the dream got muddy because Actual Plot is something I have to do while conscious and I’m not doing more than I have to until my eye stops trying to to persuade me to gouge it out with a spoon)
ANYWAY, The Final Act is the Big Wedding where all the Humans are plotting to murder each other and the Demons are all shriveled up little creatures and The Daughter and The Demon Prince turn up and reveal it was them all along and that ALL of you suck and have also ruined each other- the Judge has gotten the lawyer disbarred, the Lawyer had gotten the Bishop caught committing fraud, the Bishop has gotten the judge excommunicated and ALL the mother’s friends and allies are broke and their careers are dead and now that they have no social agency, they can’t hurt anyone anymore.
And then the caterer steps forward and reveals that He’s Actual For Real God, and he is SO PROUD of the daughter and the demon for stopping this corrupt fracas without violence or lying! The shriveled demons are Human Souls that had been cast into hell to atone but weren’t learning the lesson, and the humans are headed that way unless they really get their shit together.
The demon prince remarks that it’s odd that God would be pleased with the work of a demon.
What Demon? Says the Daughter, who always says the truth.
Yeah what Demon? Laughs God. You’re one of my Best Angels, who oversees the rehabilitation of the wicked. You looked like you were getting overwhelmed though, so I found this Paragon of Truth for you. And you Paragon looked like you were in need of help so I found this Angel for you! Now, is someone getting married today or are we just gonna let this cake go to waste?
God marries them, there’s a big party and The All Live Happily Ever After as the King and Queen of Hell, and her sister gets big into Demonic Dog Breeding.
and then I explicitly dreamed the voice of some art historian saying “-And then it got banned EVERYWHERE.”
Tags:
#storytime #dreams #demons #illness tw #murder cw #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Brinens and Things 