//------------------------------// // Act 1 - Purgatorio // Story: Notes in Service of a Love Story // by Seer //------------------------------// In some sense, the stage itself is another character in a play. It defines the borders of unreality with which the audience can flirt. The castle walls upon which disbelief breaks. Like all other characters, it needs an appropriate costume. In The Angel’s paradise, all is white, faultless. Paradise is, and should be, overwhelming. Paradise should not be comfortable, that is the realm of the pedestrian.   A being of paradise, who embodies the perfection as she does, coat to stun in sunbeam yellow and hair to enchant in the sweetest pastel pink, should not be comfortable to behold. The Angel should stun, her beauty tantamount to something actively appalling, something overwhelming.  Contrary to this, the audience now beholds purgatory, an endless expanse of dull grey stretching beyond the limits of imagination. It too is overwhelming, but only in how it underwhelms. It is not like the paradise of absence we saw before, it is rather perfection of absence. Absolute absence, and its inhabitant should impress upon the audience the same feelings.  Enter the sinner, stage left.   She is a simple mare. Her coat and mane are dull, earth tones. The audience would forget her, were she not the only pony on the stage. When she looks out to them, broaching that wall of disbelief, the audience are not struck as they were by The Angel. On the contrary, they fidget, they look at their hooves, at each other. They look at anything other than the sinner, because she is simple and nervous, she has none of the impossible power of poise or grace or kindness, sheer station that The Angel does.  The crowd look anywhere other than that stage. But their suspense is not cruelly drawn out, because very soon they are drawn back to the grey expanse.  Enter The Angel, drop from above.  She hits the ground and radiates like the sun itself, and it is all the sinner and the audience can do but to not come apart at the seams.  “Hello,” she says simply, and the audience note how her tone has gone from archaic and cosmic to simple and personable, with a reservation wholly irreconcilable with her sheer sense of presence. the sinner cowers, huddling and shivering, hiding from whatever residual light that paradise has left in The Angel.  “Are you afraid?” she continues, and the audience are drawn in again by her voice, by the warmth it makes them feel. She treads lightly towards centre stage, closing the distance between her and the sinner. Both The Angel and the audience need no answer to the question, it was not a question for which an answer was desired. Instead, by the tone of her voice the audience can see that The Angel aimed to reassure by making the entire concept of fear seem ridiculous.  What being as she, with beautiful coat and delicate hoofsteps, immaculate wings and kind smile, could be feared?  “Are you asking me whether I fear you?” the sinner replies, shakily, “Or whether I fear where I am? What I know must have gotten me here? I think only a fool wouldn’t fear such things.”  the sinner manages to clamber to her hooves, uncertainly, and wrenches her gaze from The Angel. She takes her first steps, her first proper ones since entering the stage. It puts the audience in mind of a baby deer fresh from the womb.  “I know I must be dead. I don’t know how I know, but it might be one of the only things I really do know. Everything else seems lost to me. I don’t remember how I died, I don’t remember my name.”  “That’s how everyone comes through this place,” The Angel replies, “In many ways, it’s like a second birth. We all come blind, blank, coat dulled and memories scoured. The only certainty, as you say, is the knowledge of what brought us here.”  “Except you.” the sinner states flatly, and some in the audience gasp. There is something obscene about disagreeing with The Angel, it feels like an aberration. For her part, The Angel simply tilts her head and smiles.  “And why do you think I never felt this way too? I am here also, am I not?”  the sinner doesn’t answer. Rather, she walks off, towards the audience. She reaches the edge, the stage’s very precipice, but it is unlike The Angel. The audience could see in The Angel’s eyes that she knew what was out there, that only a boundary as tangible as dreams, weaker than cobwebs, separated her from the world of mortals.  But the sinner seems to see nothing at all, her eyes tell the audience that, to her, the expanse is nothing more than more grey. They will her forward, knowing that if she could just step further and breach the wall, she’d be back in the mortal world and be released from her fear. Maybe then they’d see how wonderful, or indeed how vile, she may have been in life.  There is a near imperceptible twitch of her eyes, a hitch in her breath, it is a performance that could rival that of The Angel, yet the suspense precludes any notion of applause. For a second, the audience believe she may do it, but the moment is quickly lost when The Angel appears behind, touching a hoof to the sinner’s cheek.  “All the world’s a stage,” She says, and her smile could scarcely be sadder.  “What happens to all the ponies who aren’t as lucky as I am? Who don’t get an Angel to greet them?” the sinner asks, her voice trembling.  “And what makes you think that everyone doesn’t get an Angel?” The Angel asks, ignoring the question the audience wants answered, denying them the quick satisfaction of laying bare how the sinner knew that she was an Angel. But to many, the answer is already clear. Because they were never told either.  “I don’t, but something tells me that is the case. Maybe it is how beautiful you are. It doesn’t feel like there’s enough beauty in this world to create enough Angels to shepherd every dying soul, God’s know there wasn’t nearly enough in my world.”  “You’re right, that not everyone is greeted by one such as me.” The Angel replies, before turning heel and walking into the grey, and once again leaving both the sinner’s and the audience’s unspoken questions unanswered.   “Where are you going?” the sinner calls after her. “Where are we going,” The Angel calls back, “Our journey will be long. Now is as good a time as any to begin in.”  And the sinner simply falls into step, because why wouldn’t she? “Is there something other than Angel that I can call you?”  The Angel turns to her, and regards her for a second. If she sees what the audience sees, then she likely sees the mare desperate for something linking her to the life she can’t remember anymore. Paradise lost, never known to be as such until its absence, perfect absence, has left her cold and frightened and so very, very grey.  But then, maybe the audience sees something more than the audience could ever hope. Maybe she doesn’t see anything because the tribulations of one single mortal mare are nothing to one such as her. But then, were that the case, why would she be leading a sinner through the wasteland of nothing at all? Maybe the motivations of Angels are too great for their grasp, and attempts for the stage to contain them are like knitting with fog.  All the world’s a stage, that much is true. The question, of course, is which world the assertion refers to?  The Angel waits just long enough to reply to leave the audience humbled by these questions, and just before they disappear from view, she can be heard to reply.  “You can call me Fluttershy.”  Exit The Angel and the sinner, stage left.  The house lights remain on for a time, past the point at which the audience would comfortably expect them to drop. The moment drags, but none dare make a sound in case the scene is over. They instead stare into grey, wondering how many further souls roam the expanse.  But, with no further the dialogue, the theatre is soon plunged into darkness once more.