In the year 1980, beneath a pale dusk when the heavens were steeped in crimson as though stained with blood, there sat in a hall draped with velvet curtains and half-burnt candles a poet with golden locks and eyes the hue of moonlight. The people deemed him mad, for sudden laughter and endless murmurs turned every gathering into a vision of delirium. Yet the truth was otherwise: his madness was but a mask— a veil drawn over a wounded heart and a wearied soul.

In those same days, a young man of noble lineage, gentle in visage and modest in nature, set foot within the hall. His long cloak whispered upon the stone-paved floor, and his gaze, cast down in shyness, would now and then waver toward the poet’s figure. He had come in search of a rare volume of ancient verse, yet fate, it seemed, had summoned him to behold this so-called “golden-haired madman.”

The poet, without lifting his head, spoke with a voice suspended between mockery and sorrow: “O young noble, hast thou come also to behold the spectacle of my madness? Or dost thou seek wisdom amidst these dust-laden pages?”

The youth, his cheeks aflame and his voice trembling, replied: “I crave neither to mock nor to witness a show. I was in quest of a book… yet now, I deem this encounter with thee the greatest revelation of all.”