AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a non-profit work not intended to infringe upon the copyrights of Anne Rice or any other person dead or alive. This work has no connection with the proposed Symphony for Mary-Jane . *************************************************************************** ***                         DEATH AND THE MAIDEN *************************************************************************** **** DEATH AND THE MAIDEN Part 2..the PRESENT By Melissa Millar This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it September, 1995. A R M A N D.....         Darkness pooled in his eyes and his face became a white poreless mask that yielded to no anger, or pain. Only a certain peace where no thought or sharp word could penetrate. No touch or caress could make him flinch as he had the beginning, when I had wrapped his slender, beguiling form in my own and rocked slowly and deliberately against him, watching as his face underwent a slow and defined change. His wide luminescent eyes had lowered at first, so that the delicate lashes had laid on his cheeks. And then he had looked out over the balcony of the Night Island with a certain remorse. A flicker of a tear pooling in the corner of his enormous green eyes, and I had felt his grief. His terrible pain that Lestat has never justified in his poetry, or trash- depending on my mood.         Lovely Pandora's Moonlight Sonata had graced my ears that night.         Ah, Memories. I'd rather have them than harsh reality anyway. Wouldn't you? Look at the sky, the moon, and think back to your childhood. Wasn't everything brighter then, less plastic looking and fake?         Or do that have that dreamlike quality that makes you wonder if what you are remembering ever happened at all?         Look at me, Louis.         It was the same with Louis, and as I took his trembling hand and lay it on the _object_ of his tears, it was that way. Fake. Phony. I was giving him the consolation prize, this lovely doll. And that was all she really was, a porcelain imitation of his beloved.         His flinching green eyes met mine for an instant before his tears spilled over onto his hollow cheeks and he fell to his knees, my strong arms hauling him to his feet and making him stand. Grasping the sides of his face I turned his head to look at the child on the bed. Look at HER, Louis!         No, Armand.. Please! he gasped, squeezing his eyes shut against the vision. His face is beautiful. One thing Lestat has recorded correctly