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Prompt #50:
Do you believe in loving a person unconditionally? Why or why not?
Cesare looks up sharply, startled. "That's... that's a strange question," he says tonelessly. "Wouldn't we all like to believe so? That love is greater and deeper and stronger than everything, that it overcomes all? That it outlasts betrayal and death, and the thousand niggling torts we accrue in the course of a lifetime? The poets make it out so. Lost is the theme on which my fancy fed, and turned to mourning my once tuneful lyre: thus Petrarca pined for Laura, and Dante for his Beatrice."
He shrugs. "But our be-laureled poets had it easy, their gentle ladies never being more than meek and faithful statues. Metaphorical monuments to... an ideal. Where's the challenge in loving a saint, where the achievement?" Looking around the room for Miquel, Cesare sits up straighter, his voice growing angrier. "For, tell me, how do you love someone unconditionally who torments and hurts you? Who breaks your heart, or your bones, or both? What if your love is trespassing, and not wanted? Tell me. Will it stay unconditional, or rather turn into a festering sore that poisons what was pure, transforming a once noble heart into a crabbed and withered lump?"
It takes a moment for him to compose himself, the space of a few breaths before he's ridden out the pain. "Just look into your soul," he says at last, sounding defeated, "and tell me I am wrong, I beg you."
Cesare looks up sharply, startled. "That's... that's a strange question," he says tonelessly. "Wouldn't we all like to believe so? That love is greater and deeper and stronger than everything, that it overcomes all? That it outlasts betrayal and death, and the thousand niggling torts we accrue in the course of a lifetime? The poets make it out so. Lost is the theme on which my fancy fed, and turned to mourning my once tuneful lyre: thus Petrarca pined for Laura, and Dante for his Beatrice."
He shrugs. "But our be-laureled poets had it easy, their gentle ladies never being more than meek and faithful statues. Metaphorical monuments to... an ideal. Where's the challenge in loving a saint, where the achievement?" Looking around the room for Miquel, Cesare sits up straighter, his voice growing angrier. "For, tell me, how do you love someone unconditionally who torments and hurts you? Who breaks your heart, or your bones, or both? What if your love is trespassing, and not wanted? Tell me. Will it stay unconditional, or rather turn into a festering sore that poisons what was pure, transforming a once noble heart into a crabbed and withered lump?"
It takes a moment for him to compose himself, the space of a few breaths before he's ridden out the pain. "Just look into your soul," he says at last, sounding defeated, "and tell me I am wrong, I beg you."