Black is the night. 

Or so the strangers say; sopping wet and icy cold and exhausted beyond their pay. They hang their coats upon my rack and in my inn they lay. 

Black is the night.

The words chase my ears. Spitting old hags and rusted men, maids young and fair. 

How is the twilight? Dark, they would say. Dragging eyes across my floor, anchored bodies to a weighty world. What they don't see of starlight, I see all the more.

Black is the night.

But to it there is more. The twinkling skies call to us, if only we were more.

More than us, more than bodies, higher than these corpse. But the others don't hear it, and so they miss the joy. And so I teach them joy.

Black is the night.

And the bed in which they lay. Their breaths shallow, their minds adrift, limp as though my clay. Tonight I shall shape them, I shall free them from this maze.

Black is the night.

So ignorant are their thoughts.

Red is the night, smooth and crimson and dark.