Hate dresses well to please a buyer.

**This is pretty long, but it spoke to me so I wanted to share it with you lovely people.

He met a woman in the street. She leaned against an open door and sang through her half-parted lips a song that he could barely hear. He knew her friendship was for hire. She was without a doubt a study in desire. Her hair fell free around her shoulders. And intrigue played upon her lips.

"Are you betrothed?" she asked.

"No, only loved," he answered.

"And do you pay for love?"

"No, but I owe it everything."

"You are alone. Could I sell but an hour of friendship?"

Deaf to her surface proposition, he said, "Tell me of the song that you were singing as I came upon you. Where did you learn it?"

His question troubled her. At length she said, "The first night that I ever sold myself, I learned it from a tall impressive man."

"And did he play a silver pipe?" the Singer asked.

She seemed surprised. "Do you know the man who bought me first?"

"Yes. Not long ago, in fact, he did his best to teach that song to me."

"I cannot understand. I sell friendship and you your melody. Why would he teach us both the self-same song?"

The Singer pitied her. He knew the World Hater had a way of making every victim feel as though he were the only person who could sing his song.

"He only has one song; he therefore teaches it to everyone. It is a song of hate."

"No, it is a love song. The first night that he held me close, he sang it tenderly and so in every way he owned me while he sang to me of love."

"And have you seen him since?"

"No, not him, but a never ending queue of men with his desires."

"So it was no song of love. Tell me, did he also say that some day in the
merchandising of you soul, you would find someone who would not simply leave
his fee upon the stand but rather take you home to care for you and cherish
you?"

Again she seemed surprised, "Those were indeed his very words - how can you
know them?"

"And have you found the one that he has promised?"

"Not yet."

"And how long have you peddled friendship?"

"Some twenty years are gone since first I learned the song that you inquired
about."

The singer felt a burst of pity. "We sometimes give ourselves to hate in
masquerade and only think it love. And all our lives we sing the song we
thought was right. The Canyon of the Damned is filled with singers who
thought they knew a love song...Listen while I sing for you a song of love."

He began the melody so vital to the dying men aroung him. "In the beginning
was the song of love..."

She listened and knew for the first time she was hearing all of love there
was. Her eyes swam when he finished. She sobbed and sobbed in shame.
"Forgive me, Father-Spirit, for I am sinful and undone...for singing weary
years of all the wrong words..."

The singer touched her shoulder and told her of the joy that lay ahead if
she could learn the music he had sung.

He left her in the street and walked away, and as he left he heard her
singing his new song. And when he turned to wave the final time he saw her
shaking her head to a buyer. She would not take his money.

And from his little distance, the Singer heard her use his very words.

"Are you betrothed?" the buyer asked her.

"No, only loved," she answered.

"And do you pay for love?"

"No, but I owe it everything."


-Calvin Miller (The Singer)