And just like that, the spark is gone. The wake of its presence only momentary sketches, echos of a genius that felt itself slipping into the rapture-less bit of self-loathing madness. “Better to remembered as before, not as it is now. Let them forget me if they want, but never, never let them see what has become of me.” In what I can only imagine was a fit of insane clarity, he set fire to his legacy, the embers scattering across the floor like demonic palm leaves, beckoning him towards death. I wonder if he doubted himself. If insanity ever made him wonder, even once. If he wished he could reach into the ash scattered across the floor and pull from it the words, still crisp, perfect, and clear, and place them back into he world. I wonder if he cried, stained his linens with bitters tears for the decade that had been bled and burned from his fading soul. Or did he turn to his desk and laugh against the darkness knowing it was one of the last choices he could actually made, before being swallowed by the tumult of his own mortality.