Dreamlit Actor

Fools are quick to question the authenticity of an Actor's grief. The crying is but a stage direction, they say. So who can ever glimpse the truth beneath?

In the long, grinding Interstellar Energy War, heeding the call of the Aeon of Elation, the Actors and the Fools took to the bone-strewn battlefields, where they unveiled their magic before the cosmos.
The sky dome churned and billowed, shrouding the movements of the Legion. In a breath, the vast army had been transported to the other side of a wormhole. The soldiers exchanged bewildered glances, and one by one, set down their weapons.
"Actors, the cries of war have already grown too many. What is it that you can offer?"

A magnificent gondola glided in from the sea of stars, and a lilting melody swept across the battlefield.
In the next moment, the stars went dark. The cosmos became a pitch-black stage, and the real war transformed into a sublime tragic phantasm.
Soldiers and generals alike sank into a fevered dream of theater, living out scenes of mutual slaughter, the fallen unable to return home, the living left to bear the curse.
"Villain who snuffs out all things, you have a mother too, don't you? You have children too!" The shattered mask wailed at the top of its lungs as they read this line out loud.
"On the surface of a star, five hundred years from now, this bullet still burns red-hot as ever. But where will we be?" Beneath the silent subtitles, a blood-stained mask wept without a sound.
"Bones by the river without a name, those who long for you still weep in your memory—" Countless masks sang the dirge in unison.
...

Besotted Fools always fixate on the masks worn by those upon the stage. Perhaps the most infamous of all such thieves was one Carla Harper.
She slipped secretly aboard the gondola and stole the Troupe Master's mask, intending to play a cruel joke: revealing herself as the Fool at the very climax of the tragedy.
The curtain fell, and the soldiers recovered as from a dream. They saw the absurdity of war for what it was, and cheered as they withdrew, like survivors stumbling out of a nightmare.
The Troupe Master gently removed Carla Harper's mask, only to find that she had long been weeping.