Silence fell over the workshop, but silence is a beast that the modern world does not tolerate. Iris, in a gesture of one who sins out of weariness, pressed the button on her mobile and the screen lit up violently.
Pim pam. It was a notification. Where are you? New photo? The feed is dead! Short, dry sentences. The world outside does not walk, it runs; it does not breathe, it gasps. It is the dictatorship of the immediate, the false glow of liquid crystal reclaiming its soul.
On the screen, she could also read the messages from the city's confidantes, with their voices of honey and gall:
– Iris, darling, are you still tucked away in that dusty hole?
– What do you see in that man from another era? He smells of sawdust and mould, heavens!
She was not with them, but she could hear them laughing from the height of their stiletto heels and their filters of perfection, unable to understand that beauty sometimes lacks varnish.
And it was not only in the glass that malevolence dwelt. At the workshop door, the neighbours – the neighbourhood's true 'owls', arms crossed over their chests and lynx-like eyes – kept watch.
– Did you see her? She went in at nine and hasn't come out yet…
– He's old enough to be her father, or near enough. What would a girl like that want with a grey-bearded joiner?
To the neighbourhood, Elias was not a master; he was a danger. To them, affection is always self-interest, and learning is always a sin.
Iris was bombarded from all sides, and the system – that algorithm that knows everything and feels nothing – did not rest. It pushed invitations to neon-lit parties at her, suggested boys with white, empty smiles, tried to rescue her from that 'anomaly' of peace; for the algorithm only desires to consume the now with all the fury it possesses, not allowing anyone to have moments of slow time to heal from it.
Ah, dear reader, the world is a master at judging what it cannot grasp. They see a young woman in her early twenties and a man in his forties and the poison immediately drips from the corners of their mouths. They are incapable of seeing a master and his apprentice, only a wolf and a sheep. The world, in its infinite malice, has already forgotten how a friendship is born between souls seeking the same light.