M a sealed correspondence

Masquerade Protocol

DOSSIER VOL. VII SEALED 03 · 31

Speak softly. The walls are listening, but they have learned to forget on cue.

scroll to part the curtain

Article I

The Bauta

on the discipline of silence

The first protocol is to wear nothing of yourself upon your face. The Bauta forbids speech without distortion: a chamber of resonance hollowed behind the chin, where every syllable becomes another's. To put it on is to relinquish the small honesty of being recognized.

// directive 01

marginalia — bauta worn at the senate, the gambling house, the confessional booth. legal between dusk and the seventh bell.

end of article I

Article II

Colombina

on the half-truth

The half-mask reveals the mouth and conceals the eyes — the inverse of conversation as you have known it. Smile freely; your truth has been redacted at the brow. Colombina permits the courtship of strangers and the negotiation of treaties that no signatory will ever recognize.

We extend two faces to every party we meet. The visible portion is the smaller offering: a registered self, an audited persona, a name that pays its taxes. The hidden portion is the larger sum, ledgered only here, between us, in ink that has not yet decided to dry.

redacted — ████ ████████ at the second crossing of the canal. seen by no one. recorded by every wall.

end of article II

Article III

Kitsune

on borrowed cunning

To wear the fox is to admit that intelligence is a costume one borrows from older animals. The kitsune mask carries a debt: every clever phrase you speak in it is a phrase the fox spoke first, in another century, on a road that no longer exists.

// directive 02

footnote — the seventh tail is reserved for those who have lied to themselves for the public good.

Article IV

The Collection

scroll the corridor of faces

I · Bauta — the chamber of voice

II · Colombina — the half-truth

III · Kitsune — borrowed cunning

IV · Gelede — the council of mothers

V · Jade — the obsidian register

VI · Pierrot — the moonless one

VII · Volto — the unwritten name

drift the wheel · the corridor responds

Article V

The Removal

on the rite of the unmasked

At the conclusion of every assembly, the masks are surrendered into a basin of cold water. The faces float for a moment, recognizing one another with a final familiarity, then are carried away. To remove the mask is the protocol's gentlest violence: an admission that we are returning, briefly, to the unbearable specificity of being someone in particular.

// directive 03

closing rite — the basin is emptied at first light. the water is not used again. the masks dry, briefly, on the windowsills of those who can be trusted not to look.

archive sealed