The kiss of the beast before the last petal fell

The moon used to remind him of those days. Days of old, when the lad played endlessly running about the huge garden of innocence. That vastness of golden leaves often led him into new places, some unknown, some already visited (yet just as well new). Mayhaps his was not so great of an imagination, may be he preferred not to stray too far from the center of that garden, a fountain, surounded by silver chairs. Chairs that cradled him on gentle dreams of clouds as soft as pillows. The Moon. He saw on her an unloved lover, ready to bear all his burdens as no woman did. Ever felt like a misplaced pawn on a much greater-than-life board, always being beaten by a white queen, mean and with deep velvet eyes. Nightmares. Those frightened his boyhood as well as the ones he oft saw on that garden of innocence. Reckoner, mounted, cold-glanced men with toppers gazed at him and pointed to the same mirror that reflected the strange cowled man.
His was the awe, his was the memory of those unfulfilled and unrevealed dellusions of despair. Wishing that, gone a thousand (or so it seemed) years now, he had the moon by his side, he could still only see on his platonic lover the reflection of his past mistakes, under the guise of that same old grinning, cowled man, now much more recognizable: his own present being, sheding tears crimson as a mare's blood. Poor man, rolling the dices to try his future once more. Paying the price of guilt for being such a lackwit. Gaoler of his own desires, overburdened by his own soul's ugliness. Forbidden to feel and forever encumbered by the price of the endless dreaming.