In Renaissance Florence, the seventy-two-year-old Count Marco Bolianos led his family to translate the Gospels in Tuscan common language, translating "Holy Spirit" as "breath" and "grace" as "free gift." A Vatican hunt ensues. Swans died one after another in the pond, white doves were nailed to the iron bars, and masked translators handed out edicts in the dusk that were difficult to distinguish between true and false. When the torches finally lit up the hills, the blood of the Bollianos seeped into the Tuscan soil, but the words translated into proverbs had melted like salt onto the tongues of the living.
This is a story about how language can confront power.
Combining the absurdity of Camus, the coldness of Maupassant, and the reversal of O. Henry, there is no heroic victory in Eighty Thousand Words, only the silent gesture of a man reaching for the last line of ink in the fire.
The swan dies, but the words remain.
Intention: The ashes of the word fell into the soil, where they took root. No one knew it was the cremation place.