Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Host: The theatre was empty, its velvet seats shrouded in dust and moonlight. Through a cracked window, a draft whispered across the stage, stirring the curtain like a breath from another age. A single spotlight still burned, casting a cone of silver onto the center of the floor — a lonely island of light surrounded by the dark sea of silence.

Jack stood there, his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on a faded poster hanging at the edge of the stage — a woman’s face, once beautiful, now yellowed and cracked with time. Jeeny entered quietly, her heels clicking against the wooden boards. She stopped beside him, her gaze following his to the poster, her voice barely above a whisper.

Jeeny: “Socrates said, ‘Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.’ He must’ve known something we all pretend not to — that even the gods of beauty get dethroned.”

Jack: “Short-lived, huh? Tell that to every face on a billboard, every influencer, every celebrity who’s built a kingdom out of their reflection. Beauty’s not short-lived, Jeeny — it’s just rebranded.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. What you’re talking about is attention. That’s the tyranny. Beauty just happens to wear the crown until it fades.”

Jack: “Same difference. You call it beauty, I call it currency. Either way, people worship it until it runs out of value.”

Host: A faint wind rattled the lighting rig, a soft metallic tremor echoing through the hall. Jeeny walked to the center of the stage, standing in the spotlight, her face half illumined, half shadowed — a living metaphor for the very truth she was trying to defend.

Jeeny: “You really think beauty is just currency? Then why does it still move you? Why do you still stare at that poster as if it’s speaking to you?”

Jack: “Because I’m mourning it. Not her — it. The illusion that something so fleeting could ever be permanent.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the point, Jack. It’s short-lived because it’s supposed to be. Beauty forces us to see the moment, to feel what’s vanishing.”

Jack: “Or to chase it, worship it, destroy ourselves for it. You call it appreciation, I call it addiction. People ruin their faces, their lives, their souls for an idea they can’t even define.”

Jeeny: “And yet, even knowing that, you still look. You still ache when it’s gone. Maybe beauty isn’t the tyrant, Jack. Maybe we are — because we keep begging it to stay.”

Host: The spotlight flickered, casting brief shadows across Jeeny’s face — one moment angelic, the next unseen. Jack watched her, his expression a mixture of admiration and resentment, as if truth itself had just walked into the room wearing a dress he couldn’t ignore.

Jack: “You know, I once dated someone like that. Beautiful in a way that hurt to look at. But it wasn’t her I was in love with — it was the way she made me feel about myself. That’s the tyranny Socrates was talking about. Beauty rules us by our own weakness.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe beauty isn’t tyranny, Jack. Maybe it’s a mirror. It shows us what we value, what we fear, what we lack.”

Jack: “Or it’s a weapon. It makes you blind enough to forget who’s holding it.”

Jeeny: “But whose fault is that — the blade, or the one who chooses to be cut?”

Host: The wind outside rose, shaking the old theatre doors. A single program from a forgotten performance fluttered across the stage, its pages crinkled, its ink fading — a relic of something once admired, now abandoned.

Jack: “You talk like beauty is some cosmic teacher. But tell that to the girls who starve themselves to fit into a screen. Tell that to the men who trade their souls for status, who think youth is a virtue.”

Jeeny: “And yet, you’re not wrong, Jack. The tyranny exists — but not because of beauty. Because of fear. The fear of aging, the fear of irrelevance, the fear of not being seen. Socrates was right — beauty rules us. But only because we bow so easily.”

Jack: “So what do you do? Just accept that it’s temporary?”

Jeeny: “No. You celebrate it — because it’s temporary. The cherry blossom, the sunset, the first note of a song that ends too soon — their power comes from their brevity. The tyranny only hurts if you try to own it.”

Host: Jack walked toward her, the echo of his boots sharp against the wooden stage. His face softened, the anger melting into something quieter — not surrender, but recognition. The light caught the faint lines near his eyes, small signatures of years that refused to hide.

Jack: “You know, when I was younger, I thought I’d be someone by now. Powerful, admired, maybe even beautiful in my own way. But time… it doesn’t negotiate.”

Jeeny: “It never does. But maybe time isn’t the enemy of beauty — maybe it’s what completes it. Youth is charming, Jack, but grace — that’s what makes it eternal.”

Jack: “Grace doesn’t sell.”

Jeeny: “Neither does truth, but it’s still worth painting.”

Host: Jeeny stepped closer, the light from the spot now split between them, half her, half him — two halves of an argument that was really just a reflection of the same fear. Jack smiled, a small, tired gesture that looked like both admission and apology.

Jack: “You know something, Jeeny… maybe the tyranny isn’t that beauty fades. Maybe it’s that it stays — in the mind, in the memory — even after the world moves on.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. It’s short-lived only on the surface, Jack. The body forgets, but the soul keeps a portrait. That’s the part no mirror can show.”

Host: The spotlight began to dim, the edges of the stage swallowed by the dark once more. The poster on the wall rippled faintly in the breeze, the woman’s smile blurred, her eyes still haunting.

Jack and Jeeny stood in the fading light, their faces quiet, still, real.

And as the darkness finally claimed the stage, the tyranny of beauty ended — not because it died, but because it had been understood.

Beauty, after all, was never meant to rule; only to remind us how fragile the crown of time really is.