[PQ] [SE] Sing Down the Stars

D e i m o s

Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you
Relive the pictures that have come to pass

The reality of being woefully out of his element slunk along the back of his spine as he intentionally kept himself occupied on the spit, turning it occasionally, glancing elsewhere, mind deliberately thinking of an escape. It’d be easier to glide away on his frozen, detached nuances and simply disappear into the shadows – a custom, a habit, a routine, a ritual for the barbaric being no one ever really wanted around. But the world was different now, sculpting him in new edges and lines: there was no death, no abandonment, no colossal shift in the earth where they can bury him alive. He was well and wholly stuck in this collaboration, the discomfort, the inadequacy stoking the fibers of his skin; apprehensive, concerned, far more eager for swordplay and weaponry, flinging daggers, assailing rivals, than proffering poems and songs. What was he doing here? His eyes glanced to Amalia and the answer was there, clear and distinct; swallowing the misgivings and disquiet, keeping his hands busy with gathering or ensuring the meat was cooking, listening in while the world waited and pressed its weight on his shoulders. It was too late to back out, and his jaw clenched, fighting the urge to let the earth swallow and consume him. He was no bard. He was no poet. The only oeuvre he’d ever maintained or managed was survival when few others had; damnation stoked and disasters keened, wild and savage, untamed and furious, ferocious and vehement, plucked apart at the seams. Just try the winds whispered, the fire crackled, and he wondered if they’d laugh him out of the area, out of the circle, full of failure and dissolution. The Reaper wanted to stay in his comfortable silence, where it was familiar, where it was dark, where it was dreary, and everything, everyone left him alone. But it was also damned lonely too, and he’d made too many outlines and sketches, on the fringes, on the borderline, of amazing, wonderful, bewildering things (friends, affection, which seemed altogether foreign when they shouldn’t have, when kingdoms and sojourns could’ve been so much more than the reckless, disillusioned crusades). He listened, as always, an adept scholar even when he felt inept and ridiculous, eyes flickering to Jigano and the string of his instrument, the rich tenor that spoke volumes of experience and fortitude in tunes, in harmonies. Then Amalia came next, with an underpinning of beatific undulations from Jyoti, bold and cold and shadowed, and he wished he could tuck himself in there, in between the words and stanzas, free and frozen and not shackled with impending dread. Her challenging depths slid over to him, and it was his damned turn. His mouth parted, released and loosened from his taut, rigid clenching, and he didn’t know what kind of ignorant sound was going to come out of his throat; he wasn’t relaxed enough for mischief: the lyrics were simple, enough for him to not drown, intonations brimming on the impact of audacity, on the realms daring them to fold. “We shall not shy away The world cannot keep us at bay.” The vocals were deep, no particular pitch, no training, haphazard and often influenced by ravenous, rapacious amounts of liquor. He could’ve used some in that moment, feeling the desperate urge to fling himself into the fire and be done with the entire charade. The beast waited for the laughter, the chuckles, the nuances of his failure, staring at the ground instead of the stars. For now we stand alone, the world is lost and blown And we are flesh and blood disintegrate with no more to hate