I've turned the grief to medicine

the echoes of the thunderclaps
reverberation of the dead

He doesn’t know what to do to help her as she cries. Though she doesn’t know it, she is no longer his - or perhaps he is no longer hers? She has abandoned him twice now, even unintentionally so. But this time, Harper has already grieved her. Mourned her. He had picked up the few pieces left in the ashes and through the fires of his will had forged something ugly but whole - functional, if nothing else. There had been no option to stagnate, to hunt for her, to wait around in the wake of her absence. He’d had Jude. Jude, who needed him to be more than a mere shell of a man. So Harper had done that - because he knew Phoebe would have wanted that, would have wanted him to heal for the sake of their son. But now…he had already moved on from the hole she left in him, and the pieces don’t fit properly anymore.

Her vehemence makes his mouth go dry, uncertain what to say. If she’d had no awareness of the garden’s powers, how could she claim it would never happen again? He is brittle now, pessimistic, and uncertain how to be anything else. But information, at least, he could share. “Hushabye Mountain is his favorite,” he murmurs, watching as a Jude - uncertain why Phoebe is crying into his abdomen, hugs her head with his chubby little arms and pats as gently as a one year old can, trying to comfort her.

provides the tempo for the song
describing how all things went wrong