Also has Shilo and Mag.
Warnings: HERE THAR BE SPOILERS LAND-LUBBERS.
Warnings: HERE THAR BE SPOILERS LAND-LUBBERS.
Her song speaks to all the beauty that was once in the world.
He could never bear to stop her, even coming in late. She used to sing to Marni, jokes, little lines. He used to say that he invited Mag over at Christmas simply to hear her sing Christmas Carols. The first time he heard her sing Ave Maria he had to excuse himself to weep.
There is something primal. He thinks, something deep and profound about music, it speaks not only to us but to the animal inside of us.
Proof there was something else, how civilization could turn beats of rain on forest leaves into rhythm. How civilization could turn sound into emotion, primal animal cries into melody that made him want to cry as he stood and listened to her sing.
He didn’t interrupt. He couldn’t. She was singing Marni’s song.
--------------------------------
The moments where they were trying to scratch a life from the barest seeds were the ones that mattered. Preparing meals together, watching television before it became a second-rate commodity. Decorations, painting, plans, always plans.
And whenever he flagged, whenever he wavered she was there solid and smooth. She’d trace her hand over his cheek and kiss the top of his head. Yield for nothing, Yield for Nothing. She’d never sung for Rotti, of that much he was sure.
He wouldn’t have needed a songbird like Mag if he knew what a nightingale Marni was.
-------------------------------------
She didn’t deserve to be a ghost, a memory. She deserved solidness, more form then the clearest memories that Mag had. His eyes sting as he holds his position in the darkness, his wife a glittering image against the light his daughter illuminated.
How fitting. She was ever the light of his life.
------------------------------
Whenever he comes home from the clinic he’s bone-weary, dropping into the nearest fixture, feet screaming as he leans his head back only to find her wide eyes staring into his.
“Did you fight the good fight today?”
His only response was a tired smile. She existed on another plane, another world that seemed untouched by the concrete jungle they lived in. She is a bird in a world filled with cats, bright and colorful, illuminated against the night they all inhabited.
Spotlight, center stage, his nightingale wreathed in holographic light.
-------------------------------------------
He has stopped believing in music.
He stopped believing in song the day that Marni died-the radio had been playing old rock and roll-some of her favorites. Broadway Musicals-she loved the spoken word. He moved in more primal rhythm, he couldn’t fathom civilization.
Give him dark beats.
Give him dripping water on wild leaves. Give him primal animal cries. Jesus Nathan, will you turn off those old Jazz records?
“…Sweetheart, it’s BB King.” He cranked his music down, “…You can’t listen to BB-King! You have to blare it. Good Jazz needs to be felt-not just heard.”
“What are you looking for?” her arms encircled his neck, looking up at him, “…hmm? What are you trying to feel?”
Her hips move against his, “…Is it this?”
“Possibly. I could use some more persuasion.”
The strains of his memory die like Mag’s voice, society slipping. Melody becomes background noise, sound looses all meaning, song becomes pure animal cries and it hurts because he is at peace.
Nightingales always shy away before the sun or the sound of the nocturnal cats they share the evening with. His back straightens, his lips curl, his claws unsheathe and the animal within him licks its lips at the hapless songbird wandering helplessly into his territory.
Her frightened chirp does little to mollify him, “…Hi Nate.”
And that is why I don’t like singing. Beauty is fleeting, the real music of life came in the pulsing beats, rain on leaves, forest sounds, trying desperately to feel. There was no civilization anymore, just animal beats writhing in him. Nothing else.
“…Mag. How did you get in here?”
