And oh my longing heart to break!
Dec. 29th, 2005 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crows[Here! A short story I started at two thirty in the morning when I really should have knocked myself out with a brick.]
Autumn wind smoothed too cold across her pursed lips. The skin across her knuckles paled a little for the wind-chill as her hand flexed along the neck of her guitar, the small rhythms of her fingers brushing the strings punctuating the plucked notes. Madeleine squinted into the evening, which was beginning to dim from grey to black. She had hoped – banked on, really – a fiery sunset tonight but the world had not been forthcoming with any beauty. Now, as the night covered the fields and hills of her home with coldness, there was only the hard ground beneath her legs and ankles, the relative warmth of the instrument in her lap, and the tight feeling in her throat of a story she was waiting to tell.
Mad had come up to this hill – a miscellaneous one, among a set of nearly identical brethren above the Catholic church that seemed on nights like this to lord over their small and scattered town with a shadowy, hawkish eye – to try and pull it from air. Something waiting to be written, to be sung… a story that was there, ripe in her hands, only the characters did not have faces or hands. They had no voices with which to communicate to one another; bound to their own grounds. It was a crippled thing.
So, there she was, chilly in a jacket too light for the near-winter season, perched alone on a hill in the gathering dark with a guitar in her lap, its soft voice wasted on an uncaring wind. It was a wrenchingly poetic image, she thought, oughtn't it have been one that couldn’t help but birth some kind of brilliant composition? Apparently not.
A long, ragged sigh pushed its way up between her teeth, lisped out onto the brittle air and she silenced the strings by wrapping her fingers around the guitar’s slender neck. I am strangling the song that I wasn’t even playing. She thought idly, resisting the urge to laugh at herself for how melodramatic a thought that was. There was a pragmatism, sometimes, that seemed to quietly assassinate otherwise artistic endeavors in her… a desire for sensibility that had been predominantly instilled in her by her grandparents, responsible for half or more of her upbringing.
Her boots and jeans scraped against the stony dirt and dry grass as she unfolded her legs… she flexed her abdomen, laying her back to the earth and settling her head somewhat uncomfortably down. The guitar swung parallel to her body, cradled flat against her stomach in a configuration not unlike one might imagine some knight of legend being buried with the great sword that had slain a demon.
“Heavens, I can hear the funeral dirge now…” Madeleine muttered, not without some humor, to nobody in particular. There was a difference, she considered, that it was possibly difficult to slay a demon with a mere acoustic guitar. Possibly. Nonetheless, this position was warmest if not most luxuriant among any she cold have occupied, and she let her body relax out its shivers.
There must have been high winds far above the earth… the breeze that stirred among the hills that sheltered her was light and preoccupied, moving too and fro among the gentle swells of land without much rhythm. The clouds above her, however, were swimming with the deepening shadows of nightfall. They rushed westward in a disorganized cavalcade, black shapes moving uncertainly about and growing as the sun fell further beyond the horizon. There was a beauty in it, for lack of a heartbreaking, painted dusk… it may have been a flat grey evening, but at least there was some interest to the sky, as with cloud cover like this there would be no stars to wish on tonight.
Slowly lengthening her breathing, trying in vain to accustom herself to the cold air, Mad let her eyes sink closed, relaxing against the frustration that she hadn’t been able to get anything written tonight. It was a specific accomplishment she had set out for… something that had been rationally important. A couple of dry weeks had gone by while Madeleine moved in and out of her daily obligations with a little bit of hollowness. This in itself was not uncommon, she was worn down by the artist’s longing for creation, her housemates continually tried to reassure her as they always did that if she gave it a little while ‘the muse’ would visit her. It was late, so she figured she could surely construct something from the mind… maybe it wouldn’t be great, but it would be something, and that much was a start.
“Meet the waves I shall reside… meet the waters and the tide…” She began to sing to herself… it was a child’s rhyme, in her youth… one that her mother had sung to her when she was a tot and lived on thusly in her memory. She couldn’t quite remember all the words, and thought she might have been making some of them up.
“And oh my longing heart to break, has she another love to take…” Mad drew a breath, sealed her lips and held it pressed hard against the earth, trying to remember if that was the tail end of the song or if she needed to make up another verse. Her mind was leaning toward the latter option, when she was startled abruptly from her nursery song reverie by the clatter of wings beating close to her head and the scratching of talons on the ground. Frightened, she turned over, clawing at the ground to gain her feet and escape whatever menace had snuck up upon her. Managing only to right herself into a shaken crouch, she met the black eyes of a large, glossy raven that was contemplating her askance from his position a couple of yards away. He cocked his sable plumed head and hopped from one foot to the other, resettling his wings and appearing to regard her now with the other round, intelligent eye.
Stirring dust, her unbidden companion took to the air, perching himself with graceful effortlessness on the limb of a balding oak tree that still cast an impressively dark shadow in the dusky half-light. Blacker still, however, was the raven… she could make out his shape among the branches very easily and was keenly aware that he was still looking at her very intently.
A strange sensation came over her, then… she had not recalled being in front of a tree for her little failed bout of songwriting… Mad thought that it was something she’d remember… the oak was no trifle; twisted trunk and branches reaching into the sky like the fingers of a mad old crone. It had about half of its leaves still about it, the rest scattered on the rocky ground that its roots twisted possessively through. She got the impression that it was very deeply rooted in the hill, that there was a great deal of ownership between tree and hill itself. Furrowing her brow, Madeleine pursed her lips and stepped forward into its ominous aura, stretching out a hand to touch the pitted bark. It was cool against her fingers, but this new night seemed warmer than it had before… reasonable, in that the start that the unexpected raven had caused her had quickened her blood a fair bit. Under her breath she was back to humming the song.
Having counted on the slowing of her heartbeat to remind her of the chill of the night rather failed her in the next moment, when she heard the bird in the tree shift his clawed feet on his chosen branch and, on the heels of that, the far more human sound of a man clearing his throat near by. More sensible hackles raised abruptly, then, when Mad’s mind flashed with how late it had gotten, with the fact that she was a ways away from the nearest building in the town and was alone save for this stranger.
“Forgive me,” came a voice that apparently belonged to a tall shape just beyond the perimeter of the oak’s shadow. “I was walking and I didn’t want to frighten you.” Madeleine stepped back out onto the somewhat lighter part of the hilltop, narrowing her eyes to get a better look at him. By the sound of his voice, she’d place him around her own age, no more than thirty. He drew a little closer, just enough so that they could more properly see one another but maintaining a distance that most acquaintances would consider ‘proper’.
“Good evening…” Madeleine replied, awkward in that moment as she was unsure quite how to respond to what he’d said… he had frightened her but she didn’t fancy just out and saying it to him.
“Good evening!” She could hear in his voice that he was smiling, the greeting conversationally light where hers had been somewhat wary. “Brisk night this is going to turn into, I’d wager.” He continued. Hi hands were clasped easily behind the small of his back, and he was wearing a coat of some kind that fell past his waist. Any and all of his details were almost totally lost to the moonless darkness.
“No kidding.” Mad replied, laughing slightly to shake off her own preoccupation. “Bought time to finish up our evening strolls, eh? Before it gets nasty out here.”
He seemed to laugh softly at her reply, nodding and skirting her at a courteous distance. “Probably. I’ll likely be out a little while longer, though.” Carefree in every aspect. She turned to watch him as he past, settling her eyes on his back as he finished his sentence. Then, after a moment, he added. “Have a lovely night.” And waved to her without looking back.
“You too.” She waved also, without thinking that he was turned away from her, and looked back at the strangely beautiful tree. “Yea, I guess I ought to be getting on home.” Madeleine intoned to herself disappointedly, any warmth at having encountered a personable stranger fading into a quickening breeze.
Suddenly, she jumped in her skin, clutching a hand to her stomach and casting a panicked glance around the small hilltop. She wasn’t sure exactly where she’d set her guitar before the raven startled her from her daydreaming. Having taken a few steps away from where she’d originally been sitting, she couldn’t be quite sure that it was within arms length of her, and it was dark enough now that it was going to be difficult to put her hands on it if she didn’t know precisely where it was.
“Shit.” Madeleine drew herself up straight, casting a very scrutinizing gaze around in the shadows for any sign of her instrument. Finding none, she scowled at the night and turned in the direction of the town. She’d have to run home and grab a flashlight, which would make ridiculously quick work of finding the errant guitar up here. It couldn’t have gotten far, after all… or rather; she couldn’t have gotten far from it.
She turned in the direction of the town. Then, she turned again, having apparently gotten herself turned around more than she thought she had. Then, after a moment of floundering in the blackness, her heart began to hammer in her chest. The sound of her heartbeat, and of her boots scraping about in the dry dirt beneath them, filled her ears as she found no sign at all of the town lights. There was no possible way that they were all shut off… it may have been a small community but it was certainly not so small that there were not streetlamps, not a few all night business. Besides, the steeple of the church was lit day and night… something she’d always thought was a little grandiose on the part of the good Catholics, but would have given anything to spot at that particular instant. Her mind was well upon racing as she found herself backing up to the close solidity of the tree trunk behind her.
Autumn wind smoothed too cold across her pursed lips. The skin across her knuckles paled a little for the wind-chill as her hand flexed along the neck of her guitar, the small rhythms of her fingers brushing the strings punctuating the plucked notes. Madeleine squinted into the evening, which was beginning to dim from grey to black. She had hoped – banked on, really – a fiery sunset tonight but the world had not been forthcoming with any beauty. Now, as the night covered the fields and hills of her home with coldness, there was only the hard ground beneath her legs and ankles, the relative warmth of the instrument in her lap, and the tight feeling in her throat of a story she was waiting to tell.
Mad had come up to this hill – a miscellaneous one, among a set of nearly identical brethren above the Catholic church that seemed on nights like this to lord over their small and scattered town with a shadowy, hawkish eye – to try and pull it from air. Something waiting to be written, to be sung… a story that was there, ripe in her hands, only the characters did not have faces or hands. They had no voices with which to communicate to one another; bound to their own grounds. It was a crippled thing.
So, there she was, chilly in a jacket too light for the near-winter season, perched alone on a hill in the gathering dark with a guitar in her lap, its soft voice wasted on an uncaring wind. It was a wrenchingly poetic image, she thought, oughtn't it have been one that couldn’t help but birth some kind of brilliant composition? Apparently not.
A long, ragged sigh pushed its way up between her teeth, lisped out onto the brittle air and she silenced the strings by wrapping her fingers around the guitar’s slender neck. I am strangling the song that I wasn’t even playing. She thought idly, resisting the urge to laugh at herself for how melodramatic a thought that was. There was a pragmatism, sometimes, that seemed to quietly assassinate otherwise artistic endeavors in her… a desire for sensibility that had been predominantly instilled in her by her grandparents, responsible for half or more of her upbringing.
Her boots and jeans scraped against the stony dirt and dry grass as she unfolded her legs… she flexed her abdomen, laying her back to the earth and settling her head somewhat uncomfortably down. The guitar swung parallel to her body, cradled flat against her stomach in a configuration not unlike one might imagine some knight of legend being buried with the great sword that had slain a demon.
“Heavens, I can hear the funeral dirge now…” Madeleine muttered, not without some humor, to nobody in particular. There was a difference, she considered, that it was possibly difficult to slay a demon with a mere acoustic guitar. Possibly. Nonetheless, this position was warmest if not most luxuriant among any she cold have occupied, and she let her body relax out its shivers.
There must have been high winds far above the earth… the breeze that stirred among the hills that sheltered her was light and preoccupied, moving too and fro among the gentle swells of land without much rhythm. The clouds above her, however, were swimming with the deepening shadows of nightfall. They rushed westward in a disorganized cavalcade, black shapes moving uncertainly about and growing as the sun fell further beyond the horizon. There was a beauty in it, for lack of a heartbreaking, painted dusk… it may have been a flat grey evening, but at least there was some interest to the sky, as with cloud cover like this there would be no stars to wish on tonight.
Slowly lengthening her breathing, trying in vain to accustom herself to the cold air, Mad let her eyes sink closed, relaxing against the frustration that she hadn’t been able to get anything written tonight. It was a specific accomplishment she had set out for… something that had been rationally important. A couple of dry weeks had gone by while Madeleine moved in and out of her daily obligations with a little bit of hollowness. This in itself was not uncommon, she was worn down by the artist’s longing for creation, her housemates continually tried to reassure her as they always did that if she gave it a little while ‘the muse’ would visit her. It was late, so she figured she could surely construct something from the mind… maybe it wouldn’t be great, but it would be something, and that much was a start.
“Meet the waves I shall reside… meet the waters and the tide…” She began to sing to herself… it was a child’s rhyme, in her youth… one that her mother had sung to her when she was a tot and lived on thusly in her memory. She couldn’t quite remember all the words, and thought she might have been making some of them up.
“And oh my longing heart to break, has she another love to take…” Mad drew a breath, sealed her lips and held it pressed hard against the earth, trying to remember if that was the tail end of the song or if she needed to make up another verse. Her mind was leaning toward the latter option, when she was startled abruptly from her nursery song reverie by the clatter of wings beating close to her head and the scratching of talons on the ground. Frightened, she turned over, clawing at the ground to gain her feet and escape whatever menace had snuck up upon her. Managing only to right herself into a shaken crouch, she met the black eyes of a large, glossy raven that was contemplating her askance from his position a couple of yards away. He cocked his sable plumed head and hopped from one foot to the other, resettling his wings and appearing to regard her now with the other round, intelligent eye.
Stirring dust, her unbidden companion took to the air, perching himself with graceful effortlessness on the limb of a balding oak tree that still cast an impressively dark shadow in the dusky half-light. Blacker still, however, was the raven… she could make out his shape among the branches very easily and was keenly aware that he was still looking at her very intently.
A strange sensation came over her, then… she had not recalled being in front of a tree for her little failed bout of songwriting… Mad thought that it was something she’d remember… the oak was no trifle; twisted trunk and branches reaching into the sky like the fingers of a mad old crone. It had about half of its leaves still about it, the rest scattered on the rocky ground that its roots twisted possessively through. She got the impression that it was very deeply rooted in the hill, that there was a great deal of ownership between tree and hill itself. Furrowing her brow, Madeleine pursed her lips and stepped forward into its ominous aura, stretching out a hand to touch the pitted bark. It was cool against her fingers, but this new night seemed warmer than it had before… reasonable, in that the start that the unexpected raven had caused her had quickened her blood a fair bit. Under her breath she was back to humming the song.
Having counted on the slowing of her heartbeat to remind her of the chill of the night rather failed her in the next moment, when she heard the bird in the tree shift his clawed feet on his chosen branch and, on the heels of that, the far more human sound of a man clearing his throat near by. More sensible hackles raised abruptly, then, when Mad’s mind flashed with how late it had gotten, with the fact that she was a ways away from the nearest building in the town and was alone save for this stranger.
“Forgive me,” came a voice that apparently belonged to a tall shape just beyond the perimeter of the oak’s shadow. “I was walking and I didn’t want to frighten you.” Madeleine stepped back out onto the somewhat lighter part of the hilltop, narrowing her eyes to get a better look at him. By the sound of his voice, she’d place him around her own age, no more than thirty. He drew a little closer, just enough so that they could more properly see one another but maintaining a distance that most acquaintances would consider ‘proper’.
“Good evening…” Madeleine replied, awkward in that moment as she was unsure quite how to respond to what he’d said… he had frightened her but she didn’t fancy just out and saying it to him.
“Good evening!” She could hear in his voice that he was smiling, the greeting conversationally light where hers had been somewhat wary. “Brisk night this is going to turn into, I’d wager.” He continued. Hi hands were clasped easily behind the small of his back, and he was wearing a coat of some kind that fell past his waist. Any and all of his details were almost totally lost to the moonless darkness.
“No kidding.” Mad replied, laughing slightly to shake off her own preoccupation. “Bought time to finish up our evening strolls, eh? Before it gets nasty out here.”
He seemed to laugh softly at her reply, nodding and skirting her at a courteous distance. “Probably. I’ll likely be out a little while longer, though.” Carefree in every aspect. She turned to watch him as he past, settling her eyes on his back as he finished his sentence. Then, after a moment, he added. “Have a lovely night.” And waved to her without looking back.
“You too.” She waved also, without thinking that he was turned away from her, and looked back at the strangely beautiful tree. “Yea, I guess I ought to be getting on home.” Madeleine intoned to herself disappointedly, any warmth at having encountered a personable stranger fading into a quickening breeze.
Suddenly, she jumped in her skin, clutching a hand to her stomach and casting a panicked glance around the small hilltop. She wasn’t sure exactly where she’d set her guitar before the raven startled her from her daydreaming. Having taken a few steps away from where she’d originally been sitting, she couldn’t be quite sure that it was within arms length of her, and it was dark enough now that it was going to be difficult to put her hands on it if she didn’t know precisely where it was.
“Shit.” Madeleine drew herself up straight, casting a very scrutinizing gaze around in the shadows for any sign of her instrument. Finding none, she scowled at the night and turned in the direction of the town. She’d have to run home and grab a flashlight, which would make ridiculously quick work of finding the errant guitar up here. It couldn’t have gotten far, after all… or rather; she couldn’t have gotten far from it.
She turned in the direction of the town. Then, she turned again, having apparently gotten herself turned around more than she thought she had. Then, after a moment of floundering in the blackness, her heart began to hammer in her chest. The sound of her heartbeat, and of her boots scraping about in the dry dirt beneath them, filled her ears as she found no sign at all of the town lights. There was no possible way that they were all shut off… it may have been a small community but it was certainly not so small that there were not streetlamps, not a few all night business. Besides, the steeple of the church was lit day and night… something she’d always thought was a little grandiose on the part of the good Catholics, but would have given anything to spot at that particular instant. Her mind was well upon racing as she found herself backing up to the close solidity of the tree trunk behind her.