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aestivatesTitle: The Flute
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sira
Universe: Standalone.
Rating: G
Word Count: 640
Notes: Written for CW portfolio, as the expanded version of the first part from this full piece.
It's nothing but a tune. Just a simple tune, fabled to save a life if played on a wooden flute on the first clear night after a full moon. Any life the flautist wished, the tale claims, reborn whole and new and all of mind, body, and soul perfectly intact. There is no morbid price to pay, because there is nothing fair or equal in death when it brings only loss and regret. Of course, back in these olden times, where everything is done for Him, and where death is treated as the next life ascending into Heaven or descending into Hell, the tale is scorned, hushed, shunned. When a little girl dares to ask her mother about it, she's sent to the stable to sleep with the lambs.
She spends the next ten years of her life wondering. She grows from a precocious child to an awkward young lady, hair spun from leaves of autumn and eyes from leaves of spring. She has the face of a princess, they tell her, and sometimes she pretends she is—wool turning to silk, sandals to slippers—and sometimes, in the deepest night when only the moon and the fireflies are out, she climbs through her window and runs through the village, dancing and jumping and laughing silently along the streets as though the world is hers until sunrise. And in a way, she supposes it is.
She spends a year carving the perfect flute with her own two hands. She doesn't intend for it to take so long, of course, but inexplicably, she finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into the craft, trading weeks' worth of goods for the best knife, and tossing endless numbers of hollowed wooden tubes moments before completion due to the smallest of mistakes. Her fingers are calloused, slivers and pricks dotted across her skin like stars, and finally, sitting on a barrel wrapped in sheepskin, breathing out translucent mist, fingers numb, she has it. She lifts it to her lips and blows, and it's as perfect as she's always imagined it to be.
She spends a year learning the song to the last note until it's her own. It isn't a difficult tune at all, but she's determined to get it right, which is harder than it sounds with merely a faint hum from a distant memory to go by. As the months wear on, the village children ingrain her into their own memories; the young woman perched high on the grassy knoll, tirelessly playing her song the moment the sun's rays touched the flute. She plays only on days when the sky is the clearest blue, and when asked, all she ever responds is that she has a deep, perhaps irrational, fear of hearing the song in the rain. When it comes time for frost to touch the knoll, the song is beautiful enough to put the birds to shame.
She spends one last year falling in love. If she could be a princess, he's by no means her knight—and in fact, perhaps she is the one who rides in on the white horse, for the manner through which he first comes to her is by calling at her door in the dead of night, during a heavy storm, and asking for her assistance in food and lodging. And she would forever remember that night, when he sees her flute and she plays for him just once, against the muted drumbeats of the rain. But she never dares to try again, until one day, when she stares into the love of her life's eyes as he hangs limp from a rope in front of a jeering, nameless, faceless crowd, and she cries his name and plays her song until they take her away.
She's burned at the stake, jagged pieces of charred wood dropping from charred fingers into the fire.
It's defeat.
Author:
siraUniverse: Standalone.
Rating: G
Word Count: 640
Notes: Written for CW portfolio, as the expanded version of the first part from this full piece.
It's nothing but a tune. Just a simple tune, fabled to save a life if played on a wooden flute on the first clear night after a full moon. Any life the flautist wished, the tale claims, reborn whole and new and all of mind, body, and soul perfectly intact. There is no morbid price to pay, because there is nothing fair or equal in death when it brings only loss and regret. Of course, back in these olden times, where everything is done for Him, and where death is treated as the next life ascending into Heaven or descending into Hell, the tale is scorned, hushed, shunned. When a little girl dares to ask her mother about it, she's sent to the stable to sleep with the lambs.
She spends the next ten years of her life wondering. She grows from a precocious child to an awkward young lady, hair spun from leaves of autumn and eyes from leaves of spring. She has the face of a princess, they tell her, and sometimes she pretends she is—wool turning to silk, sandals to slippers—and sometimes, in the deepest night when only the moon and the fireflies are out, she climbs through her window and runs through the village, dancing and jumping and laughing silently along the streets as though the world is hers until sunrise. And in a way, she supposes it is.
She spends a year carving the perfect flute with her own two hands. She doesn't intend for it to take so long, of course, but inexplicably, she finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into the craft, trading weeks' worth of goods for the best knife, and tossing endless numbers of hollowed wooden tubes moments before completion due to the smallest of mistakes. Her fingers are calloused, slivers and pricks dotted across her skin like stars, and finally, sitting on a barrel wrapped in sheepskin, breathing out translucent mist, fingers numb, she has it. She lifts it to her lips and blows, and it's as perfect as she's always imagined it to be.
She spends a year learning the song to the last note until it's her own. It isn't a difficult tune at all, but she's determined to get it right, which is harder than it sounds with merely a faint hum from a distant memory to go by. As the months wear on, the village children ingrain her into their own memories; the young woman perched high on the grassy knoll, tirelessly playing her song the moment the sun's rays touched the flute. She plays only on days when the sky is the clearest blue, and when asked, all she ever responds is that she has a deep, perhaps irrational, fear of hearing the song in the rain. When it comes time for frost to touch the knoll, the song is beautiful enough to put the birds to shame.
She spends one last year falling in love. If she could be a princess, he's by no means her knight—and in fact, perhaps she is the one who rides in on the white horse, for the manner through which he first comes to her is by calling at her door in the dead of night, during a heavy storm, and asking for her assistance in food and lodging. And she would forever remember that night, when he sees her flute and she plays for him just once, against the muted drumbeats of the rain. But she never dares to try again, until one day, when she stares into the love of her life's eyes as he hangs limp from a rope in front of a jeering, nameless, faceless crowd, and she cries his name and plays her song until they take her away.
She's burned at the stake, jagged pieces of charred wood dropping from charred fingers into the fire.
It's defeat.
