i had a vague idea for a story, about a girl who's made of wood.
but in my head i keep coming back to this. please ignore the tense slipping, it's probably my worst habit as a writer. i'm trying to reign it in.
“I had a daughter once, she was born blind. It was a long time ago, a very long time ago. back when this world was young, and I was just a little bit older. She couldn’t look after herself, so I couldn’t leave her alone, unlike her sisters. She would sing though, she was the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard. The world would ache at the very sound of it. It would shift and crack, trying to get nearer her. Animals would sing with her, trying to mimic her. They couldn’t though. It would have been like a candle trying to be like the sun. they tried though, sometimes that’s enough.”
“I don’t think she ever knew the effect she had on her world. She would never see it. I held her in my arms on mountains high above everything and would listen and watch as new mountains were born with her song. I would whisper in her ear, describing the events. I’ve never been good with words though, I don’t think she ever truly knew. But I tried nonetheless to capture the scars stretch out before her crystal notes, tearing the earth apart and forming lakes and seas and valleys. It was beautiful. Her voice and the making of a world.”
“when she was happy, the very air seemed electric with it, her voice carried high and clear above everything, and she gave birth to green valleys, distant plains. She teased animals to erupt in colour and song, she caused the fish in the sea to leap and dance before her. She was an extension of me, and she did far more in this world than I could ever have hoped for from a daughter.”
“but when the sadness gripped her, which grew in frequency, she birthed flaming lakes, jagged grey mountains burst violently from the once peaceful forests, tearing at their roots and leaving them black and dead. Her voice was as beautiful, but nobody could have stood before the onslaught. I tried to comfort her, whispering words of my love, and the love of her sisters to her. This worked, at least for a short time. But soon she began to shrug off my comfort. She became more and more distant from me, I never figured out why. She never spoke, she only sang. This was the only clue to her feelings, and it was raw feeling. There were no words, no descriptions, no justifications. Just images and emotion spilling from her throat, out into the world.”
“she grew more melancholy, and I could do nothing but watch as her sadness tore apart the world, a world she had helped shape. It pained me, but she was my daughter, and unlike her sisters she had grown, through the years, to be reliant on me. And I, in my own way, was loathe to leave her now, to fend for herself. Her sisters had grown without my aid, but they had done so since birth. She head been with me since birth, I had carried her, fed and nursed her, and watched her slip from me into the sadness that now seemed to consume her.”
“And then, one day, I woke up and she was gone.”
“She had given me no warning, I had heard no intent in her singing of the previous day. She had just vanished. I sat there, unmoving from where I awoke, looking at the place where she had lain beside me before sleep, and I wept. I had never shed tears for any of my daughters, but I wept for her. She had been my only companion in my travels, she had brought great beauty to the world, I think probably far more than I had managed to. She had taught the world to sing, each with it’s own distinctive voice.”
“and now she was gone.”
“I never heard her again. Her voice no longer shaped the earth, creating mountains and seas. She no longer conjured emotion from the air, stirring the creatures that walked the earth. She was silent.”
“she has always been silent. I never found her, I don’t think she ever wanted to be found. I think, I hope, that she is still alive somewhere, and that she is safe and happy. I think, I think I loved her, not more than, but differently to any of my other children. They are all unique, and beautiful, but none have ever done so much. None have ever felt so much, and done so much with it as she did.”
“I miss her.”
i think i'm wearing my melancholy head today.
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