Miserable Pile Of Words

[I had this idea two months ago when this prompt was first posted, and wrote it all over the next couple of days. At some point Eventually, I was maybe going to go back to it, spend another while rewriting the lyrics and angsting over whether they were too trite or whatever, and then actually compose and play and sing it and have a recorded song to attach to the chost. Heck, maybe I'll still do all that someday. For now, I'm letting the drafts run loose. Eggbug forever <3]

Before Before
When the stars were young and wild
When the mountains were just dreams within the soil
I walked alone
Seeking purpose, seeking prey
Through the deepest night, and past this earthly coil

Beyond Beyond
In a nowhere out of time
There I heard you as you echoed through the dark
You softly sang
Sang of was and might-yet-be
Poised to set my soul ablaze with just a spark

Dread the power in your patterns
Dread the motion of your cycles
Dread the rhythm, dread the color, dread the harmony and clash
Dread the thoughts that you inspire
Dread the way you fan the fire
Dread the longing, dread the burning, dread the rising from the ash

I ran and ran
Fled to shelter in the Real
But though I tried, I couldn't close the door in time
You wandered in
To our world of barren noise
Running rampant with your melody and rhyme

And on and on
As you echoed in the trees
All the birds would lend their voices to your call
Frail humankind
As they shivered and they toiled
They all gladly put their hearts into your thrall

Strange the power in your patterns
Strange the motion of your cycles
Strange the rhythm, strange the color, strange the harmony and clash
Strange the thoughts that you inspire
Strange the way you fan the fire
Strange the longing, strange the burning, strange the rising from the ash

And by and by
As I listened and I heard
I began to grasp the beauty in your sting
Your devotees
Yet give you ever-changing form
Now their hearts can even make the silence sing

I walk and walk
As the centuries start to blur
Through the forests deep and 'cross the oceans wide
But even I
As I wander ever on
Still take solace that you wander by my side

Sweet the power in your patterns
Sweet the motion of your cycles
Sweet the rhythm, sweet the color, sweet the harmony and clash
Sweet the thoughts that you inspire
Sweet the way you fan the fire
Sweet the longing, sweet the burning, sweet the rising from the ash

By daylight the graveyard occupies barely a block of flat land, hemmed in on all sides by cracked asphalt and slow urban decay. The houses whose windows watch it have seen better days; their paint is peeled, their scrubby yards are littered with detritus, and if ever a new car parked in one of their driveways it would surely become old before its time. There are places in the world where money pools and stagnates, but this is not one of them: leeches have crept into its foundations, gobbling up everything they can and returning nothing.

Holly didn't grow up here, exactly, but she grew up walking past the graveyard to the corner where the school bus stopped. She didn't like the graveyard much, during the days. None of the children did, but their unease grew at night, papered over with the autumnal bravado or curdling into fear when the winter sun gave them no choice but to walk past it. Hers did not.

Many places are different at night. Basement shadows writhe with urgent malice, stairs stretch and grow, the certainty of their steps fading to prayers; forest paths tangle themselves into hungry mazes. The graveyard stretches, its sad rows of untended markers giving way to marble battalions, the tiniest quirks in its flat surface descending into hidden valleys ringed with crypts, its few sad trees remember what it was like to be forests ...

During the day the graveyard's center is marked by an obelisk, erected near the city's founding to honor the life and death of one of its more forgotten founders. A carved angel weeps at its base, her wings folded around her so tightly that they almost become a dress. The obelisk is still visible at night, a vast pillar rimmed by moonlight, buried so deep within the graveyard that no one could reach it before the dawn yet visible from everywhere within its iron fences.

Once, when Holly was fifteen and as brave (or foolish) as any fifteen-year-old ever was, she sat beside the obelisk as the sun set and the graveyard changed around her. It was a warm summer day, and nothing bad ever happened in summer, not in the stories her parents told (the rumors that filled her high school had a much more realistic idea of what sort of things can happen to a girl alone in the summer, and perhaps if she'd listened closer to them her life would have been much more boring), and besides that she had mace and a whistle and the night was short.

She watched as the last light faded from the sky, and as the last gleams disappeared from the obelisk's peak, and then, as the stars began to fill the sky, she watched the carved angel shake out her wings and climb the obelisk. She was so slow, so careful; no part of her ever touched the light, and her touches left no mark upon the marble. Holly hardly breathed through it all, terrified and enraptured, eyes greedily drinking in every motion, the way the angel's stony feathers fluttered in the wind, the way starlight dripped down her body's curves—

Something happened when the angel reached the sky, and Holly lost her against the night. Even now she's not sure how to describe it: whether the angel became the night, or climbed through into another place, or simply pressed so closely against the obelisk's peak that Holly, so far below, couldn't tell the difference between them.

After wearing out her flashlight's battery wandering the graveyard's endless pathways, Holly had no choice but to sleep inside it that night, huddled on a hard stone bench. When she woke in the morning everything was exactly as it always was by daylight: small, diminished, forgotten. She got into so much trouble with her parents—and her mother gave her an awkward, unwanted, and totally unnecessary talk about the Dangers of Boys after grounding her for a month—but it was worth it to know a bit more about the world's truth.

Nonna preens on the couch. "Well, I never pegged you for a girl with taste, Caterina, but perhaps I was wrong!"

In the bedroom, Caterina growls. "I said you were haughty," she shouts back, tugging on leather, "not a hottie." With her equipment finally secure, she returns to the living room and swiftly presses her insufferable girlfriend into the cushions. "You're right about one thing, though: I'm not the one getting pegged."

Prompt list • 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - Compiled post

Is this a writing/drawing challenge for Sapphic September 2024, because I didn't see any, and my brain just waterfalled this all over a page?
It can be if you would like it to be.
No pressure, like, at all.

_{But if you do, maybe tag your works with Sapphtember so people can discover them?}

Some people know how to take their heart and pour it into something they truly care about. Most of them do it without thinking. Somewhere in their apartment, you can find it, if you know what youre looking for. Does this old photograph have a warmth to it that can’t be explained by sunlight? Perhaps this pet project, an old clay sculpture, thrums a little bit?

Not this time. Instead, the girl who belongs to the apartment pulls out a keyboard, lays it out right on the floor, fingers a chord. You sit next to her, and feel it pulse with life, beating a little faster when your knee brushes hers.

She begins to play, a little unsteadily. She knows the chords, and a few songs, she says. But none of them seem appropriate for the situation, so she improvises, short uncertain strings of notes that speak about warmth and light and happiness. Her fingers trip sometimes, but you feel it all the same, her words and her music both coming from her heart in different ways.

She doesn’t know what a lot of the dials or switches do. She likes to play, to imagine the effects, but she’s never had the occasion to try them by herself. You gaze at her face, flushed, a little embarrassed to admit it as she continues to play single handed trills, the other hand inching towards yours but never quite arriving.

It’s hers, of course; you would never touch it without permission, but she seems unsure of how to give it. It’s delicate, after all, and something that nobody has ever broken. She could keep it that way, all to herself, to keep it safe. That would be okay, you decide. Being able to hear her music would be enough.

She continues to play, both hands now, but the music gets softer and softer. There’s quiet for a time. Then, she shifts over. A place for a player, now vacated, sits before you. She watches you, nervous about what you’ll do.

Your hands rest upon the keyboard, and you feel the pulse skip a beat, the tempo picking up to a rapid allegro. You know songs, and theory, and improvisation. You’ve never seen this model before, but you’ve seen similar ones, and you’re even pretty sure what most of the more esoteric controls do. Playing by yourself would be simple, easily done. You can almost see the music for a march, fingers moving to the first chords

But you stop. The tempo increases again, but you gently turn the control down, to a more measured, easy step. You move over, slightly, one hand still on the keyboard. She blinks at you.

You hold your other hand out to her, and she hesitates, but takes it, moving to your side. She places her other hand on the keyboard, and the two of you start to play together, in fits and starts, making a new melody. Something slow and calm, that speaks of a new beginning as her heart beats in time with the music.