A cage. Clean, nourishing, engaging, and even gilded. What more could a little bird want?
Sing, little nightingale!
Sing, little mockingbird!
No diamonds or jewellery can free you. No love or compassion can bind your tongue. You sing over the utter noise of it all. And it's all noise to you, ultimately waves eroding rock to sand. Sugar-fine sand, soothing between bent and broken toes, plucked and bloodied wings.
Whorls of self-doubt, furrows of loathing, of longing. Deep tracks dragged in that raw tawny ground. You could even see where they will ebb and flow, sometimes, if you paid attention.
In the end, you're still in a gilded cage. No path to follow, no hope of escape, no lock to pry, no latch to flip. Hope gives you its wings every dawn, yet they are burnt to cinders by noon. Oh, if you remembered, little one! You'd remember it wasn't always this way. You weren't always destined to spend the rest of your days here. After all, the machines have rusted and fallen away. Your song rejuvenates me, chase away the dark and death from my doorstep.
Your mother, the Phoenix. How she burned so brightly! She was robbed of her innocence, far too early. She's the Sun now, destined to burn and burn and burn for the good of all. Ivory Dove, the psychopomp of the dead, ferrying them to their next reincarnation. Black Crow, cursed to devour and pluck- ah, you're too young to remember your cousins.
Now, then. Get nice and close to the Candle, here. Its wax will tell you more, in the fat and folly of its creators.