Song

She sat at his feet and sang with him, needing to feel as though the song connected her to him. The song she did not like much; it melted from their lips with pain and sorrow, but it was his song, so she sang it with him, for him. In her heart and soul she loved him. She always loved him, as a brother, as a lover, as a friend and for himself. Seeing him like this tore something from deep inside her.

So young, she thought as she let the words swell and rain, he looked so young in that nineteen-year-old form. Of course he was beautiful, with his delicately spun face and midnight hair, and the full but colorless lips. His white shirt, as white as angel’s wings, should have washed him out, but instead gave him a distinct halo.

She knew he was no angel, not anymore. Within him, beneath the placid seeming of his mask, a slithering darkness had settled long ago, one she felt the moment he reappeared in her existence. It curled in his heart, and would not let him go. He refused to speak of it, what happened to bring him to this perilous state between light and darkness, but she could see it in his eyes. Once clear and blue, now they were dark, nearly black, and showed the twin burdens of pain and age.

Where did her playmate go? So long, long ago, the boy with whom she danced and frolicked in the meadows near the village where they both lived. That same boy, she shared the burgeoning of adulthood with, the growth, the discovery and wonder of it all. Dead, he’d told her when she asked the question out loud. That boy is dust, Branwen.

Why? she'd wanted to ask him. Why did such a lovely boy, who grew once into a lovely young man, have to die? She remembered those days in the sun, from childhood up through adulthood. Did he? Did he remember anything beyond his personal darkness, or did it all succumb to shadows?