Recently discovered the lovely music of Phildel, and this song "Storm Song" inspired the short story below. Enjoy!
The Storm That
Sang
My love died today. Drowned. The sea took him, claimed his
life for its own, before washing his body back to me, pale and wrapped in
trailing seaweed that swirled around his gray face, framing it with its
tendrils like strangling dark hair. His body rocked by the tide came to rest at
my feet, bare in the cold morning. The sea filled his cloudy eyes like tears as
I closed them and kissed his cold blue lips. I tasted a salty sting, licking it
clean from my mouth.
I did not weep.
I sang.
My voice started quiet, barely a hum. It might have been a lullaby,
something I heard when I was small, to soothe and ease the terrors of sleep. I
pulled my love’s body into my arms, soaking my dress. How heavy he was, though
the him I loved was gone. I traced the black wings of his brows, gently pulling
the seaweed from his face, knowing the shell I held was empty, yet I was unable
to let go.
So I sang.
My voice grew to a wail, a keening cry, burning up from inside.
I stood, stronger than I had ever been before. I lifted my love, his cold cheek
falling against mine. I felt the wind around me rise, a lament of air, a
whipping siren call to loss.
Looking out to the sea I saw it turn from green to gray to
swirling black. The waves began to crash and foam against the rocks, the sand,
spraying my face sharply. I took slow steps to meet it. My voice rose higher,
my song became a ravaging tide.
The rain came. Hard. It plastered my hair to my face, ran
into my eyes. Thunder roared. It could not compare to the din of my voice, the
sound of my grief song, a song that had brought the storm, a voice that could
cry down heaven and earth.
I carried my love back to the sea and stepped into the
waves, they sucked me down greedily and tried to tear his body away. I held
fast, wrapping my legs around his lifeless body, holding tight to what was mine.
We were dragged out and deep, the ocean and sky above raging into a tempest
that would tear the world apart. I did not care.
I took one last breath, inhaling the cold dark water,
pulling it down into me, steeping me in salt and sorrow.
I let it out in one final, shattering, endless, singing,
shriek.
For my love, I sang the song to end us all.
I have sung us all to sleep.
I have sung us all to sleep.
