Why the Caged Bird Plays
From Gameresource
When she dreamed, it always started the same. A girl had heard something, and had seen someone, someone important to her and others, leaving. She knew the someone’s face like it was her own… After all, it had looked very much like the vision that met her in the reflective surfaces of the Eternal City. But she followed it, deep into somewhere, silently, so the someone wouldn’t know that she was there.
Almost always, the someone noticed her just as they had reached where the someone had been going, and she had to run.
Normally, that was when she woke up, and so she did now, curled up in an inn, an empty basket at her side, with her weapons, her armor, and other sundry things that gave her comfort. There wasn’t much, very little could survive her anima banner. She had on two occasions returned home, with only her breastplate protecting her nudity, and her daiklaive to protect her as she crossed the sands.
Five days to come, five days to leave.
Her thoughts were on her engagement as she dressed herself, looking at her empty bed. Once she had become what her beloved had considered most fitting for his most adored slave-
That was what she always was, but now it was to someone who truly cared, who she would bind herself to again and again if he would so desire it, if it would heal him-
his Exalted bride redeeming her ancestors’ betrayal by her willing love and soon marriage to him, the Yozi known as the Ebon Dragon, it was she who would seek him, or one of his third-circle souls out, much to his pleasure.
However, she had only returned the day before, and her body, though as aching as her heart for the Dragon’s shadowy coils or the touch of his souls, had demanded rest first. Now, she paid the innkeeper, studying the violent skinned woman for a moment, and realizing with a sigh as she left, she still didn’t wholly know any of the creatures that she had the honor of dwelling with, though she could feel those who came from her beloved’s broken spirit.
Ah, my Dragonblooded Dove…
She couldn’t remember any other name, he had freed her from those useless memories as he had wrapped himself around her the first time, muffling her terrified-
Why had she been so scared?
-screams as he claimed her for the first time, forcing the first realization as her blood had sang and her body filled, talons of whispers piercing her mind, rending lies that she had been fed since birth, the fires that had flared around her as she had thrashed, impaled on something exquisite and full as a voice of fears and heart-rending madness purred the truth in her ear along with what she knew were honeyed lies-
For he was the very meaning of deception, and so she was its opposite, burning truth into the eyes of Creation
-Taking her, contorting her body as she protested the price won when he had rescued her. She was hidden away in his coils for a time she could not remember, freezing and burning, the one thing dulling the pain being her voice, music. After a time, a flute made out of bone had been given to her, and she had played, the sound the only thing she could focus on other than the voice, by that time, that made her heart both weep in sorrow and exalt in joy, a sorrow that was completely faded now, had faded as she had accepted and fallen deeper into the shadows. The dross of a tranquil nature and valor had frozen and melted away in the pain, tempering into a steely resolve and an adoration for her captor as he transformed her.
Yes, sing, my Dragonblooded dove, sing… her unknown captor, her now beloved master and husband-to-be, had hissed as he had claimed her again and again, riding her as she sang breathlessly, Learn how sweet notes are to all of us, how it takes away the pain of this prison… For it is what it was, Malfeas. It was a hell that they had been wrongfully sealed in after being broken apart as she had been, within the body of one of their own!
Finally, curled up in those curls for what seemed forever, after a period of nothing but her voice cooing lullabies to herself and her voice fading into sleep for a time, she stopped on purpose, trying to call her captor with her silence, tears trickling down as she wordlessly begged for him, she found herself at the top of a tower of bronze, still in his coils, in fact, shrinking back into them nervously, as if a frightened maiden meeting her lover’s family.
Which was exactly the case, it turned out. She had faced several of the fetich souls of other Yozis, all looking at the golden Dragonblooded that almost glowed in his coils under the sickly light of Ligier, the heart of Malfeas. Her reaction after a moment, had been to boldly step out, her valor still strong, though weakened and twisted. She had turned, gazing into each of the alien faces before her, glimpsing at the city beyond, before turning to her captor, looking at him for the first time, weeping herself in sorrow at what they had become.
She had run back into the Ebon Dragon’s talons, crying and pleading to help him, sobbing her despair at how they had been so torn, and the Yozi cooed to her, a version of the same lullaby she had sung, still as melodious as her own, but in a voice of the nights that fostered the fears that the lullaby had been meant to sooth away, a voice she now adored and could not fear without her heart singing louder in joy, until her tears were gone.
Yes, my Dove, now you tasted how we have suffered, and how we hunger for freedom. You are mine, my bride to be…
Yes, she was his betrothed, and she sang it with all of her heart and soul. She did not care how now, that was in the shadows of a past that did not matter, not when there was a Creation needing to be healed, to be redeemed in the eyes of its despairing parents.
But for now, a maiden once of the Scarlet Empire, soon to be the wife of the Primordial now known as the Ebon Dragon, wandered the bones and flesh of fallen kin, unmolested as she played for them, helping to drive away the Silent Wind, dreaming of broken souls to be mended and a world to be fixed.
