Shadow Songs

by Tenebrae

High in a tower overlooking a city, a dark shape shambles to the precipice of an ledge of an eastern balcony. Dark hair hangs in light eyes that look at a slow rising moon. Grizzled hair parts about a sensuous mouth as strong teeth make way for a dreadful keening. Pain and sorrow and anger at the inhumanity of man fill that song. Frustration at justice denied form the counterpoint. That throat sings until the air in the lungs are gone. That throat sings 'til it bursts and the blood gurgles and gushes with the expiration of the singer. The song, however, does not stop. It grows, pulling the singer upright when nature would drag him down to the mould and humus. It continues adding to itself, multiplying, filling the darkened night of the collective soul. A dreadful keening at the loss that cannot be recovered. Thus were the shadow songs born. Given life by the expressed rage and feelings freed from repression.

What of the shambling shape, that quasi-ursine figure on that high perch, looking east? The sun rose to see a revenant fall to dust at its first rays. A corpse carrying on after the demise of its life. And the wind took those ashes and sang them in harmony to the shadow songs.