Work Text:
There is a man in black on the hill. He sits and sings and sobs on the hill. No one can approach him - no one has approached him. Not for years. Centuries. Stories say people have tried, have tried to talk and sing and cry with him, but they came home pale-faced and bent under grief that was not their own. So no one goes to the hill, but the little village beneath can still hear him. Can hear the pitch of his hymns and the gasp of his tears and there is nothing they can do.
At the top of the hill is a grave. It had been marked once, by a necklace of pearl and a purple feather now extinct. Now, flowers bloom and wilt and return to the earth under snow and the grave is forgotten. Not even the man remembers where it is.
In between moments of grief and sorrow and anguish - it was not fair! - he thinks it should be important. To remember where it is. Where it came from. Who might have laid beneath the dirt so tenderly cared for so long ago. But then funeral hymns build in his throat and tears sting his eyes and coherent thought is drowned beneath loss and abandonment and he is swept away.
There is a man in white who visits the town. No one has seen him before, and they will not see him again. He visits just the once. No one would remember his passing had it not been for his questions - he asked about the hill, about the man, about the grave. No one had an answer, wanted to answer, felt as if they could answer. The man takes their silence as confirmation anyway. He leaves for the hill. They do not see him again.
There are two men on the hill. The one in white cries and screams. There is anger in his words, anguish and longing and despair, but hope. Fractured and twisted out of place where there should have been something better, something more, something together . The one in black does not answer. He is lost, beyond the scope of mere words and emotion. They sit together and cry, worlds apart and breaking despite their closeness.
At the top of the hill are two graves. One is fresh dirt and upturned grass. The other lies newly discovered nearby. Stones of white and black rest atop them.
That night, as the village prepares for otherworldly sorrow from atop the hill, they instead hear a reunion.
Later, much later, the graves will be rediscovered and the occupants identified. Proper graves stones will be constructed. Two little metal trinkets, shaped like bolts of brilliant lightning and fierce jaws, are set atop them.