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You were raised by wolves and voices
There are always nights like these. Nights Kristin dare not intrude on. Nights spent in the woods and fields behind the houses, alone when things become too strong, and when burdens become too heavy for their modern lives to hold. There are things that cannot be alone in mortal bodies, things beyond their own design. What brings them together stands a constant risk of tearing them apart, and none of them have a choice.
Every night, I hear them howling
Tensions run high when hatred you can’t understand sinks deep into your bones, and they deal with it in different ways. Techno and Wilbur like to set things on fire, throwing different materials into the flames to watch how they flicker and burn. A twig or a berry here, maybe a snail. Some larger logs, some interesting smelling pine needles. Anything to keep the air heating, anything to keep that crackle going. Watch different colours jump out at them, and inhale the smoke, however dangerous it might be. Reach their hands in and poke at the embers, moving sticks and fanning the flames.
There is a flame in the both of them, and it requires feeding.
Deep beneath your bed, they said it all comes down to you.
Tommy twists, throws fists and words he can never mean, throws sticks and stones at trees and befriends the bugs to ignore anything else that he might scream for. He does not eat in the days leading up to this, nothing beyond bare minimum. He is scrappy, and frail, but he is never any less awake. There is nothing he won’t scream into the night, into this night. There is safety in its arms, a safety that used to be the only thing he turned to. A child of the daybreak, son of the light, but afraid of the creatures that roam it. He will answer only to the stars, and pray it’s enough to keep everything he won’t voice at bay.
You’re the daughter of silent watching stones,
Phil desires speed. He vaults himself over fallen tree trunks and launches himself down beaten tracks they’ve paved on happier days. He is old, but his body has not aged as his mind has, and there is an ungodly force that moves him, drives him deeper into darker things. Wings that cannot form beat into the darkness, pushing further forwards. His boys follow, because they always have. It’s never the same spot that they settle in, but it is always familiar, and it is always home. They will follow him into fire and brimstone because it is where he leads them.
You watch the stars hurl their fundament, in wonderment, at you and yours, forever asking more.
There are ghosts with them tonight. They breathe curses in their ears and whisper the hopes and dreams they have lost to these men. Each of them carry weight unspoken, and with it they carry the lives they have destroyed in another time, another life. Creatures scream empty promises of pain they cannot carry. Promises their counterparts cannot wreak. Women hide behind trees with dagger strapped against their backs, and men with crooked smiles and swinging pickaxes bounce in the trees above. Children rustle the leaves by their feet, and they resist the urges to kick them away, send them from the harm and war they bring.
You are the space that’s in between, every page, every chord and every screen.
Things have been harder, in these months. Dissociation has gotten worse for all of them, and it’s not too strange anymore to find someone zoned out in a tight corner or empty field, half dressed with no clue how they got out there. Wilbur’s been the worst recently, on his knees in various corners of the estate, tears streaming down his face, murmuring quiet apologies to people that aren’t there. Techno is angry, Tommy is tired, and Phil spends more time working on his fences and the grasses than he ever needed to.
But there is a difference in their story. They will always come home. There is always a reason to come home.
You are the driftwood and the rift, you’re the words that I promise I don’t mean.
They don’t hate each-other, far from it. Beneath rage they cannot hold and tears they have no reason to cry, they are family. They are brothers and sons, father and family. It is soft apologies when curled up by the fire. They are animals that still live, reassurances that they live. There is a mother who has not died and a father who never left. There is a son who has no wish for glory and no man who wishes for glory. There is no neglected child in this home. They are healing, and making up for the mistakes they have never made. Safety is in the wooden arms of these old homes.
We’re drunk but drinking, sunk but sinking, they thought us blind, we were just blinking.
Nothing is perfect. Tommy will still apologise as he takes a loaf of bread. Wilbur will speak and in the next moment he is taking it all back, apologising for manipulations he had no plans to make. Techno will still strike out at the walls, and his migraines are akin to thunder in his head. Phil will look to the skies and remember a freer time. There is no reason for them to move, however. Where they leave, they always return, and Kristin is standing by the door to help them inside and warm them up when the days grow cold. When Tommy comes home from fishing and Wilbur from band practice, she is there, and she has never given them reason to believe otherwise.
All the stones and kings of old will hear us screaming at the cold
”Remember me,” I ask.
”Remember me,” I sing.
Nothing is perfect, arguments still happen. Wilbur will strike out, words lashing into old cuts that aren’t there, ripping them anew in this world over the last, dragging out a soul through a paper cut. Phil can still be harsh, the years hang on his shoulders and pull him down. There are hundreds yet calling for penance on his soul, but Death will not let them have him yet, and instead his anger will reach into those he loves and send them flying, pushing them into history they still don’t know. Techno and Tommy will beat each-other into the floorboards, wild fits of fury and mania driving them to be enemies once again, and where one feels his world is being won, the other will be broken by the world. It is his youth, built on worlds of pain, that will hurt the hardest, the disappointment more painful than anger. He will lose that which makes him feel human, and scream.
“Give me back my heart you wingless thing.”
But this is never for too long. When they are home, when they are on Earth, in their own bodies and own souls, they are safe. Peaceful, even. They are hums in darkness and half-read myths on the sofa. They are information about the stars and the bugs and the trees and the chords. They are direction and poles and forces. Magnesia keeps them steady, and forces pull them together that are stronger than any pain they may cause. The sun will always rise, and with her she will always bring them a new day. One where they can be happier, safer, stronger.
Think of all the horrors that I promised you I’d bring
Tonight is the night they prepare for dawn. They are slipping, losing grip on themselves to rememants and revenants. Angered beings that do not belong, and shadows calling for control once more. They have lost control before, manipulated and played by men not much stronger, but much crueler. Though it has caused pain, they will not lie to each-other, and perhaps that is what hurts them the most. What holds them in place and pushes them away all in the same movement. Magnets held together by an outwards force, just in the wrong way.
I promise you they’ll sing of every time
Tonight they are here to feel safe. Here to let themselves be free and chaotic, to let something beyond anything ethereal have the space it needs to breathe. Smoke and wind and fire and Earth. Vines around their ankles and leaves in their hair. Moss and flowers and natural existence, away from anything built or stable. It is untamed, unfettered, and refuses to be as such all the time the vessels are awake. Nothing and everything is sacred here.
You ran your fingers through my hair and called me child
They can dance, sing, scream, and they are safe in the arms of the skies and each-other. There is something more in the air and their eyes tonight, and it flickers, never wavering or changing. There is fun and flight and something new in Tommy’s eyes when he stands on a rock, covered in a moss blanket for a cape and feathers for a crown. There is something like the skies and the sun and the dawn of a new beginning when he turns with his face to the skies, brothers and father there where they should have always been, and they are able to speak as one.
“Witness me, old man, I am the Wild.”