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The sensation of being cold was unfamiliar now. Of feeling a chill in his bones. Of pulling his clothes tighter around him. Maybe it was the fault of the man behind the wall. Maybe it was his own fault for getting too comfortable. Nothing lasted forever.
If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the bite of whiskey at the back of his throat, head thrown back and choking on laughter that punched its way out of his chest as he watched his friends flail around the floor in a wrestling match that stemmed from a misplaced hairbrush and several false accusations in an attempt to distract from one’s own faulty memory. A slap on the back eased his coughing, but he had already drunk so much that the faces ran together. His body was warm, too warm, he was sweating. Fingers gloved, bare, scaled, and hot burning hot scorching hot pulled him to his feet and spun him around in a devilish dance as music - where did the music come from? Was it always there? - swaddled his soul and set him free. The cage was dented, the bird wriggled free, shedding some feathers in the process, and the celebration had begun.
But he wasn’t celebrating. He wasn’t dancing. He wasn’t surrounded by gloves and scales and warm touches. Frost encased his hand and his eyes refused to stay frozen shut. He could count the silence between the seconds as the man behind the wall waited for him to speak. The back of his throat dripped with the burden of obsoletion. Did he do it right? Did he save his name carve out his own path follow in the footsteps project onto another embody a false identity?
Hands. Scorching hands. Metal clinking against metal. Scalding and sizzling met stiff and whirring. One born to be a heartless robot who grew to dance and a dancer forced to hack at his finest instrument until it was all replaced with unfeeling steel. Turquoise. The color of wisdom, tranquility, protection, good fortune, hope. At the snap of his hands, he could make that color appear and embody what it meant. He gazed upon it daily but it was never as beautiful as it was when it blinked back at him.
A noise spilled from his lips. Lips he wished were blue from the cold or red from the heat, just something different for once. A noise, words, but what did they mean? What was he saying? Why was he talking? Did whoever was listening deserve to hear what he had to say? Would they respond with a grunt of acknowledgement, pour him another drink and continue the conversation? No, that never happened. Only in his dreams did he tear down the veil and let himself reveal what made the spinning dancer tick. One could not be mighty without suffering and had any person truly suffered as much as the one with the scalding hands? So who was he to say that only that person deserved to hear his words? Who was he to claim that he held any such significance?
There were mechanisms at work beyond the sterile walls that caged him. A war raging. Brothers and gods alike killing each other in defense of their ideals of what the world should be. So many scorned who only wished to be loved. So many idols craving for divinity. So many children butchering and regurgitating the same ideologies that their forefathers died justifying. And here he was simultaneously removed from and in the center of the carnage. A key character who will never experience the bloodbath first hand. He was ultimately and entirely useless, only filling the space between events for curious onlookers to gawk at and theorize over. And he was still talking.