Work Text:
♫♪♩♬♩♪♩♬♩ (Rocky)
‘Untitled', VℓVλI
Acrylic, sand, gravel on xenonite
The bottom of the sea is a dark place
Unseen and unseeable
Sunbeams fade before they can ever be felt
Before they can ever be missed
Light is nothing but a fairytale
As is lightness, the pressure persistent
The weight of the world entire
Pressing down on you like stone
An abyss such as this should be lifeless
Empty, hollow, and dark
And yet, there it is: life
Singing, just like everything does
In the hopes of being heard
We are here, here we are
Is anybody listening?
There are no stars to wish upon
Down there in the dark
So they work their way up to them instead
And when they find those stars?
Oh they are singing too
Fairytales can come true, they hum
But so too can their monsters
Hungry as they always are
But where there are monsters
There are also heroes
Willing to save a star they cannot see
Out they go, out into a dark even deeper
To keep their own from going cold
But cold they go, one by one
By one by one by one
Until that's all that does remain
The last one, the lost one
Left in the darkest place of all
Where no song is ever sung
A story such as this should be hopeless
Lonely, tragic, and dark
And yet, there it is: Light
Seeping through the cracks
To reach the one so far out of reach
And the Light tells it:
Wherever you go I'll follow
Even into the dark?
Even into the dark, it promises
Light loses something, in coming down
To the bottom of the sea
Its blood loses colour without a fight
Soon after, its golden hair goes dull
Along with golden wings and golden clothes
Its eyes keep their colour the longest
A love letter to the world it once knew
But even that too disappears to the dark
Unseen and unseeable
The Light, it dims and flickers
In a world not built for flames
It'll go out! the bottom dwellers whisper
Just like all the sunbeams before it
A Light such as this should be listless
Faded, cold, and dark
And yet, there it is
There it is, shining despite the ending
The story was supposed to have
It teaches them a new kind of fairytale
That is the truest one ever heard, ever told
Not of monsters, not of heroes
But of friends
Of kindness
Of care
Of darkness and Light dancing together
To the oldest song of all
And then, eventually, to the oldest truth:
The dark always has to say goodbye
For Light cannot stay forever
It comes and goes so fast
A Blip in the universe
Always on its way to somewhere else
But even when a star is gone
The darkness holds it like a memory
So those who know where to look
Can always find it again
For now, I find you here
My friend
I find you here, for now
In the rough reds and smooth blues
And the bumpiest of yellows
You always wore with love
These are words you gave to me
And so, here, I give them back to you
In hue and in melody
In this echo of your song
It is not enough
It can never be enough
It is not you
It is a sunbeam that will never fade
But you are the Light that will always be missed
I can't follow you where you've gone
That's a promise I cannot keep
But I can make another one
Are you listening?
I'll keep your Light alive today
And tomorrow and tomorrow
Until all my days are through
But until then
Rest easy, my friend
In that dark place at the bottom of the sea
You are safe there, always and forever
For I will watch you sleep