34 Searing 122
10:58 AM
A musician was a being that understood time. Or rather, timing. Not the exact passage of seconds and minutes, but the opportune moments for the right song, word, tune. And what these people needed was not just a rallying cry, but something that would ease their minds. It was what she’d gathered as she’d been ushered down the stairs, the echo of her playing shut down there with the door. It was an assorted bunch below, and the first reminder that came of a life she no longer lived was this variety. The shaken and downtrodden of the Low City. A blip of realization that melted faces of strangers into people she barely remembered. Amalgamous features that struck both nostalgic and horrific all at once and the bard looked to where Jieun stood beside her as she settled down on her bench.
A minute passed and her song had shifted. Voice warbled for a moment as she sorted through lyrics. A small stepped forward as her fingers found the right notes. Small fingers reached out to land on her boot, the child settling by her leg as if she were to be some sort of comfort. How dismal their situation was for her to be a comfort. The words came as the first blast hit.
“When the night has come, and the land is dark…”
11:00 AM
The building shook. A rattling that reminded them of the stalagmites that trembled with the movement of monsters much too monstrous to think on again. Creatures that ripped into flesh and tore people apart with ease. Her voice rose, as if it might drown out the rumbling around them. A note cracked in time with an errant note. Ears of others covered and yet she continued to play.
“If the sky that we look upon should tumble and fall…”
It was not a sky above them, but the floor above. If it should fall — they would surely be crushed. Brick and wood to be their grave. The bard knew of worse graves to be had. Worse graves that she had watched people be put in. But it shook, the ground around, above, and below them. She swallowed, allowed her guitar to cover the chatter and uncertainty as the next blast wave came, with the words lifting — “Stand by me.” Shouted like a prayer, a curse, and blessing all in one. Shaky murmurs of people joining in for the chorus of the song. An urgent, rushed stand by me.
Continued as she kept picking at the strings of her guitar. A restart of the song after a rift, more people joining in their broken voices. But she did not sing again. Or rather, it was not the same song. A slip into another tongue as she implored first the god of suffering. Because, surely: there was suffering beyond the warded basement and tavern. Out in the streets.
“Let all who suffer do so with the conviction that life is suffering and that this is what it means to be alive. Let them know that this is your will and those who do not suffer, here and now, will soon be among them and that they, too, will know that suffering is life. Stretch your hands down, great god of ache, and bless this suffering with the sweetness and completeness of your embrace.
Show that, our suffering is our own but we never do so alone.”