Work Text:
There was music in the air.
The soft notes danced with the wind as it swirled playfully around weathered fenceposts and over the cracked tiling of roofs — a sharp contrast to the turbulent gales that normally swept through the city, bowing everything in their path into a travesty of reverence. This breeze flitted gaily along the uneven cobblestones of narrow streets, tugging gently at threadbare cloaks and coarsely woven skirts, brushing against chapped cheeks and chilled fingers as it ambled by.
Music was not common in the city; everything that wanted to be heard had to struggle against the roar of the storm barriers that hedged them in on all sides, struggle to endure under the decrees of a forbidding god. On the days that the winds calmed their raging, the silence seemed almost sacred — as if the slightest noise would shatter the frigid peace in the air and cause the storms to swallow up the world once more.
This sound was not competing with the domain of their god, nor was it fighting to exist. The song seemed to harmonize with the winds, creating a little pocket of tranquility that followed the gentle breeze wherever it decided to go — tumbling over barrels, weaving between the legs of horses, ruffling though children's scruffy hair. It seemed to gather up their delighted laughter, adding their joy to the tune it carried past.
People paused to listen to the melody the gentle wind carried, the scuffing of leather against stone stilling in a rippling wave along its path. The sweet sound of a lyre washed over them, pouring into the emptiness that their footsteps had left behind.
A voice joined in the chorus.
It was a beautiful voice, accompanying the chords of the lyre with a kind, cheerful lilt in its words. It sang of sunlight and birdsong, and soft rainbows after the harshest of hurricanes. Hearing that voice made everything feel warmer, as if a fire had been lit in a previously barren mantle place after a long day, or a soft blanket had been draped over shivering shoulders, a mug of hot cider pressed into cold-numbed hands.
So, the people stopped, and they listened, and they wondered at the music in the wind. It did not stay, of course; it continued its meandering path, as breezes so often do, leaving the people behind to carry on with their day. Leaving them to resume the same labors that they undertook every time a dawn they could not see broke over the horizon.
Leaving them with lighter spirits and warmer hearts, and a tiny seed of hope planted deep in their minds.
For some, the seed lay dormant, suppressed by the cold maelstroms that surrounded it, too afraid to give even an attempt at growth.
For others, however, the seed began to sprout the moment it settled, sending out roots and yearning for the sky, for a sun it had never known yet knew it desperately longed for. Some of these were the ones who followed the music, setting aside their work and letting the little wisp lead them through the streets, to an open, stone-paved square with a frost-touched fountain.
To the plucking strings of a wooden lyre, and a white flower pinned to an earth-brown cloak.
To eyes as blue as the sky behind its gloomy shroud, and a soul as free as a bird in flight.
They did not know, yet, of crimson staining icy soil, or arrows piercing hearts both cruelly divine and passionately mortal. If they had, would they have stayed to listen to the young bard, to partake in his dream?
Would they have cried out with their entire souls, raising for themselves a flag of revolt, or would they have slowed on the worn-down road, and let the gentle wind pass them by as they lingered on the border between obedience and insurrection?
Perhaps they would still have stepped forward, certain though their future was. Perhaps no price would have been too great to pay in exchange for their freedom, even if they knew—but they did not know.
Maybe that was braver, to continue on their weary way — shuffling towards an uncertain fate, but ready to face it with newly-kindled hope burning in their eyes.
It was the wind that had kept them caged for so long, that had trapped them safely in a frozen prison, but—
Perhaps this time, the wind would set them free.