-show me what it's like-
Jan. 19th, 2008 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bobthewizard"Useless," muttered Bob, running his hands through his white hair.
The second-years had filed out, tense and subdued after a lesson that had included acid burns, exploding wards, and no fewer than three students randomly bursting into song. One child had gone to the Hospital Wing with a burn that Bob could have prevented had his hand been solid enough to catch the beaker when it slipped. The school's spontaneous musical epidemic had ceased to be amusing.
"Impotent, immaterial, dead and doomed and a cipher in my own classroom--"
Turning on the spot, he found himself face to eyeridge with the rune-carved skull that rested on a shelf in the back of the classroom. It almost seemed to glare back at him. Angrily he warded the door and shot upwards through the ceiling, seeking a quiet place to calm himself down.
With the skull on the second floor, his fifty-foot sphere of mobility included a number of fourth-floor classrooms on the outside wall of the castle. The wide barred windows afforded him a rare view of the grounds and the distant mountains, but even their snowcapped beauty offered him little comfort, and as he paced through the room, not the slightest speck of dust moving as he passed, he only felt his agitation grow.
Two students ran by, tiny figures on the grounds far below: a boy and girl with ice skates slung over their shoulders, too distant to identify in the gathering dusk, stumbling and laughing in the deep snowdrifts. Their hands found each other as they passed out of sight, and Bob slid away from the window, struck to the heart by the phantom memories of a slender hand in his own and a dark head against his shoulder.
So long ago. Five hundred years -- maybe six hundred; it was hard to remember now -- he had been so many centuries apart from the living world, so many years a captive to the dry relic downstairs. So long since that hand, that heart, had been his to hold. Ever to linger, never to join her in the place where she had surely gone: such was the nature of his punishment.
The musical hex caught him unawares and spun his mood into a howling rant.
"Prison gates won't open up for me!
On these hands and knees I'm crawlin';
Oh, I reach for you!
Well, I'm terrified of these four walls;
These iron bars can't hold my soul in--
All I need is you!"
He had always been a pleasant singer, his dark, powerful voice melodious and true. It was one of the things she had enjoyed -- his creature of night and moon and hidden heat in the secret chambers of great houses. Sometimes he imagined that wherever she was, she might hear him when he sang her favorite melodies. Now, when he lacked even the ability to choose what he sung, she had never seemed so far away.
"Come, please, I'm callin',
And oh, I scream for you--
Hurry, I'm fallin', I'm fallin'...."
A furious hand gesture, leaving claws and coils of light in the air, like finger-marks on a crumbling ledge.
"Show me what it's like to be the last one standing!
And teach me wrong from right, and I'll show you what I can be!
Say it for me, say it to me, and I'll leave this life behind me:
Say it if it's worth savin' me!"
He never remembered the rest of the song -- the gates of heaven, the angel's wings. By the third phrase angry tears tracked across the lines of his pale face. He had no physical form, but the end left him spent and shaking.
The final echoes hung heavy in the darkening air.
I'm falling... I'm falling.
[[Backdated to Friday. Complete lyrics are here.
Students may hear Bob's inadvertentemo performance, but this is the immediate aftermath.]]
The second-years had filed out, tense and subdued after a lesson that had included acid burns, exploding wards, and no fewer than three students randomly bursting into song. One child had gone to the Hospital Wing with a burn that Bob could have prevented had his hand been solid enough to catch the beaker when it slipped. The school's spontaneous musical epidemic had ceased to be amusing.
"Impotent, immaterial, dead and doomed and a cipher in my own classroom--"
Turning on the spot, he found himself face to eyeridge with the rune-carved skull that rested on a shelf in the back of the classroom. It almost seemed to glare back at him. Angrily he warded the door and shot upwards through the ceiling, seeking a quiet place to calm himself down.
With the skull on the second floor, his fifty-foot sphere of mobility included a number of fourth-floor classrooms on the outside wall of the castle. The wide barred windows afforded him a rare view of the grounds and the distant mountains, but even their snowcapped beauty offered him little comfort, and as he paced through the room, not the slightest speck of dust moving as he passed, he only felt his agitation grow.
Two students ran by, tiny figures on the grounds far below: a boy and girl with ice skates slung over their shoulders, too distant to identify in the gathering dusk, stumbling and laughing in the deep snowdrifts. Their hands found each other as they passed out of sight, and Bob slid away from the window, struck to the heart by the phantom memories of a slender hand in his own and a dark head against his shoulder.
So long ago. Five hundred years -- maybe six hundred; it was hard to remember now -- he had been so many centuries apart from the living world, so many years a captive to the dry relic downstairs. So long since that hand, that heart, had been his to hold. Ever to linger, never to join her in the place where she had surely gone: such was the nature of his punishment.
The musical hex caught him unawares and spun his mood into a howling rant.
"Prison gates won't open up for me!
On these hands and knees I'm crawlin';
Oh, I reach for you!
Well, I'm terrified of these four walls;
These iron bars can't hold my soul in--
All I need is you!"
He had always been a pleasant singer, his dark, powerful voice melodious and true. It was one of the things she had enjoyed -- his creature of night and moon and hidden heat in the secret chambers of great houses. Sometimes he imagined that wherever she was, she might hear him when he sang her favorite melodies. Now, when he lacked even the ability to choose what he sung, she had never seemed so far away.
"Come, please, I'm callin',
And oh, I scream for you--
Hurry, I'm fallin', I'm fallin'...."
A furious hand gesture, leaving claws and coils of light in the air, like finger-marks on a crumbling ledge.
"Show me what it's like to be the last one standing!
And teach me wrong from right, and I'll show you what I can be!
Say it for me, say it to me, and I'll leave this life behind me:
Say it if it's worth savin' me!"
He never remembered the rest of the song -- the gates of heaven, the angel's wings. By the third phrase angry tears tracked across the lines of his pale face. He had no physical form, but the end left him spent and shaking.
The final echoes hung heavy in the darkening air.
I'm falling... I'm falling.
[[Backdated to Friday. Complete lyrics are here.
Students may hear Bob's inadvertent
