It's sad, I know. I can't seem to stop. There's something so deliciously FREE about just writing out whatever-it-is I'm thinking about. Today, it's a story. Just the first part of a story, actually.

This story is not meant for children. It's not meant for adults. It's meant for people, nothing more.

There's that voice. Her voice. She's on the radio again - not surprising, she's a song on every station, all over them, country, rock, jazz... people are calling her the original Torch Singer, they say she's a goddess, sometimes. They don't know her, the girl with a voice like an angel. They haven't seen the scars. The brand. Her eyes, behind the cage that is the only home she's known for years.

She is a caged bird, the Songbird. They never put a name to her, you know. They, the infamous They, music writers and news reporters and a hundred publishing companies that would sell their souls for just one of her songs... no names. The Songbird. Nothing more. As if she had no name.

She doesn't, you know. She doesn't remember ever having one, just that one day they were calling her Songbird and that she answered to it. In her head, she sometimes thinks of herself with the other name they used to use, though. She remembers being their little Prize. There's a story behind that name, too... back when her keepers first acquired her.

That's not the story I'm telling yet, though. I've only got one chance to write this, to tell you about the Songbird and about her music, where all that passion and pain and fire comes from. People say she can break your heart with a note. Odd... but not really too surprising. She learned from the best - her own heart's broken, shattered. A man did it, of course. Isn't there always a man behind these stories? But perhaps we'd better call him a boy, youthful and only ninteen, his heart still on his sleeve, or at least so it seemed to her.

She didn't know any better, she was only fifteen herself.

She remembers him, still. She remembers the first time she saw him, soaked in sweat, in blood, thrown down on the floor in front of her as if she was a queen, his nose pressed into the dirty wood that was barely enough to cover the stale, dry dirt beneath it. He looked up at her, then put his head back down as if he was ashamed. Embarassed that she see him like that, filthy and helpless and still whimpering loud enough that she could hear it. He spit out a bit of blood and she cringed.

"It's ok."

He only whispered it, only muttered it into the boards that he was held down on, but she heard it, and so did the men holding him. Kick. Leather, thudding against torn silk and bare skin. Slap. A scream of pain, and he was huddled in a ball suddenly, bleeding again, and she screamed as well, high, piercing, and they stopped.

Stepped back.

Left him there, at her feet, her tears mixing with his blood and the dust on the floor.

He didn't uncurl for a long time, as she counted it. Long enough to sing her scales ten times over, long enough for her voice to start to tremble, and when it wavered there was suddenly water there, a glass of it, the one certainty she had in this new life. When her voice broke, there was comfort... but only if it didn't break too soon. They could tell when it was real. They could hurt her. But if her voice was hurt, then they took care of it.

She'd come to regard her voice as something separate, another little creature living inside the skin she inhabited. She showed the singer to him, tones echoing through the room, soothing and light, healing... and he finally uncurled, looking up, and at the sight of the water she held he whimpered again, lifting bound wrists to her, pleading.

No one had asked her for anything, ever. In all her memory, no one had asked, only demanded, forced, taken. And he asked. No defenses against that, this little Prize with nothing of her own... but the boy at her feet thought the water was hers, and so she gave it gladly. Sip after sip, his head resting on her lap, and she petted him. She remembered petting. Someone had petted her once, and she still brought up the memory of warmth, pressure, the way the lady's hand felt in her hair. She petted the boy, because it was all she knew of comfort.

His eyes were on hers again and she looked at him, no idea what to say, what to do, but he acted first, rolling away and crouching again. Nature shows. She remembered watching the picturebox and seeing a wolf held at bay, teeth gleaming, eyes lit up, and the first words out of her mouth were sung...

"Wolf, no weapons, no fire, wolf at bay but I am nothing."

And he trembled... his eyes widened... they dragged him out after only a few minutes, because he was still screaming, his hands over his ears, she had forgotten to sing low enough for him to hear it right, and her guilt drove her back into the little steel cage before her keepers could even come into the room.

That night she sang about wolves, howling, prancing, she always pictured them moving in a glade. There was a picture in one of the picturebooks they gave her, a fairy ring, and all the fairies were on wolfback, and all of them had this boy's face, scared, confused, the trickle of blood running down his cheek. She knew about blood, knew it came when you hurt, it came when you sang too hard, and sometimes it came in the night, stealthy, between your legs but nowhere else. She'd wondered what notes that mouth sang, but she could never hear them, no matter how hard she tried to coax her body to make them audible.

That night the boy slept fitfully, the walls didn't keep out the sound of her voice, and he dreamed about snapping jaws and fur, and woke wondering why his paws had grown so oddly, turning about fitfully, looking for his tail.

--- to be continued ---