A Poet's Quiet Moment [ONE-SHOT]

Sat Feb 25, 2017 7:46 am

When my skin dismayed, my dreams decayed, and without my hope, I now hang by rope.

Iriko Crow

The Forsaken Dragon

Click For Today's Performance Music. A piece by SIXX:AM, performed by the former Captain Commander of Soul Society: The Seiryuu, Iriko Puzyri-Teimei Crow!

"...Paint yourself a picture, of what you wished you looked like..."

In the realms of hell, a man sat at a piano, a chain wrapped around his throat. His body was so malnourished that his bones were displayed, his hair an unkempt mess. That was normal, though. Brown hair that fell down the sides of his head, making it difficult to see his left eye. The golden eye. The eye that the woman currently sitting on the piano had given him.

"Maybe then they just might, feel an ounce of your pain..." His voice let out, cracking as his bone like digits pressed into the ivory keys. The one solace that he had in his imprisonment here, the ability to still create poems and music. This was a little piece that he learned while he was alive. A little piece that he used to play for someone else, someone who he had once known. Someone he used to trust. Someone who had put him on his road of destruction.

"Come into focus, step out of the shadows..." He continued, his fingers moving along the keys as the form of the woman sitting on the piano came more and more into focus. Some time ago, he had begun to see it. She was starting to hear him less and less. His voice was no longer able to reach her as it once had. "It's a losing battle, there's no need to be... ashamed..."

He continued, his voice that had always been so clear the last remaining fragment of the man who had once been known as Iriko Crow. Now, he had no name. He was a dead man in Hell. "'Cause they don't even know you, all they see is scars..." He told her, his eyes growing soft as he beheld her sitting on the piano as the edges of it began to fade.

"They don't see the angel, living in your heart..." He got out, his legs relaxing as he softly breathed. He recalled the moment when she had stopped her rampage, and instead had embraced his broken body, infusing him with her essence. Iriko's broken and dying body had been brought back and given life once again. She could be a devil, and follow her demonic heritage, that much was true. But just as she could feel from his mind through their entwined fates, he showed her that she was more then that.

"Let them find the real you, buried deep within..." The line was supposed to be powerful, a clarion call. From Iriko's lips, though, it sounded like a half-scared dream, spoken with quiet hope. "Let them know with all, you've got..." He breathed out, his voice getting stronger.

"That you, are not, your skin." He let out quietly, his fingers pushing down lighter on the skin as his song became quieter, his eyes half closed as the words left his lips. Memories of the way his home burned by his own hand, the last works of a broken man destroyed. Memories of the way he abandoned his second home, the one where he left because of the demonic traits that touched his body. The curvature of his fingers, the additional length of his ears, the pointedness of his teeth...

"And when they start to judge you, show them your true colors!" He let out stronger, remembering the way the two of them truly battled. This line was perhaps the one that both scared him the most and gave him the most hope. It was a remembrance of what had allowed for those he cared about to keep living... and it was the thought of what her darkening psyche could do to him if his voice could no longer reach it. "And do unto others... as you'd have done to you..."

Those words were much softer than the others, his body leaning back slightly as his fingers moved. That was the greatest philosophical problem with the golden rule, and it was what allowed for a caustic man like Iriko to exist. A masochist, by the golden rule, would only hurt others. But it was still an important rule, especially for the woman sitting on the piano.

"Just rise above this...." He said shakily, a bead of sweat moving down the side of his face as he was allowed to perform his art. "Kill them with your kindness..." He let out, his eyes shuddering a bit as he was reminded of his own situation. "Ignorance is blindness!" He belted with determination in his voice, a line that was close to his heart. "They're the ones...

Who stand...

To lose..."

He let out... before his hands fell from the piano. But he could not stop his song, his poem, now that it had begun. It was not even his poem. But it was a 'good' one. "Cause they don't even know you... All they see is scars... They don't know the angel, living in your heart..." He got the words out, his fingers returning to the piano as they pressed in once again.

"Let them find the real you, buried deep within... let them know with all you've got...

That you... are not... your skin...!" He let out with shuddering breath, his gaze looking up as a timpani roll let out from somewhere. "Oh...!" He let out a sustained note to it, his eyes looking up at the red sky. "Well they don't even know you! All they see is scars! And they don't see the angels! Living in your heart!" He called out into hell, seeing shadows of those from the nearby Hell Layers and the kingdom who had heard his song and decided to gain some enjoyment out of it.

"So let them find the real you..." He pushed on, his fingers pressing softer on the keys. "Buried deep within..." He let out, with an ever so soft smile. "Let them know, with all, you've got..." He got out... feeling the chains returning around his hands again..

"That you.." The edges of the piano began to disappear again, Iriko's eyes beginning to close. "Are not..." His seat disappeared, pressure on his neck holding him in place as his eyes were forced open, his hands pushing in the last notes...

"Your... skin...!"

Into the air by his neck the male was dragged, his hands bound as the piano he had disappeared, his eyes half open as he her presence faded from that place.

"Oh-oh..." He let out to the sound of the last drifting note, a poet with no audience. Left there alone, his gaze shutting. "Oh-oh..." The final note finally drifted into silence, as Iriko hung in the air.

"...It truly was too much to ever hope, I suppose... And now these words that I say are as empty as my future." He got out, the faintest trace of a smile going to his lips. "But I can still speak... so I will continue to do so... even if the only one who can hear my words is my own ears..."

A weak laugh left his throat, an ounce of ironic joy within this desolate place.

"..Just like at the peak of my power... I have total isolation once again..."

The laugh slowly faded, as the smile returned to a hard line, The Poet's eyes closing.

His time would come soon... and he was ready for his own life to end.

At least that would be the end of it.

His flailing about would stop.

She would not take any more.

He was a fool.

Core Elements Devised by Aivee