Songs of the Night Pt. 3 : May it Be..
#4 of Songs Of The Night
Sometimes in the darkness, there is hope....
Another story about Bobby, my little buck from the first in this series. So many have written wanting to see what was next, that he gets his own little sub thread in the series as I find songs to fit his story.
Songs Of The Night Pt. 3: May It Be
**_May it be an evening star
Shines down upon you
May it be when darkness falls
Your heart will be true
You walk a lonely road
Oh! How far you are from home..._**
Bobby woke, the darkness wrapping around him like heavy velvet, thick, black and soothing. He lay there, his thumb slowly stroking the heavy gold band around his finger as he fought back the tears. It had been a month since Tyler's funeral, and yet every waking moment he still expected to wake, finding the snowy fox laying next to him, the mischievous smile softened in sleep, the beautiful eyes closed in gentle repose. He had quit questioning how his love had come to him that night, instead giving thanks to the Gods every day that They had allowed it to happen. That he was allowed to be with his precious foxy one last time before he was taken from him forever. His sleep-addled mind wandered back to that last day as he lay in bed, cuddling the sweater that still faintly smelled of his love to his chest. The day of the funeral. The day his happiness and his life, ended. He thought fleetingly of work in the morning, but pushed it aside. After all, he hadn't been there more then a handful of days since the accident, instead roaming each day through his small apartment. A building that that he found he had inherited with the reading of Tyler's will. His lover's final gift...something they had talked about doing, but he never knew his mate was making a reality. Instead he wandered back a month, running it through his head again like a movie of penance...
It had been raining that morning. Very fitting, he thought, as if the world were weeping for the passing of such a gentle soul. As if the elements themselves knew what had been lost. He stood there soaking, the offered umbrella pushed aside numbly as he watched the casket of dark wood and shining brass lowered into the ground. He felt a touch on his paw, and looking down, saw a snowy one intertwine with his. He looked up into the rheumy eyes of Tyler's grandmother, inwardly flinching as he waited for some harsh word from the formidable old woman. Instead she merely smiled sadly and lay her withered paw on his cheek gently, pulling him down to kiss him tenderly on the cheek as Tyler's parents had stood across the dark scar of earth glaring at him with tear-filled eyes.
"He spoke of you off-ten, vnook." She murmured to him in her thick russian accent as she kissed him. "Regardless of what my son and his sooka of a wife may say, he loved you more then anything." She smiled up at him with a small nod as Tyler's sister had come and taken her arm.
"Baba..you have to get out of the rain...you don't want to get sick..." The girl had smiled at him though her tattered lace veil as she led her grandmother away. She had looked back over her shoulder at him and smiled softly as she guided the old woman away, the frayed hem of her dress sweeping the raindrops from the grass like a gothic angel of mercy as she spoke quickly in russian to her parents, tearing their accusing eyes from him. He watched them leave as he knelt by the grave, dropping a single white rose onto the top of the casket as the first crumbs of dirt hit the damp lid from the gravedigger's shovel, the young bull glancing time to time at him sympathetically as he went about his sad task.
He didn't remember how he got home that day. The next thing he knew, he was laying curled up on the couch in his apartment sobbing into a pillow quietly for fear the neighbors would hear through the thin walls. Not that in the end it had mattered. Mrs. Tomson, the busy-body badger widow across the hall had found out somehow and his kitchen was overflowing with the various offerings from the few tenants of the small building. Though many of them privately may not have approved of the relationship, they took care of their own...and the young buck was obviously in no condition to take care of himself. Mrs. Tomson had even taken to letting herself in in the mornings and doing a bit of cleaning before he awoke. He had moved through his life in a daze, eating when he must, absently thanking the kindly badger when he saw her, unable to meet her eyes. Hiding himself away from the world outside as much as he could.
He whimpered a soft sob as he drifted back to sleep, clinging to the tattered sweater almost desperately, never seeing the girl who watched him from the shadows.
**_Mornie utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now..._**
Aleksandra watched from the darkness, the black lace of her tattered dress whispering over the soft carpet as she moved to the side of the bed, gently stroking the buck's head as sleep claimed him once more. She had no fear of being seen, Baba Sofiya had taught her too well for that. Had taught them BOTH too well for that...she mused idly as she swept from the room, as silently as the wind. Both she and her twin brother Aleksandr, who had changed his name to Tyler, had been taught enough of their grandmother's wise-woman ways that they were able to perform minor tricks like this. It had served then well in their teen years, letting them both sneak in and out of the house almost at will, sometimes almost under their disbelieving parents noses. But regardless of how much she believed everything her grandmother had told her though, she was still shocked when she woke from a sound sleep that night a month ago and wandered into you grandmother's bedroom to see her talking to her brother, the old woman sobbing quietly, yet smiling tenderly up at the handsome fox standing next to her bed and nodding as he spoke quietly to her. She would never forget how he turned to her and winked with a grin, his voice seeming to come from down a long hallway as he spoke.
"I'm counting on you to watch him too, little sister, he is someone special." He had smiled before simply fading away.
She had stood there in shock until snapped out of it by her grandmother's quiet sobs. She had sat on the bed and listened numbly as the old woman told her what had happened and dawn had found them holding each other for comfort as the phone rang, her mother's screams echoing through the house as the news was delivered.
**_May it be the shadows call
Will fly away
May it be you journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun_**
For the past month, she and her grandmother had worked, in secret, to undermine her parent's vendetta against the young buck. From "forgetting" to deliver messages, to purposefully destroying legal documents that arrived in the mail, they had been tireless in fulfilling her brother's last wish. She didn't know what it was that he had seen from beyond the veil in the future of the young buck, but the fact that her darling brother, her other half, had loved him enough to stay the hand of death itself for a time was enough for her. She made her way silently to the kitchen, mixing the herbs her grandmother had given her with the tea that Bobby drank every night before bed. A concoction that was supposed to assure a dreamless sleep, if the old woman were to be believed, and after things she had seen her pull of, she had no reason to NOT believe her. As she turned to leave, her eyes fell in a stack of mail on the table. Curious, she picked it up and flipped though it, rifling though each that was open. A cold chill went down her spine as she read over a letter from CanaDrug, one of the top pharmaceutical research labs in the country. Bobby had been offered a position as a research assistant in one of their labs. Somehow she KNEW this was what her brother had meant...that THIS one letter was what she had been waiting for. She made a quick phone call to a friend, having him call and make the interview appointment as she wrote out a note and put it on the door, carefully copying Bobby's lazy scrawl.
"Mrs. Tomson, please wake me if you don't hear my alarm...I have an important interview tomorrow that I can't miss, no matter how I feel."
She smiled to herself, knowing that the old badger would, well...badger..him until he was up and dressed. With the way he had been going though the say on auto-pilot the last few weeks, he would be at the interview before he even knew what had happened, and well, by then it would be too late for him to back out. Taping the note to the door, she went to her car to watch, waiting until she saw the bemused buck leave and following him downtown. She sat outside, sipping a strong latte and munching on a flaky apple pastry from the bakery across the street until she saw him walk out, a look of slight confusion on his face. She hurried across the street and "accidentally" ran into him, making idle small talk until he got around to telling her how he had just got a new job and was supposed to start next month. She congratulated him and made her excuses to leave, making him promise to call if he needed anything. As she walked off, she smiled to herself, looking up and muttering softly.
"Its up to him now, big brother...and you if you are watching."
Just then, the clouds parted, bathing her in warm sunlight, as comforting as a lover's arms.
"Or a brother's..." she thought to herself, humming softly as she drove away into the bright new day.
**_Mornie utúlië (darkness has come)
Believe and you will find your way
Mornie alantië (darkness has fallen)
A promise lives within you now
A promise lives within you now_**