Ravaged

Chapter 33

Sky's feet carry her to the piano in a first floor parlor of their own accord. They still remember the way as if no time has passed since the last time she walked into it. She always thought of this room as the music room, as it contains all different kinds of instruments with a pitch black piano in the center.

Sky lets her fingers trail over the smooth surface of the instrument before she sits down on the small, soft stool. As with every other room in the mansion, there is no dust here. She opens the keys, letting her hands glide over them.

Music. She hasn't played music in so long. She wonders for a moment if she still can.

Shaking her head to clear the thought, she places the three sheets on the music rack. Chrysalis. He named the song Chrysalis.

Her fingers are hesitant and unsure as she places her hands on the keys, forming the first chord of the song. She takes a deep breath before she presses down, letting the sound fill the air around her. Her hands start moving of their own accord, her eyes on the sheet music. The movements become automatic, instinctive, her body remembering exactly how this is done.

The melody has changed slightly from what she did to it, the sound fuller and more intricate than she left it. It's slow and sad, but sweet at the same time, with an edge of innocence offset by a haunting tone that's barely noticeable at first but which gradually builds around a feeling of floating. Sky's body moves with the notes easily, and she finds her thoughts slipping away, her only focus becoming the music as it plays along the edges of her soul.

She plays the song all the way through, learning the melody, before she looks at the lyrics and starts over again, this time singing the words as well.

There's a girl that I know who watches the world as it goes ... by

She smiles inside but it looks like a sigh

She's sad and she's sweet and she looks like she's glass

And she sits in the window and cries butterflies

They go away and don't know how to stay and she cries again

Bound to a whisper, the words that she knows

She never speaks them so they float like ghosts

In the air and in between

What is and never was and should have been

And she watches the butterflies

They can't fly away

Chained to the ground though they don't want to stay

It's sad and it's sweet and it echoes like promises

That she doesn't know how to make

So she lifts to the skies and she tells them to fly

The tears that she never could cry

Drift in her eyes

She cries butterflies

She watches the clouds as they drift through a storm

Lights in her eyes but she'll never stay warm on the ground

Lost in an echo of something long gone

She's bound by the whispers that all went so wrong

But her eyes

They go to the sky