Tag Archives: saturday songs

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Like the Wind

Author’s Note: So while I did a piece for “She’s Like the Wind” for Vred and Malina, I couldn’t help thinking that I should be doing one for Enadar. I suppose it’s cheating with Felise’s ability, but it made sense, and the opening paragraph kept bugging me.

So I used these lyrics:

She’s like the wind through my tree

and probably these:

She’s out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs

And then let Enadar talk, and this is what came out. Oops?

Like the Wind

“I think I understand now,” Enadar said, kicking at the rocks. He put his hands in his coat pockets, shaking his head. “It’s not just that she can control wind currents. She is the wind.”

Alik lifted his head. He could hear something in his brother’s voice, something that needed to be addressed, but he did not know how to deal with it. His own mind was far from the concerns of his younger brother, and they always had been. Alik didn’t understand the way Enadar’s mind worked. It wasn’t that he didn’t know Enadar was smart and mostly logical. It was that his brother acted far more on his emotions than Alik had ever done.

“Who?”

Enadar gave him a dark look. “Come on. You know who I mean.”

“Felise,” Alik said, rubbing his forehead. “Enadar, I don’t—”

“You’re the storyteller. You should get symbolism.”

Alik snorted. “Not everyone puts deeper meanings in their stories. I told you the ones I did as a distraction. I didn’t have time to weave allegory into them. Symbolism wasn’t my objective.”

Enadar rolled his eyes. “Think about it, Alik. She’s the wind. She’s the thing you want most that when you think it’s within your reach… that’s when it slips through your fingers. Just a breeze in the tree. That’s all you ever have her for, that moment when the wind touches you… and then it’s gone.”

Alik shook his head. “You are overreacting.”

“Am I? The moment I think I understand her, that we’re getting along, that I think I feel… something and that there’s this infinitesimal chance that she does, too, then… Then everything shifts. Something gets said or done, and we’re as distant as two strangers again.”

Alik let out a breath. “Why do people have wind chimes?”

“Um… for the sound? The song. The one the wind plays when it passes through.”

“Does it sound the same every time you hear it?”

“No.”

“Does that mean that you never hear the chimes again?”

“No.” Enadar frowned. He folded his arms over his chest, and Alik could see him thinking it through. “You’re saying that… that even when the song changes, when the wind circles back, the chimes… still have the wind when it does? That even if the song changes—what, take what you can get? Is that it?”

“You have to listen to the songs to hear the differences between them. You have to accept that the beauty of the song is not in holding it in one place but in appreciating it for what it is,” Alik said. He studied his brother for a moment. “Stop trying to see her on your terms. See her on her own.”

“You’re right,” Enadar told him, and Alik started to frown. “You suck at symbolism.”

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A Look in the Mirror

Author’s Note: So today I went for a different story than Larina and Dillon’s, since I’ve been meaning to use this song for something for a while. This time I wanted to do Vred and Malina, but it wasn’t quite what I hoped.

Tried to use these lyrics as the basis:

Can’t look in her eyes
She’s out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs
She’s like the wind

I look in the mirror and all I see
Is a young old man with only a dream
Am I just fooling myself
That she’ll stop the pain
Living without her
I’d go insane

~Patrick Swayze, “She’s Like the Wind”

I have more lyrics from the song that I’d like to use, and I’d like to do better with them, but I have this.

A Look in the Mirror

Vred went into the bathroom, to the sink first before anything else. He washed his hands in the cool water, letting it run longer than he knew was necessary for hygiene, not ready to shut it off. Since joining the others, when he wanted to be alone, he went outside, and he could be there now instead of letting the water run over his hands.

He shut it off, glancing at the mirror. His resemblance to his uncle seemed stronger than usual, though he knew that it hadn’t changed. It felt sharper after the past few days. Everything did. Illusions had been shattered and his family had become more fractured than before.

He turned away, not wanting to see himself in the mirror any longer. He already knew his own face, and there was little point in studying it to begin with. He opened the door, and his senses tangled with those of another.

He was face-to-face with another mirror, this one of flesh and blood and ability.

Malina stepped back, putting enough distance between them to close herself off to his ability. She forced a slight smile. “I was just coming to see if you were hungry. Lisea made dinner again.”

“You already know the answer to that,” he reminded her, knowing she would have gotten that even with how briefly she’d mirrored him.

She shrugged ever so slightly. “You know I prefer to ask. That’s how you really know a person.”

He nodded, acknowledging her position on that. It had not changed. He waited for her to leave, but she did not, even knowing as she did that he was not hungry.

“Vred.”

He frowned. “What?”

“You could ask.”

“Ask what?”

Her expression betrayed her disappointment, but she swallowed it down and spoke anyway. “Whatever you wanted to know.”

Then she did walk away.

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The Light’s Still On

Author’s Note: Here is a very good example of how what I get from songs being far from what the artist had intended. I was prompted with Brenda Carlile’s “Leave a Light On,” which at the very least has a far more upbeat tempo than this bit of fic that came out of my brain.

I suppose this can count as a Saturday song, even if it wasn’t written for a themed snippet. I finally got to posting this after my dentist visit, which was traumatic in many ways.

The Light’s Still On

Every night, Nada walked a well-worn path to the front door. She pressed a hand against the wood, taking a deep breath and wondering if tonight she would be strong enough to break the ritual. Tonight, she could turn away, walk back to her room, forget all about this. She should be strong enough by now, practical enough. Surely the intervening years had taught her not to hope.

“Leave a light on for me, koshechka.” Whispered words from a smiling face almost lost to time, remembered only by the faded photographs hidden away in places he would never look, a faint touch her skin seemed to remember, these were all she had left of that woman. “I love you, and I’ll be back soon.”

Her mother had not returned in more than twenty years. She hadn’t said where she was going or why. Her promise to return was a hollow one, an empty gesture to placate a child foolish enough to believe in it. Nada was not six years old anymore. That kind of naivete had been crushed out of her day by day as her mother failed to reappear.

Her hand reached toward the lamp and then pulled back. She swallowed, fighting tears that should not come. All that grief, all that anger, that was behind her. She lifted her head, determined to walk back to her bedroom without giving in to her usual weakness.

She took two steps forward and cursed herself as she ran back to the lamp. She shook her head as she yanked on the cord.

“I think I hate you, Mom,” she whispered, closing her eyes, “but the light’s still on.”

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Absently Singing Along

Author’s Note: So I probably could have used this Thursday if I had been able to think. Yesterday was worse, since I could not really function with the lovely migraine I had, so I did not manage to find anything. Today I’m running late again, and I’m doing a quick grab from a completed story because I am uninspired for creating something new.

So here is a bit of song and awkward bonding.

Absently Singing Along

She checked the sign on the side of the road. It would be over an hour before they reached the town that he’d mumbled about before he passed out, and she was getting tired. She turned the radio on again, wincing as the owner’s presets blasted out the latest hit—one that wasn’t even worth being considered music since that woman could not sing—and flipped the channels until the oldies station came on. She smiled to herself, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel as she started to sing along.

At least there was music. She could keep herself more awake that way. If this had been her car—forget it. The radio had died six months ago, and with the store floundering like it was, replacing it was not high on the list of priorities. She just ran her cellphone’s battery down listening to music instead of making calls.

She turned up the radio when she heard one of her favorites come on—amazing because no one played Melanie Safka’s songs anymore. Even the “oldies” stations were playing newer and newer stuff.

“Some say I got devil. Some say I got angel, but I’m just this girl in trouble…” She was in the middle of the last verse when she realized that she’d woken Kennedy up with the radio—no, probably her singing was too loud. He was staring at her. She reached for the knob again. “Sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. Keep singing.”

“I suppose now I sound like her?”

“She made a musical. It was a horrible flop. You have a better voice.”

“Oh. Thanks. I think.”

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A Boy to Remember

Author’s Note: So it has been a rough month and a half, and I did not mean to stop posting my themed snippets so soon after announcing their arrival, but I wasn’t able to write or post or do much of anything through December. It was a very tough time, and I am only now getting back to where I feel almost capable of moving forward again. I think I am ready to try sharing the snippets again. Today is Saturday. That means a Saturday song.

The choice seemed simple when I sat down to post, having also overcome my dislike for the updated version of my site’s backend. I have been thinking for a while that this song suits these characters, and I meant to share this with my collaborator first, but I was impatient. Hopefully She will forgive me for sharing this with everyone before she sees it.

This is in part inspired by “Flowers in Your Hair” by the Lumineers.

A Boy to Remember

Enadar had never seen hair so red, so vibrant. The way the sun hit it was just right for the hew word he’d just learned. He liked it, but it was now forever linked to that fiery braid she wore, even if he did not want it to be. She was not supposed to be such apart of his life. Felise Revente was not someone he wanted in his life.

He was a dreamer, a bookworm. She wasn’t supposed to be a part of those dreams. He should have been able to sleep without remembering. Alik didn’t. Somehow the robot managed to push away every bad memory that should torment him, as though he felt nothing at all when he remembered those things he’d done, as though it was easy to pretend that his ability was always in control, that he was not a killer.

Enadar closed his eyes. He tried to think only of bursts of energy, of those blinding lights, of fireworks, and for some reason, vibrant red hair.

Every time he saw it, his reaction was the same. He wanted to touch it. He wanted to know that it was real. He needed to know that it was real.

Once he had tried to touch it. Once it was within his grasp. Once he’d made a mistake, and a glass of lemonade taught him never to reach for that light again.

Nothing could make him stop dreaming of it, though.