PROMPT: 002ZODIACAL DRABBLE
Feat: Silent Night
It was cold, but not cold enough to keep her from running away.
Silent Night drifted along the mangrove's edge with a soft swiftness that made the leaves hanging around her shudder with life. Tears were in the poor doe's eyes, as she fled from her- now- ex lover. The mist around her only added to the moisture of her tears, causing her coat to become damp and making her shiver against the light breeze that swayed it's way through the mangroves and to the trodden path around them. Surely, it could get no worse than this.
The doe gave a soft sniffle, though the tears still did not fall from the pools of her eyes. She was strong, in that sense, at least. She does not cry, but she does- when alone- sing.
A soft, haunting melody meant to lull the young and innocent to sleep. A song that her mother had passed onto her, after hearing it from some other doe of lineage. Chilling and dark- yet, to her, it was comforting. A gentle lullaby. She sang it as such; closing her eyes to the mangroves and instead envisioning herself elsewhere. A place where she hadn't been betrayed.
Her voice seemed to whisper like the leaves still shivering in the wind's embrace.
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree,"
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree,"
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree."
"Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be,
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree."
When her song was sung, she chose to blink the water from her eyes instead of let it fall. She felt stronger now, more sure. She lifted her face, just in time to see the sunrise peek its way through the gaps in the too-tall mangrove trees. The sight made her sigh.
"It wasn't as though I needed him, I suppose... per-perhaps she needed him more than me and perhaps I myself deserve so, so much better." Again, the doe sighs; though this one is more sad than awe-inspired. "Perhaps he deserved so much better than me, and he knew that, and-" the words catch in her throat, she lets her head fall; gazing down at the reflection of herself in the puddle below. She did not continue her sentence. Instead, she looked away from herself; gazing instead at the path ahead. She moved solemnly, but she did not look back.
Shamelessly references The Hanging Tree, as written in the Hunger Games trilogy (by Suzanne Collins).