The whispers come, as always, unbidden.

Here come the ravens
To take what is mine
Their watching eyes
Waiting for the rest of me to die
Here comes the reaper
That hides from the light
Still hunting for
The heart that's still beating inside
For these ravens to find

They circle above you. They perch around you. The blackened corvids collect in communion. A mass called… The thought slips away. It was something. Something else. Something big. Something beautiful. Something terrible. Something...

She sits next to you. Her scarlet and charcoal dresses waft in the breeze above your face. Her hand dangles an inch from your arm, caressing the air between you. You are on your back. Her face is veiled. The sky is huge behind her. Your breath tastes like iron. It gurgles like swamp water. Your voice does not escape your throat, but she hears you all the same.

Sing, She urges you. Sing to me your story. Make me weep, or laugh, or scream. I am nothing. I am empty. I am a vessel that longs to be filled. So fill me with music. With beauty. With terror. With pain. Fill me with everything that makes life worth living.

And so, you sing.

-----------------------

A voice is a powerful tool, and you were gifted with one most ardently admired. Your voice opened doors and showed you opportunities that others from your home city never enjoyed. The night sky shone like diamonds and you were there to show that beauty to your friends, family, and companions in ways they had never dreamed of seeing it. Your heart whispered poetry to you in your sleep, and your hands scribbled it down in the wee hours of every morning, capturing those ephemeral moments to be distilled by lyre, flute, and lyric.

Words for you were a flood. Barely contained, like you had tapped some infinite wellspring of passion and you struggled to hold back a world-ending deluge. Page after page, you made them recollections. Safe, so as not to hurt those you shared them with. Because they did not understand, could not understand.

But; everything changed, when nothing did.

I could not stop for death-

The whispers come, as always, unbidden. Your quill finds parchment, and the words are etched, but outside your window you see a team of horses and their riders canter into town.

They wear neat armors, plate and chain. It fits their form, clinging tightly to their broad shoulders, chests and arms. Their helmets, soon removed, were the crowns of beetles. Horns stretching tall above their brows, and feathers curling backwards in majestic arcs. Regal, formal, Imperial.

New custom, nothing more. No matter what your heart whispered, or how your fingers ached. They could not be… could they?