What A Prompt Has Mustered...
Thanks to the prompt myboxofcats sent me, I've produced this reincarnation drabble (along with a poem I wrote to go with it)-- Please, please tell me what you think!
Another Life
Life runs shallow,
Life runs cold.
It trickles through,
The hollows and cracks
Of death’s hold.
Run it may,
And rush it might,
Hoping it will find its way
Into the light.
***
Arthur rushed through the streets, eager to be home, out of the cold. There was something very dank and stingy about that day. The people on the streets around him, seemed to be concentrated on getting to their destination, their brows were furrowed, and eyes set. He couldn’t help but notice that nobody seemed to be wearing bright colors. Their jackets all seemed to take up a dull, dreary sort of shade. Arthur cringed. He was apart of this crowd. This ugly sadness.
He was only about a block from home now. A sigh of relief rushed from his lips. All he wanted at the moment was to be alone with his thoughts, away from the noise and the lights. To get the smell of exhaust out of his nose.
But through the street, echoed music. The strumming of a guitar. It wrung through Arthur’s ears, pushing aside the steady rush of bustling city noises. He walked towards it, feeling a deep swelling urge in his chest to find its source. The music, Arthur found, came from a gaunt man in a well-worn royal blue sweater. He wore a gray beanie cap, but his black fringe peaked out from under it. The man’s eyes were closed as though he were soaking up the essence of what he was playing, his lips forming lyrics but not singing them aloud. The guitar case that lay set out in front of him had some spare change that wouldn’t amount to even a meal, and so the man’s brittle fingers played on it seemed. Merely hoping to muster enough to quench his stomach’s needs.
“Are you liking it?” The man asked, his song having ended at some point in Arthur’s daze, “The music, I mean.” he added after Arthur responded with a mouth that gaped in loss for words.
“Yeah- I really like it. It’s- it’s really brilliant,” Arthur sputtered. The way the man’s blue eyes dug into his own, made the gears in his mind grind and want to seize up. There was something in those eyes. A sort of hopefulness, perhaps even recognition, that Arthur’d never seen before. One that sent a warm, whispering shiver over his neck.
“Well, I am accepting tips,” he said with a laugh, shifting on his feet.
“Can my tip to you be dinner this evening, and a warm place to stay?” Arthur asked. He didn’t know what it was about the man, but it was something deep. Something strong.
“That’d be brilliant.” Merlin gasped in exasperation as he fumbled to pack up his guitar.
“Have we met somewhere?” Arthur asked, his tone notching up an octave in curiosity.
The man looked up at him from where he knelt, his eyes twinkling, “Perhaps in another life.”
