The Pirate and the Song of Despair

He reached for her.  There she was as she always was still stained in the blood of maker and now stained in his blood.  Her blackened hull glistened under the light of the moon that shone through the window of his cabin.  She was the embodiment of darkness.  She stole the moon and the light around the cabin, swallowed it for her own.  She rendered the cabin in darkness and yet from her there was light within her reek of dusk, her shadow and the night.

His fingers brushed across the familiar silver strings that sang of the moon which had first spun them to life.  And she sang out in desire, calling him to stroke her strings once more, to give her song life and not the death of silence.  But in her own way it was death she sought and it was in silence that she lived for she was broken.  Her murky hull lay intact, but her heart sang of loss and sorrow.  Her song searched the night searched the very sea for the one she had lost.

Years had passed and still her song never found him.  And so she wept in song and in the tears of blood that flowed down her neck swirling into the great depths of the sea that adorned her back.  The waves crashed with every mournful cry with every song of sorrow that she sang.  They crashed and crashed, churning each wave of fresh tears that sprang anew.

But all was not completely lost for after so many years of lying at the bottom of the ocean she had found one who shared her song of loss.  And it was he who caressed her silver strings.  It was he who reached out and held her as a lover, kissed her neck and gave her life after so many years of silence.  Together they searched the sea, searched the world and even the sky for those they had lost.

“I give you life…”  He whispered to her.

She sang out in reply.

“And I bring you death…”

And she sang one more echoing the sorrow that rippled through his whispers.  Though she had life she wished for death to be with the one she lost.  So she reached into the dark night seeking those souls lost at sea for hope that one of them may be the one that she had lost.  Or perhaps they would be the one who he had lost.

It was with hope that they became one bonded through despair, bonded through blood and life.  It was that hope which washed away the waves of despair that wreaked their hearts.  And so each night they sang as one in their never-ending search.  His arms would embrace her and her song would cry out.  And each night a wandering soul stood before them.

“Do you wish death?”  He asked the ghostly apparition that stood before him.

“No.”  Some wailed.

“I wish rest.”  Another cried.

“Then I give you life…”  He said as his palm lay upon their chest, “And I give you…death.”

Before their very eyes one soul breathed again, the body healed and full of life.  The other smiled and began to fade feeling the peace it had sought for centuries.  And before their very eyes their Captain would tumble to the deck.  Bringing death is an easy task, but to give life to that which once was held in death is no easy task.

Everything has a price.  And his price was pain.  It was the pain of death.  It was the death of those who he had given life.  He would relive their death, feel all that they had felt and he would be pulled toward death.

No!  Her song sang out!  Her song tugged on his soul, held him fast to her, crying out for him to stay!

And so he stayed.  He was alive and well, but with the pain of death always upon his shoulders, always tugging at him with every life he brought back from the dead.  Every few nights he would suffer while another lost soul found death of found life once more.  And every night she is there singing to him to hold him steady.