FIN // ratmas cb 3 // avox // ariane duarté

ariane duarté
nineteen
avox

You used to have such a beautiful voice.

It was like birdsong, but also more than that. It was satin, as weightless as chiffon. People wrapped themselves in it.

Your brother loved you best, and you sang for him the most. But birds never spend their whole lives singing for just one person. If only you had, perhaps you would still be singing now.

It wasn't the impulse to talk to a stranger about your family's dangerous secrets, to watch them become captivated by your knowledge, that got you caught - but actually the fact that you knew how to stop once that impulse had seized you. If you had shared everything, they would have known when you exhausted your supply of incriminations. They wouldn't have come back with a car, and a suitcase full of torture equipment, and tried to tug them out of you like weeds from the stubborn earth.

And perhaps if you hadn't screamed so much, and pushed to share a little more, they wouldn't have tugged your tongue out like one of those weeds, too.

However you know there's no point in thinking what could have been, but instead appreciating what has happened since. Beaten and bloody, you were found by your brother, and sold to him as your new rank required (more like an owned bird than you ever felt before). Though he loves and cares for you dearly, you are regarded by everyone else as nothing more than a slave. You cry often, but even your crying sounds different coming out of the hollow wound of your mouth. So you try to focus on being grateful that you're alive, and protected. Your wings were broken when your voice was snatched, your song literally and figuratively silenced. But bones mend, and we learn to live with our loss. You're still growing, and learning, and building up secrets once again. And you won't make a mistake a second time.