The Ballad of Hollowed Strings
A vagrant minstrel treads the woods asleep,
His lute, a skeletal companion borne,
Sings dirges for the lost, the love, the lorn.
No hearth nor home hath he, save twilight’s shroud,
Yet music threads his veins, a ghostly cloud.
The forest, gaunt and gasping, claws the sky,
Its ribs of oak in knotted anguish lie;
Each leaf a whispered curse, each root a chain,
And mist, a shroud to smother mortal pain.
There stumbled he, where moonlight dared not wane,
Upon a glade where silence choked the plain.
A figure stood, ethereal, undefined—
A wraith in tattered silver, unconfined.
Her hair, a cascade of the starless night,
Her eyes, twin pools where drowned auroras light.
“What mortal fool,” she sighed, “invades my rest?
This grove devours hope, forbids the blessed.”
He trembled, yet his voice found strength to soar:
“I play for phantoms who crave music’s lore.”
Her laughter, brittle as a frosted pane,
Unwove the threads of time, rewound his pain.
“Play then, poor fool, and let thy chords decree
If thou art worthy of such company.”
He plucked the strings, a mournful serenade,
As shadows coiled and ancient spirits swayed.
Her form, once rigid as the petrified,
Now flowed like twilight’s tear, undenied.
“Thy name?” he begged, as notes began to die.
“Elara,” whispered she, “the forest’s sigh.”
Through veils of mist, their fragile bond took seed:
She, starved for song; he, hungering to feed
A soul long numbed by solitude’s cruel frost.
Each dusk he came, each dawn he paid the cost—
For though her presence waned with morning’s glare,
Her phantom kiss still lingered in his hair.
“Why fade thou?” cried he, clutching at her glow.
“A curse,” she mourned, “binds me to endless woe.
A vow unkept, a lover’s traitorous tongue,
Left me to rot where neither old nor young
May pierce the veil that seals my breathless sleep.
Yet in thy chords, a promise I dare keep.”
He swore to break the chains of her despair,
To graft his soul to hers through tender air.
But lo! The woods, envious of their accord,
Unleashed their wrath to sunder harp and chord.
A storm, black-fanged, devoured moon and sphere,
As roots arose to strangle, choke, and sear.
Elara shrieked, her form a tempest’s bride:
“Flee, mortal! Fate demands thou step aside!”
He stood, his lute aloft, defiance carved
In every note—each harmony unstarved.
The trees, they howled; the earth, it gnashed and wailed,
Yet still he played, though blood and breath both failed.
Her fingers, cold as sepulchral marble, closed
Around his wrists, where life’s last river flowed.
“Thy sacrifice would but extend my night,
Yet I shall spare thee, though it break my light.”
One kiss, a moth’s faint brush against his cheek,
Then—silence. Dawn’s grey blade crept, cruel and meek.
She vanished, as the sun’s first lance took aim,
Leaving his lute, his heart, both void of flame.
The forest, sated, sank to feignéd sleep,
While he, a hollow thing, could only weep.
Now through the trees, a dirge is seldom heard—
A tune that weeps but never breathes a word.
Some say the wind yet carries orphaned song,
A duel of strings where shadows do belong.
But none dare seek the glade where twilight clings
To bones and whispers… and the hollowed strings.
