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Sunday stared at himself as he stood in a room covered in mirrors, eyes flitting over his figure from head to toe.
His wings hung low to the floor, feathers clipped on the largest, most mature ones, the tips of each dirty and caked in mud. His hair was nearly plastered to his back, his bangs hanging over his face and making his vision spotty as they fell around the wings on his head. He looked into his own eyes, the pits inside of his pupils endless. He raised one of his many arms to rub away the crust rimming one of them, wincing at the feeling.
Sunday felt bile rise in his throat as he stared at his body, his old clothes looking like rags as they barely covered him. His newfound limbs sprouted from holes in the sides, and the back of his suit was tattered enough that his wings had no trouble fitting through the rips. His pant legs were short on his legs as they struggled to accommodate the new, bent nature of the limbs—akin to a birds’ legs, they were bent backwards, feet facing forward.
He had no doubt that he would continue mutating, until he hardly resembled a human any longer.
Was this considered Aeonhood? If he transcended human form, shed the body plagued with sin, would he be considered more worthy?
All he could feel was disgust as he looked at a form like this, all mangled and many-limbed. The eyes on his wings each stared at their own mirror, taking in the sight and squinting in revulsion. He figured his feet were next to go, as they had hardly been touched by the horrendous transformations.
He fluttered his eyelashes shut, heaving a large sigh. He opened them again moments later to stare down at the raggedy suit hardly clinging to his body, the loose fabric tickling his arms and legs as it drifted against him in the slight draft.
He furrowed his brows as emotion clogged his throat, angry tears welling on his lash line yet never dripping down his cheeks. With an energy he hadn’t had for the last three years, he stormed out of the room, the mirrors shaking in their places on the walls.
He hurried over to the dreamscape hotel, careful to hang low so he wouldn’t be noticed by the dream goers. As he entered the building, he rushed over to one of the back rooms where they did the cleaning of the various amenities, like towels, sheets, and blankets.
Looking down at the white, folded cloth, he quickly sorted through them to find the least moth-eaten one. Finding a perfectly preserved sheet, he slung the item over his shoulder before returning to the pile and finding a few more, to save for later. The emotion clogging his throat dissipated, replaced with determination.
Holding the sheets tightly in his arms, he headed back to the Grand Theater, feeling small drips as the afternoon rain started to fall. Water droplets ran into his eyes, yet the coolness of it felt nice on his exposed skin. He hugged the sheets close to his body so that they wouldn’t get wet.
As he pushed through the curtains leading to the Grand Theater, he hurried over to a nearby seat. He put down the sheets, then stared down at the cloth pathetically clinging to his skin, the current state of the suit not even containing a sliver of its past luxurious quality. With clawed hands, he ripped the tattered suit off of his form, leaving him bare and cold. He paused.
He looked down at his skin. It almost seemed to sparkle in the dim theater light. Scars were lined up in parallel lines going up and down his ribcage, old scars that had not been healed over by his Aeon status like his other wounds had been. He ran a hand over those raised lines and huffed for a moment, before letting his hand drop back to his side. Feathers had sprouted up in patches on his body, around his extra limbs and around his knees.
He hadn’t noticed them before, but they were stark against his (very) pale skin, being dark indigo. Despite his stomach roiling at the discovery, he almost thought they looked… pretty.
He shook his head as he grabbed one of the sheets, wrapping it around his waist and clipping it in place. He did the same for his torso, leaving lots of room on the back for his wings and arms, yet still keeping him mostly covered. The sheets were cool against his skin, and very soft. For the first time in years, Sunday let out a sigh of relief.
He looked down at his old clothes. Piercing the end of his old sleeve with a single claw, he took the clothes outside and tossed them over the edge of the Grand Theater, into the bubbling, abyssal memoria below. Unlike him, they actually disappeared once they fell into that abyss.
As he stared into that blackness, pitter-patters fell around him. He wanted to move away, yet his eyes were fixated on the long drop before him. The rain started to pour, wetting his new clothes. Once they started sticking to his skin, he cringed and ran inside, shaking off his body as if he were a dog.
He brushed his hair back with his fingers, allowing the extra eyes on his face to finally see unobstructed. He walked back into the depths of the Grand Theater, heading to the hallway on the right. Walking that familiar hallway that smelled of dust and rotting mahogany, he came upon their music room. As he pushed open the door, he realized it was the first time he had not counted every step to the door.
The thought made him uneasy, and so he put it away as he searched the rest of the room and ignored the polished gramophone. He pulled out a damaged wooden drawer—inside it was a trumpet inside of its case. An unpopular instrument between the siblings, but it had seen use prior to being purchased by Gopher Wood. The thing was dusty, but still seemed expensive.
He pulled open various other drawers before finding what he was looking for: the most expensive violin in the collection, made of spruce and maple. It was not dusty at all, for the case had been closed around it all this time. It was once Robin’s prized posession—it’d seen some disuse as of late, for obvious reasons.
Holding it in his hands, Sunday suddenly itched to play the piano again. To move his fingers across the keys, muscle memory working its magic; to stretch his hands as far as they can go to form difficult chords; to tap his foot against the hardwood of a stage, acting as his own metronome. However, that was not his objective at the moment, so he shook it off as he hurried out of the room with the expensive violin, bow, and rosin.
He walked to the entrance to the Grand Theater, to which he was pleasantly surprised to see that the rain had ceased. Dark clouds still loomed overhead, but no further rain fell onto the wet concrete. Sunday stepped outside, approaching the edge he had been standing at not too long ago.
He coated the horsehair bow with rosin before bringing the violin to his chin. Tentatively, he brought the bow up to the neck of the instrument, but hesitated to place it down. He knew it was going to sound terrible—it was no doubt out of tune, and Sunday had not played in many, many years.
However, he swallowed his pride and began to play. His hands remembered how to finger the right chords, but his bow work was sloppy, and the bow shrieked as he moved it the wrong way over the strings. It sounded awful.
And yet, a subconscious smile came to Sunday’s lips. A real smile, not one wrought by self-loathing or self-pity. This awful sound, the sound a violinist would surely strangle someone over, brought him a sliver of real comfort. It reminded him of when Robin started to learn.
Sunday played an old classical piece, one that Robin often practiced with during her time learning. It was somewhat simple, and he found himself able to play most of it with no shrieking, but it still managed to sound wholeheartedly bad. His wings fluttered a bit as he smiled yet again. A cloud moved, and a single beam of light fell on him, reflecting with a glint off of his halo and warming his scalp.
He cleared his throat. Soon, he began to hum along once he started playing one of their childhood songs. Slowly, his bow work improved—he was a very quick learner when it came to music—and the piece sounded less terrible. Another cloud moved out of the way, and some of the concrete started to dry out.
He began to sing quietly, his voice rough and low from being unused for so long. He slowly mumbled, “Hands up… the wheels are spinning…”
Tears sprouted in the rims of his eyes, soon running over his cheeks. He continued to sing, growing louder, as he swayed his body while he played the violin, as if imbuing all of his emotions into the soundwaves produced from the strings.
The sound carried down to the dreamgoers. Although Sunday did not see them from his place in the Grand Theater, they stopped and turned to stare at the glowing building in placid silence. They simply listened; those with misfortune plaguing their hearts quickly let it dissolve, and those feeling happy gently smiled. The small children awoke from their slumber on the benches, and allowed the golden light of the sun to halo their heads.
Sunday’s voice grew louder, fat tears falling quickly from his eyes now. The violin ceased shrieking, the bow moving over the strings as if he were a professional in an orchestra. Though his voice had been rough, his notes were now crisp and he never once had a voice crack. The vibrato he sang seemed to vibrate the very bones of the dreamgoers, and soon enough everyone had a calmed smile on their lips.
Deep in the dreamscape, in a penthouse filled to the brim with every luxury imaginable, tears came to Robin’s eyes, though she hadn’t a clue why. Smiling and putting on lipstick, she wiped away the gentle tears with a handkerchief, careful not to smudge her eyeliner.
Sunday finished the song, quickly putting the violin down before his tears started to stain the wood. The clouds had cleared, and as he stared down at Golden Hour, everything seemed as if it stilled. As if the world had stopped to listen to his lament. He quickly picked up the instrument and walked back inside, returning it to its rightful place in the music room.
As he walked back outside, he thought, for once, that the turbulence in his heart had stopped. The raging sea now had the calmness of a pond in a forest, with not a wave in sight. The abyss below him did not seem to reach for him with warm, inviting hands. He slowly flapped his wings behind him, stretching them to their full span, letting the warm sun dry them off. He tucked his long hair behind his ears.
Today was a good day. He ought to write it down.
Tomorrow was a new day. He hoped it was as good as this one.