Across the room she stares at him.
She squints her eyes as she tries to follow the figure walking in the dark, smoke-filled stage of the tavern aptly named and without pun, the Hazy Heaven. The tavern was moderately filled with people, mostly couples for it was Valentine's Eve. She still stares and observes.
He looked strange, but as experience had taught her, all musicians are strange in one form or another. But still, there is the feeling that somehow his strangeness seemed more unusual, if there was such a thing.
He gently lifts out his guitar from his guitar bag. He takes a cigarette, lights it and inhales deeply. He's nervous, she thinks.
She proceeds to sit beside a table nearest to the stage, where she could get a good look at him.
He's unremarkable, that was the first thing she thought. Wearing ordinary clothing, thick glasses and sporting an old-style mop hair (obviously straightened, she's sure he used to have wavy or curly hair before), he is nowhere near the likes of John Mayer or any other EMO artist. The only redeeming factor he must have is his voice, and his music, in which he still has to prove a few moments from now.
He sits on the high chair and fixes the mike. He inhales his cigarette one last time before he stubs it out on the concrete floor of the stage. He smiles towards the faceless crowd, a nervously confident one at that. He purses his lips.
Then he humms.
The deep tone he makes was so resonous, it seemed to vibrate the very walls of the room. She felt the humm like a tangible object, caressing, nurturing. It plays a song unheard before, yet warm and familiar.
The crowd is quiet now, he has gotten their attention.
Then he sings.
The song he sings rushes towards her like the warm ocean, or a soothing sea breeze. There she remembers a feeling she had long buried, the memory of a beach somewhere far and forgotten. She's 15 again, and looks longingly at her first crush, seeing him walking along the shore with a cocky confident gait, and a smile that tugs her heart. A love so innocent and lustful and new. Even when her crush has forgotten about her, the feeling remained, and the longing for that feeling that was kept in check for all these years, blossomed into full view.
She longed for that love, and yearned for its embrace. She was in love again, not to anyone in particular, just the feeling of something bordering between being alive and being dead. And those feelings flow through her like a confusing, cascading koleidescope.
She gazes upon the one singing onstage, and she swears that she saw him bathed in shimmering light, like wings outstretched. Beside her, lovers kissed with passioned fury, while others just like her, alone yet content but with the same longing look on their faces.
He finished his set, thanked everyone and proceeded to leave for the backrooms of the tavern. Not knowing why, she followed him, and caught him when he stopped near the exit to light another cigarette.
"You want to know, do you?" he said. He knows she had followed him. "You want to know why you felt this way, with the songs."
The songs she knew she could not explain. The songs that opened something she had kept hidden for a long time. The longing to be loved.
He stares towards the outside, where the night sky bloomed with stars, despite being in the middle of the city. He again blew a puff of smoke and looked at her, deeply.
He said something, but she couldnt understand, like being in a half-dream and forgetting it as you woke up. Something about myth, legends, love and change, Venus (the planet?) and going on what you do best. That songs are better than bows, and that there should always be hope, hope for people like her. Hope for love.
And like a dream, she felt a start, and he was no longer there. All except for something white on the ground, a single feather.
She did remember asking for the name of his song, and she did remember him answering. "The song", he said, "was 'Laying down the Arrows'.
