Nightingale
One Piece belongs to Eiichiro Oda. I make no claim.
Paulie woke up with a song stuck in his head.
It had been a morning song, though not a waking up song. It had been a song that he heard at the start of another good day of good work, still sore from a night before that hadn't involved falling off a barstool.
The song had always raised eyebrows, making Paulie feel vaguely embarrassed. Even though he wasn't what they were staring at, even though there was nothing to connect him to it at all. And if it had been obvious, so what.
What they did was not embarrassing. But maybe how much they both enjoyed it was.
The song was how he had been sure that the extreme, irresponsible degree of happiness had been mutual. Even now, for whatever sick reason, he wanted to hold onto that assurance. Thus his subconscious attempting to sing it endlessly.
His waking mind couldn't string the notes together beyond the first few, beyond the suggestion of the tune, beyond the ghost that haunted him with the idea of the music but not the song itself.
He tried whistling and felt ridiculous. Worse, he felt like he had warped the memory somehow by attempting to recreate it. Pushed himself even further from something that had already been out of reach.
That had always been out of reach. As much as he felt it constantly, he kept forgetting for small moments. Hard to remember that he had lost nothing that had actually existed.
That some tricks of voice were inherently fake.
He had known it was some weird ventriloquism, but that had seemed seperate from it being a lie.
He should have known.
Stealing the voice of a songbird and warping it through the beak of a pigeon could never have been an honest thing.
Paulie woke up with a song stuck in his head.
It had been a morning song, though not a waking up song. It had been a song that he heard at the start of another good day of good work, still sore from a night before that hadn't involved falling off a barstool.
The song had always raised eyebrows, making Paulie feel vaguely embarrassed. Even though he wasn't what they were staring at, even though there was nothing to connect him to it at all. And if it had been obvious, so what.
What they did was not embarrassing. But maybe how much they both enjoyed it was.
The song was how he had been sure that the extreme, irresponsible degree of happiness had been mutual. Even now, for whatever sick reason, he wanted to hold onto that assurance. Thus his subconscious attempting to sing it endlessly.
His waking mind couldn't string the notes together beyond the first few, beyond the suggestion of the tune, beyond the ghost that haunted him with the idea of the music but not the song itself.
He tried whistling and felt ridiculous. Worse, he felt like he had warped the memory somehow by attempting to recreate it. Pushed himself even further from something that had already been out of reach.
That had always been out of reach. As much as he felt it constantly, he kept forgetting for small moments. Hard to remember that he had lost nothing that had actually existed.
That some tricks of voice were inherently fake.
He had known it was some weird ventriloquism, but that had seemed seperate from it being a lie.
He should have known.
Stealing the voice of a songbird and warping it through the beak of a pigeon could never have been an honest thing.