He dreams of music. Sinking in the green, the red-rot longing of his grave-bed, he dreams. The sweet-song sliding of his lady's blood, the death curl, bubbling brown, laughing life and keening blood. Croak and scream, hunting cry, mourning calls of mist and dying. Swamp songs. And outward. Outward through the swirl of life, the fog of death, and the mortals call.

Memory, bitter-sweet, mud-fruits bursting on his tongue, and the sounds of the riverboat, the crack of whip and whirl of dance-music, laughing and chinking of glasses, the band cheerful and gaudy, haunted by screams as Les Jeunes stick rotting hands in the wheel, and drag them down. He can hear them, dream them, singing in the bayou, the band playing white and pale, old tunes and new songs, misty as the morning sun rises over the trees. Lively, dance-drowning, feet tapping to the Baron's rhythm, brassy and fierce white in the red-brown sliding, human songs a-sinking. He hears. He dreams. They sing for him, while he remembers. While he dreams.

And deeper. Music deeper than the swamp singing, than the ghosts of human songs, and the Baron dances at the crossroads, filthy grin and fire-rum, and the deep bass beat, blood-song singing, death in the laughing, life in the crying, and the throat behind the grin is screaming, and the screaming is a song, the oldest song, the most beautiful. The Baron turns, and sees him, bottle tipped in salute, shovel laid aside, and he dreams he's laughing, dreams he's singing, and the blood-beat in his head is the beat of his heart, and the life is in the dying. In the song.

Some songs is for singing. Some is for living. And the first, the last, that song is for dying.
 

"I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends on who is made judge." -- Herman Melville

Well now. *smiles toothily, looking down at himself* I'm thinkin' I be quite handsome, actually. Handsome enough for ma belle dame, sure. Handsome enough for the women of the towns to leave me presents on the edge of the bayou, too, them what's seen me. *grins* Seen me fighting, usually, those women. When Les Jeunes are moving again, or the townsfolk decide to harm the swamps. My dark maman, she doesn't like that, and her lover-man, he must see to it, non?

Always been something to look at, me. Back when I was a human slave-boy, and got sent upriver for catching the wrong lady's eye. Almost lost it, maybe, to Les Jeunes. Man don't stay pretty long, after they touch him. The rot shows, you see. But ma belle dame, she take that away, change it to somethin' else. Change it to the life-death of the swamp, where beauty grows out of the rotting. Leave me some nasty scars, maybe, but they fit in with all the old ones, and man needs his scars, anyway. Prove he's somethin' more than a pretty face, oui? *laughs*

So. I'm thinkin' I be plenty handsome, end of the day. So the Baron tell me, too. Handsome enough to play with, if Maman Birgitte and ma belle dame not hurt him if he tried. *grin* Me, I not mind so much, but a man must do as his woman tells him, if a man wants a place to come home to, non?