Chapter 14 The Music Box (the verse)

"Time flows

Nobody knows
The years go by
Where we go... alone... from here

Night falls
Strange colored walls
My eyes deceive
What is wrong... with me?

Deep in the night you think everything's right
Tell it to yourself
Say it's just a nightmare

Something is telling you
Nothing can change where you are
Again

Why should it matter
Your dreams of a child
Innocence is gone
Only fear to play with

Faces are changing
But nothing is changing the pain
Too late

Two steps I take getting closer
And closer

And one more breath I take
Sends me further back

Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah

Over and over it calls to your soul
Say it isn't so
Emptiness surrounds you

No one can help if the angels refuse to come near
Who's there?

Cold faded photos
They lay by your side
Something in my room
Nevermind the reason

Visions are lying and reasons just live to survive
This time

The cold (The cold)
The light (The light)
The fear (The fear)
Returning

It's not (It's not)
The eyes (The eyes)
You feel (You feel)

That's chilling you"
-------

The snow in the cabin stilled.
Even the frost along the music box seemed to lean in, listening.
And from within the ice—muffled, warped, yet unmistakably her—
a woman’s voice began to sing.

Soft.
Haunting.
Like a lullaby meant for children who never got to sleep.

The ballerina inside the frozen box twirled once, her movement slowed by the ice, and the voice rose through the frost:

“Time flows
Nobody knows
The years go by
Where we go… alone… from here”

His breath caught.
His hand trembled on the ice.
He knew this voice as intimately as his own heartbeat.

“Night falls
Strange colored walls
My eyes deceive
What is wrong… with me?”

He saw her then—first as a child, knees tucked to her chest, hiding under blankets while her mother raged behind the door.
Playing a broken little tape player to drown it out.
Her tiny hands clutching the headphones too tight, the melody shaking with fear.

“…Tell it to yourself
Say it’s just a nightmare…”

Then he saw her as a grown woman—brave, beautiful, fractured—holding their daughter on her lap as she played the same song on the piano, slow and careful, teaching her that fear could become melody.

And then—
their daughter.
Small hands, too much like her father’s.
Playing the tune alone the night before he died.

Each generation passing the song like a lantern carried through darkness.

“Why should it matter
Your dreams of a child
Innocence is gone
Only fear to play with…”

A cold tear slid down his cheek and froze halfway.

This wasn’t music.
This was memory.
This was inheritance.
Their entire family’s grief carved into sound.

His wife.
Her father.
Their daughter.
Him.

All inside these notes.
All inside this room.
All trapped in the same shadow.

The last lines trembled through the cabin, soft as snow falling:

**“The cold
The light
The fear
Returning

It’s not
The eyes
You feel
That’s chilling you.”**

When the song faded, the ballerina slowed, ice turning her final spin into a stuttered drift.
And for a long moment, he simply knelt there, forehead against the frozen lid of the music box.

He whispered to her—
to all of them—
“I’m still listening.”