accomplished***
Not Our Own..
Come sit with me daughter,
Here down by the water,
Come sit, and I'll tell you the tale.
It's a story of thieving,
Of greed and of grieving,
Against which our tragedies pale.
For we'll each pay the penance for how we were made,
For the bright copper blood on the sharp silver blade,
Guilt is more than skin-deep; it's the blood, and the bone,
And the price we must pay for a crime not our own.
Come sit with me daughter,
Come down to the water,
Come quick, for my time is not long.
There is much that's been hidden,
Now do as you're bidden,
My daughter, my dearest, be strong.
For you soon will be gowned in the skin that was mine,
And you'll dart through the waves like an arrow so fine,
But the cost of this grace is far more than you've known;
It's the price we must pay for a crime not our own.
Come sit with me daughter,
We're sworn to the water,
Come now, where the bitter waves sigh.
Have you never once wondered
How we could be sundered
Immortal, yet destined to die?
For we once made a bargain, we once made a plea,
And what's sworn to the waves is both captive and free,
But the bargain was made, and all chances have flown,
There's a price we must pay for a crime not our own.
Come sit with me daughter,
The child of the slaughter,
My sins on your shoulders will fall.
I am sorry, my dear one,
This choice was a clear one,
Each child bears the guilt for us all...
Still, you may yet be spared from the penance we'll pay;
Have a child of your own, bring her down to the bay.
Guilt is passed hand to hand, though each bears it alone...
Please forgive me the price for a crime not your own.
November 7 2011, 21:44:21 UTC 5 years ago
2) you hid the spoilers behind a cut with an appropriate warning.
These are not the problems you're looking for. Move along....
(I like this song a lot. As the last verse of _One Salt Sea_ may have made clear I was really moved by the dilemma of the selkies.)
November 7 2011, 22:26:58 UTC 5 years ago
I feel bad for the Selkies. I feel worse for the Roane.
November 8 2011, 10:04:05 UTC 5 years ago
So they might not be safely performable yet, but that shouldn't stop you writing them or (in my opinion) posting them with appropriate cut-tags and warnings, especially once the books are out.
November 8 2011, 12:41:09 UTC 5 years ago
I'm pretty sure from what I've read that the current Selkies are not the murderers... and while there is a dark, atavistic part of my brain that thinks of guilt as heritable, when I turn the light of attention on it, that is obviously not fair.
On the other hand by accepting the skins, the current Selkies are arguably still profiting from the murders. On the other hand (tentacle,) refusing a skin won't make the murder not have happened--it will just make for one fewer Fae. Even the Luidaeg doesn't want that.
The Roane are the survivors of a massacre. Possibly literally rather than the-children-of as in the Selkie case (I'm afraid I'm still a little confused on the demographics of the Roane--Fae children are rare, but if the time-since-slaughter has been long enough they might still be a substantial portion of current Roane.) I feel bad for them too, but their situation strikes me as being simpler, at least in moral terms.
So I guess I feel bad for both of them, just in different ways.