It's Still Life

21 of 27 Liturgy of Mourngale: The Unbroken Sons

I. The First Note
It begins not as sound,
but as silence outgrown—
a wound too vast for quiet.
This is not a cry;
it is a hymn threaded through the ribs,
a melody that remembers your name
when you have forgotten your own.

II. The Colour of Dusk-Feather
Mourngale is the blue of twilight—
not the blue of weeping,
but the blue of holding back the storm.
It is streaked with the silver of breath on cold glass:
the ghost of laughter behind clenched teeth,
bright, brittle, beautiful—
a sky unbroken, but trembling.

III. The Jewel in the Sleeve
Worn by those who endure,
who smile with salt on their lips
and carry grief not as a burden
but as a jewel hidden in the fold of a sleeve—
a quiet weight that gleams in certain lights,
proving even fractures hold illumination.

IV. The Gale Within
This is not resignation.
It is a choice, a reclamation:
grief learning to sing itself into something new—
a bird made of marrow and memory,
taking flight not to escape,
but to remind the sky
that sorrow, too, has wings.

V. Felreil’s Truth
“Do not fear the bird that carries your bones,” he murmurs,
ink-stained and unblinking.
“Some falls are ascensions.
Some songs are sanctuaries.”
Mourngale is the sound
a soul makes
when it chooses song over silence.

VI. The Revelation
May grief find its voice.
May laughter keep its light, even behind closed teeth.
May your heart become a chamber—
not a tomb.
And when dusk-feather blue settles deep, remember:
you are not breaking.
You are re-tuning.