If you've never read The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde, you might be a little lost. It's short - find it here ( short/happy_ ) - or just read this, then go read it to fill in the gaps.
It was raining.
A swallow found a cozy spot on the base of a statue; a prince with jeweled eyes, a ruby topped staff and enough gold leaf to feather anyone's nest. It was dry in the hollow between the Prince's feet and the bird was happy to find such a cosy haven. He was enjoying a really good sleep when he was suddenly roused by a great drop of water on his head. Assuming that the rain had finally trickled its way into his niche, the swallow spread his wings to brave the downpour and suddenly realized that it was no longer raining. Things were, in fact, rather dry now...things except for himself.
Looking upward as more drops relentlessly wetted his feathers, he saw the cause of what had become his own personal shower. The swallow let go a long-suffering sigh (if a bird can do such), shook out his feathers, quirked his head and entered the Ethereal.
He walked through the echoing vault that was the interior of the statue. After a bit of looking, the Swallow found the originator of the thorough wetting he had just indignantly suffered. A young man was shackled to the floor with leaden chains, weeping tears so heartfelt that his despair had crossed over to affect his Real statue.
All denizens of the Ethereal were charged with preventing this kind of thing, so it was currently the Swallow's job to make it stop.
Striking a pose that exuded extreme annoyance, he lit a cigarette, took a long drag on it and said, matter-of-factly:
"What. The fuck. Man!"
"...and she wouldn't put out, man! She was like a reed made of stone; refused to bend over and do the naughty!"
The Swallow flicked the dead butt of a cigarette into the shadows. Stiff from sitting, he flexed his shoulders, the knobby vertebrae of his spine rippling against another's at his back.
"So you left your Reed," said the Swallow's companion, "and now you go to Egypt?"
"Too fucking cold for any moron to stay here in the winter," the Swallow said, lighting up once again. "Present company excepted of course."
He'd been chain smoking throughout his own story and he settled in for the long haul. "So what's your bitch about?" he asked conversationally. "Why go ruining a damned good nesting spot by crying like some piss-smelling baby?"
Prince or no Prince, the Swallow knew one mode of speech and he used it. Besides, this prince was chained to the floor, the leaden links locking his soul to this statue representing the coldness of his heart in life and wasn't prone to complaining much about the company. Add to that the proffered back to recline against in a space completely devoid of other comfort and he was truly a double prisoner.
"My city is suffering," The Prince said simply.
"Yeah, it's pretty shitty out there," said The Swallow. "Just another reason to make tracks and get out of this Hell-hole!"
They sat in silence for a time, cigarette smoke wreathing them in a comfortable haze.
"Well get on with the fucking story before I lose my lethargy here, man!" The Swallow shifted slightly to jab the Prince with a not-unsympathetic elbow.
"And when it's told, friend Swallow, I ask a boon before you go..."
Without the eerie crimson light of the ruby, it was nearly pitch black in this version of Ethereal. As he walked into the gloom, the Swallow clicked his lighter and touched it to the wick of a fat, decorative candle.
"Every one of my fucking smokes this thing, man!" He said, making a grim face at the cheap quality of the painted flowers and vines encircling the wax. The feeble flame illuminated just enough area to enclose himself and the chained Prince in a vault of darkness. "I am definitely leaving this goddamned place for Egypt in the morning! First fucking light, I tell you!"
The Prince smiled uncertainly. "Tell me of Egypt."
"What the hell's to tell? It's warm there, all my guys are waiting for me on top of some damned beautiful waterfalls. We've got lions and shit, man. Up to our noses in some pretty girl swallow tail, if you know what I mean."
The Swallow had resumed his place as a relief for the Prince's back, but turned more companionably toward him. "They'd like your pretty eyes for sure. Bastard, you'd get more poke than you knew what to do with."
"Dear Swallow, The Prince said, sounding mournful despite the lurid images the other painted. "I have much to do here, and am fixed to this spot besides. Before you fly to your tantric oasis, I must ask your help..."
"...because it's fucking creepy, that's why!"
The Swallow yanked a knot into a soft band of cloth and took up his usual position at the Prince's back. "I've got to get the Hell out of here and get my ass to Egypt." He shivered in the dark as cold drafts now found their way even into Ethereal.
"First thing in the morning?" the Prince asked, turning a sightless face toward the other's voice. The strip of cloth covering the eerie, gaping holes that had been his eyes glowed faintly in the ever dying candlelight.
"Shit yes first thing!" Said the Swallow, hitching his shoulder to casually bump the Prince's jaw and push his face away. "You know how damned nice it is there right now? Sun and sand and little she-swallows just waiting to get it on, doing their little mating dance. There's tigers for fucks sake, all beautiful and shit, and waterfalls and these crazy flowers that have something in the nectar that will get you so high you don't think you'll ever get down! Makes everything sparkle like jewels. And the stars! Christ, it's like you could just reach out and pluck these mother-fuckers right out of the sky!"
The Prince tilted his face up.
"You have made me see it," he said in sad amusement. "Perhaps you can make my city just as visible to me now. It will bide the time until the sun remembers to lend us some of her cold light."
The Swallow squirmed uneasily, wishing for the relaxing rush of nicotine in his lungs. "It's about as far from fucking Egypt as I am. Snow's everywhere now, poor people are freezing in the streets while the rich cocksuckers put up their feet and forget everybody else. They couldn't give a shit if little kids are starving."
There was melancholy silence from the Prince.
"Fuck me," sighed The Swallow. "What can you do, ya know. Only what you can. Can't make gold rain down out of the damn sky."
The Prince stirred, then turned as far as his chains would let him. "Can gold make them happy?"
The sporadic rain eventually turned to sleet, then to heavy snow. The baker, throwing crumbs to the winter birds, blinked in surprise and laughed.
"...then the bastard says 'hey Gil, stupid swallow doesn't know it's winter! Thinks he's a gull, eh?' hardy har har." The Swallow broke off in fit of shivering. It was so cold that even the Ethereal was coated in frost.
"Dear swallow," said The Prince, "when shall you fly to Egypt?"
If The Swallow was cold, The Prince was hypothermic - if a statue-locked soul could be such a thing. Stripped of his last covering, he looked horribly vulnerable, inside and out.
"Ah, fuck Egypt," The Swallow said vehemently. He put his arms around The Prince, pressing into his back. "Nothing there anyway."
"Swallow, dear Swallow. Are you leaving me?"
It was now the Prince who held his friend, his face close to the others as he feared the avian was beyond hearing.
"I'm...going to...the house of death," the Swallow breathed. "glad...hell is warm."
"Friend Swallow, one last boon before you go," the Prince's voice was tight and low. "Kiss me goodbye."
"So damned demanding," sighed the Swallow, a smile touching his mouth as his lips met those of his Prince. In that moment, there was a warmth that between them that only one word could describe.
But the moment passed; the Swallow died in the Prince's arms. There was a strange, dull metallic sound and the leaden chains broke. The Ethereal faded away and all that was left was a badly crumbling statue with the bones of a little bird amidst the rubble at its foot.