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and the albatross hung 'round your neck
They're not Gaelic, she knows, but sometimes, just looking at them sparks forth a feeling, a memory, a dream of the Irish countryside and Welsh plains she'd once visited, long before she'd ever met any of them.
In a way, she supposes the Japanese customs were not so different. Cranes, where meant to represent wishes, had soon come to mean deception, a change into a bird. The Geass was the bird, and the bird's path lead from life into death, a descent from light into the darkness.
And the doves of peace that she'd so often heard of? They'd been felled and blackened by tar, nothing more than crows and ravens, awaiting their next victims. The many birds she's seen, summers of better days and sunflowers of happiness, were nothing more than flies.
Perhaps that is why she had been so surprised that one had chosen to become a serpent, moving history on its course, forcing revolution and change. And all while hiding the heart of the ouzel, of the water bird able to protect itself and its family, of the Kind Demon King who saw the world as his flock.
All she had wanted was to give up her Curse, but still he had accepted the Eye of the Dragon, still he had accepted the power, if only that the serpent had no fangs to use. She was his white stag, his turning point, and had accepted being her eagle, if only so that she'd share the half of the salmon of knowledge she still kept locked away.
Perhaps just as interesting is the serpent's friend, a boy with no hope of ever becoming a crane, desperately attempting to take the bird's flight, only to be pulled back by the serpent's new fangs.
She can't help but feel camaraderie in him, this other Knight of the King, who wants to die as much as her immortal self, yet has no control over such a decision. The serpent's fangs had ordered him to live, and, like her, he'd grown.
It is just as well that he'd grown some wings, a dove with bloodied feathers and a boy's body, never able to forgive the child who had murdered his own father, never able to forgive himself.
She's been called a witch, a Demon's Queen, a harlot, a monster, but she is not so cruel as to have never felt anything for them. For they, together, are mere reflections of a greater dream, of a world of peace, and, in the end, they all wish to die.
But, in the end, to keep this peace, they themselves can never rest.
Long live the King.