In a small fishing town on the coast of the Norwegian Sea, two young brothers used to dance on the cobbled road down by the docks as the fishermen worked their ships. The younger, a pale, quiet lad with hair so much like the white snow that it almost seemed cast in silver, would play his violin while the older, a striking young man with soft golden hair and navy eyes, would sing along in his deep, crooning voice. On clear days, the whole town would gather for a song or two and clap along to the beat.
One day, however, the brothers stopped coming to the docks. The youngest fisherman, a Danish friend of theirs, volunteered to check on them and returned with his head hung low. The younger brother was dreadfully ill and probably wouldn't last through the night. Surely enough, the sun rose only moments after his brother had pulled up the stark white sheets to cover his placid face. A hush of mourning fell over the town for the following week, after which point the boy's thickly carved coffin was transported to Iceland to be placed in the family cemetery.
The town slowly returned to working and playing as it had before, but the older brother remained in a silent state of mourning. He locked himself in his room, much to the disdain of his friends, a tall Swede and a much shorter Finn, who owned the house, but he soothed their worries by continuing to eat and sleep on a proper schedule. His voice, however, refused to be heard. On most days, he simply sat in his room with the curtain pulled tight over the window, staring at his brother's violin.
A year passed in this manner, and the young man finally began to feel the sting of his loneliness. He moved to curtain and pulled back the edge of the fabric just barely enough to look down to the docks where he and his brother used to preform – where he and his brother used to be happy. He let the curtain fall back into place, but his hand held it a moment longer before he stepped back to the centre of the room. He glanced down to the violin, settled calmly against the wall in its stand, and he hugged himself against the chill of his empty room, alone and closed off from the sun.
He turned to the window again, not advancing toward it but imagining what lied beyond it. His fingers found his throat as he wished he could hear his own voice sing again as it had in those days. But he knew that he could never sound the same after going so long without a single word, so he quickly threw down his arms and averted his gaze, inadvertently locking onto the violin. A cold realisation stabbed him as he saw that the violin was everything he'd let himself become – somber, silent, cold, and lonely, with no one to hold him and make him feel needed.
In a moment of desperation, he ran to the curtain and flung it to the side, a splash of brilliant sunlight illuminating him. He slammed his palms against the panes, swinging them open and letting a burst of warmth bodily crash into him. He crossed his arms on the sill and leant out through the frame as a gentle sea breeze wafted up and tousled his hair. He stood there for the remainder of the day, but no one took notice of him.
By the time the sun set, his head had lulled down to rest upon his arms. He lifted his gaze as darkness fell and almost tumbled out of the window as he shot up, fingers grasping the sill to hold himself higher, closer to the dancing Northern Lights. Their colors jumped through the night sky, swirling around the blinking stars and painting the water in an ethereal reflection.
The lights dipped lower and lower until four beams – one green, one violet, one blue, and one glimmering white – dove in through the window and surrounded the young man. They encircled him in their brightness before each softened into a glowing orb of color that slowly spun around him. The white orb stopped and hovered in front of his face.
At first, he reared his head away from it, but there was a strangely familiar warmth in its glow. A faint smile graced his lips as he cupped his hands around it, but it slipped through his fingers and floated just out of his reach. Then, to his surprise, his brother's voice began to emanate from the orb as it drifted back into the circle, whispering, "If you sing loud and clear, someone passing by will surely hear you."
The older brother raised his hand to his throat in protest, but the white orb murmured back as it and the others began to fade in the sunrise, "No. You can't be afraid…"
He tried to cry out for them to stay, but he couldn't make a sound. Tears of frustration welled up in his eyes, and he rubbed them away, finding the violin a welcome sight when his eyes reopened. He liberated it from its lonely stand, held it to his shoulder, and slid the bow across its strings. It sang, slightly unsure at first, but then, notes rang out from it, loud and clear. He felt the corners of his mouth tugging up at the sound, and the more he played, the lighter the weight on his heart became. Before he knew it, he was kicking up his heels with an unabashed grin on his face.
The day went by in a blur, but even as the sun went down, his arms kept the music playing with just as much vigour as they had all day. When he saw the Northern Lights break through the rolling clouds, he walked proudly to the open window and directed his song to them, loud and clear, like they had asked, and the music filled the night. The lights danced wilder, and the waves crashed lazier, and the Finn downstairs smiled in his sleep as the Swede lovingly tightened his embrace.
The night wind carried the notes down to the docks that had gone so long without them, and the same young fisherman, who had been the last to hear that beautiful voice, lifted his head up from working on his ship and looked to the singular window showcasing the violinist's silhouette. He shook his head and chuckled. As the sun began to peek above the horizon, he stepped out of his ship and set his stride toward the music.
The young man watched the sun force the colors from the sky again, and found his voice, though small and broken, to show them his gratitude. "If you sing loud and clear, someone passing by will surely hear you. No. You can't be afraid..." And then, he brought his song to a close and let out a heavy sigh of relief.
His sighing was interrupted by the boisterous clapping of a single fan below the window. He lowered the violin from his shoulder as he looked down at the young Danish fisherman, who gave happy, little wave at the acknowledgement.
The violinist vanished from the window. The fisherman stood still for a confused moment. Then the front door was carefully drawn back, and the young man quietly walked over to face his friend. "Hello," he barely managed.
The Dane beamed brightly and caged his Norwegian friend in a tight hug. "Hello."
As the young man slid his tired arms up to return the favour, he realised it was going to be a very warm day and, surprisingly, he didn't mind at all.
A/N: My second short story. I never thought I was any good at short stories, but now I have two. I realise this one is slightly different from my first in terms of characters, dialogue, and situation. For starters, I know the Scandinavian countries have human names now, and I have memorised them all, but I wanted to avoid using names on purpose, because this is based on a song based on a fairytale, and fairytales don't generally give their characters names unless they're descriptive. Since this is song-based, I didn't want much dialogue that wasn't lyrical. And also since it was song-based, this was just the situation that made sense for me with the music.
Title Info: Since this is basically my vision of the video to Emilie Autumn's "Rapunzel," I wanted to use the song name, but I was aware that the name "Rapunzel" is a German lettuce, so I translated "rapunzel" into the English "lamb's lettuce," then I translated that into "lammets salat," and there you have it.
Hope you enjoyed!