Metal

To begin the morning the warden bawling,
"Get up from yer beds and clean up your cell!"

His days were filled with metal. Brass on steel woke him each day. The scratch of steel toes on stone pervaded each hour, followed by the rusty sound of the warden's voice.

"Wake up, ye layabouts. Time fer breakfast, ye bastards."

The food tasted like copper and salt.

His nights were filled with silver memories, interspersed with the disappointing tang of reality.

As the days went by, it was apparent that there would be no prison break. No rescue. No escape.

Only the same thing, day after day. Hard labor, bad food, and the constant worry of what had happened to the friends who were his family.

"You were the last one, you know," his talkative neighbor told him once, "and well, at least you held out as long as ye did."

Platitudes didn't help.

"It wasn't enough."

The old man sat on his cot, wiping the sweat from his brow. He was getting on in years, but Aerrow was hard pressed to place his age. Over sixty, easily. Far too old to endure this life for too long.

"You never told me your name."

Faded blue eyes that still had a faint twinkle of mirth glanced at him between the bars. "Aye, yer right. I didn't."

If there was one thing that he'd learned in his weeks in this place, it was when to let something be.

The old man settled against his creaking cot.

Heavy boot steps thumped down the hall. He was used to it now, used to the words that he knew were coming. "Clean up yer cells, ya dirty wretches. It reeks. Do ye like living in filth?"

Steel toes clatter-clacked on rough stone. Iron bars rattled when the warden slapped his shillelagh against the cells. All the way down the row, he could hear the inmates moving to straighten their meager living quarters in a futile attempt to avoid a beating.

The old man moved as though his joints were wooden. Aerrow, used to the routine, was neat by nature. That didn't stop the warden from stopping at his cell every day at this time.

Aerrow was still hated by the Cyclonians, enough that the more petty of the bunch would seek him out to vent their sick violence upon his back.

He endured the beatings stoically, refusing to let them have the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. Some may have called him strong, prideful, or stubborn. But he knew that it was now a game with the guards. They took bets on who would break him and he didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

And he knew that if they tired of him, they'd go back to hurting those who were less able to endure.

He kept those faded blue eyes fixed in his mind when the beatings came.

And the auld triangle went jingle jangle,
All along the banks of the Royal Canal.