"Sacred Songs"
by Sarah the Boring
sarahtheboring@aol.com


Star Ocean: The Second Story, names, characters, et cetera copyright Enix Corporation. These poems are the property of the author.


Contents:

"Reach" - Claude Kenni
"Identity" - Rena Lanford
"The Lesson" - Celine Jules
"Fate" - Ashton Anchors
"The Last" - Dias Flac
"There Were Rules" - Leon D.S. Geeste
"Neither Saints" - Bowman Jean
"Grownup" - Precis F. Neumann
"Declaration" - Opera Vectra
"Space out of Time" - Ernest Raviede
"Champions" - Noel Chandler
"The Story" - Chisato Madison


"Reach" - Claude Kenni

I dreamed, then,
of worlds you didn't know,
places you could never reach,
things you could never do.
I dreamed of people who didn't know my name.

I wanted space,
untouched by man,
unconquered, unexplored,
un-Federated...
I wanted time out of your shadow.

I lie awake nights, now,
and think of the emptiness of space,
worlds forbidden, unexplored,
lands far out of your reach.
I think of people who know me, not just my name.

And as beautiful as it's been,
there is nothing here I know.
I guess I've made a trade:
I gave up your world
for mine.


"Identity" - Rena Lanford

I am me. I always knew that.
And I wondered about things--
my looks, my childhood,
my love for peace and tall trees,
and the power I have to end
small pieces of the world's suffering.
I may have wondered, but I didn't mind.
The world isn't that simple. I knew that too.
There are things we keep close,
and the rest, which waits outside,
really can't be helped.
So we deal.
And now the world grows
at such a frightening pace:
parents gained and lost,
friends, new love--I think--
and worlds beyond my understanding.
It is almost too enormous to take in.
But I'm glad to know.
The things that matter don't need to change.
They told me why I am who I am,
but who I am is always the same.
I think.
I am me,
child of Expel,
child of Nede.
Rena.
I always knew that.


"The Lesson" - Celine Jules

Now darling, listen;
it'll save you a world of trouble.
First, men are sweet, but simple.
There are two rules:
show less than they want,
and do more than they expect.
No, they're not stupid, just...
simple. They have uncomplicated minds.
They want love, like all of us,
and attention, and, well...
a few other things.
Vive le difference, as they say.
But also:
Every spill can be removed from clothes with seltzer,
so why do you think it's so expensive, hmm?
--Except for silk!
Mind that, it's delicate, dear,
but nothing else can do what it does.
There's a lesson in that, I suppose.
Two last things, and you'll be just fine:
Never let opportunity slip by, and
live for yourself and the ones you love.
Go now, darling. Make me proud.



"Fate" - Ashton Anchors

The dusk sighs in from the depths of the wood.
In sad mumbles the dragons mourn their fate--
--their fate! I think dismally,
tracing idle patterns in the dust
as the night falls.
They speak to each other in a private language,
half growl, half thought.
They are more than brothers;
they understand it all.
They sigh, gazing with jeweled alien eyes at the soft grass.
I catch only enough to comprehend:
We miss our claws.
I reach back to scratch each one behind the horns.
They mumble their thanks,
a gentle murmur in the night.
Their fate. My fate. Ours.


"The Last" - Dias Flac

I know four things:
fire, and blood, and sadness, and love.
And one does not last.
I know the grip of the blade,
the arc, the advance,
the final release, the final thought:
One less may cry, one less soul lost.
One less like me.
And it keeps me on the path.
Another day, another death,
one among many, that tries to pay
for the only ones that matter.
They can never be repaid,
for I cannot forget.
I am reminded by sunlight,
by the shadows under the trees,
by this girl my sister loved like her own.
She is beautiful now, grown--
as Cecille never can--
and her smile has caught the sunlight.
I cannot love her.
I don't dare.
There is nothing else, now:
fire, and blood, and sadness,
and death that strives to conquer
the death of love.
And life, as it is, holds these and little else.
Someday, once the demons are at rest--
in the world and in the past--
there will be meaning again,
one less like me;
and I will be the one.
And until then, I go on.
I am here until the last.


"There Were Rules" - Leon Geeste

There are rules.
Effect follows cause,
forces push, energy morphs
into new forms, eternally.
Creation and destruction are myths:
nothing is truly created
or destroyed....

There were rules:
The lab was quiet
while I worked,
lunch ready at one,
bedtime at seven.
Things were taken care of.
They saw to that.

There were rules,
though some never quite fit.
Genes are passed, father to son,
mother to son,
but somehow... things were off.
The columns didn't add,
things were left on the edges, extra,
unexplained.
Power, looks, and lineage.
Mystery shouldn't exist
in a well-run system.

There were rules.
Things you love
stay the same.
They remain so that the rest,
the work, the battles,
can be fought.
Things you love stay the same...
nothing surfaces, unexplained,
a shiver at the sight
of flowing hair,
these things should not happen.

There were rules
that did not hold.
Questions arose with no one to answer.
The things I love,
the things I loved,
did not stay the same.
But life, I think,
is like energy:
it finds a new form,
one after another,
eternally.


"Neither Saints" - Bowman Jean

I should have known when I saw Celine.
The fear in the eyes of my love
wasn't a surprise,
but I probably should have warned her:
You didn't marry a saint, but a man.
I understood;
I'd seen men lower their eyes
when my love passed,
faint flushes of memory
staining their faces.
She'd apologize, later,
slipping her arms
(strong now, and still pretty)
around my neck.
"You're all I want," she would murmur.
I knew, though it was good to hear her say it.
She had married a man;
I had married a woman.
Neither saints. We'd seen that for ourselves
in the old days,
days of books and nights of laughter,
each as carefree as the other.
Now, the fear in the eyes of my love
told me two things:
she believed I still had what they saw in me then,
and more important than that,
she still cared.
I kissed her at the door, that last day.
I remembered when I'd met her,
eighteen, with a smile like this,
with no more sense than Celine.
But now...
"She's pretty," I admitted,
letting slip a smile.
"But we grew up together.
Nothing's better than that."


"Grownup" - Precis Neumann

Geez, what's the point?
You give up racing,
and building,
and fixing,
and climbing--
for what?
For pretty clothes
that you can't get dirty,
jewelry you can't lose,
and boys who only care
about boring, grownup stuff.
Can you keep a secret though?
--'Course you can,
you have no mouth.
I knew there was a reason for that!
Anyway--
not all boys care about boring stuff.
I know.
I've met one.
Don't tell.


"Declaration" - Opera Vectra

I'll do what I want and you can't stop me,
said a little girl in unasked-for red velvet and bows.
And parents, and minders, and grownups said,
"Be a lady, act your age, remember your station."

I'll do what I want and you can't stop me,
said a girl with flashing eyes, quick to protest.
And teachers, and classmates, and all the boys said,
"Don't talk so loud, don't shake things up, you're scaring us away."

I'll do what I want and you can't stop me,
said a woman with a bright smile and a steady heart.
And a man said...
"Good."


"Space Out of Time" - Ernest Raviede

Give me time,
and space out of time,
to devote to what I see fit--
books and music,
the study of the world
and worlds beyond worlds.
Leave the strangling of society
and the long pointless march
of the future.
It will hang itself before long.

Give me space,
and time out of space,
lost in words and thought;
that is where I live,
in the world of concepts and dreams,
not in some numbered box,
not in some Teragene suburb
where birth is destiny.
Give me that.

And in return
I will give you my time,
away from all else I love:
a sacrifice I make
to prove your worth to me.
And I will give you all I know:
the secrets I have found deep in dust,
stories of the dark past
when men forged their own destinies
(of course, women too)
out of dust and space and time.
And I will give you freedom:

the greatest thing we know.


"Champions" - Noel Chandler

They told us we could have it all.
Anything we desired, they could get us,
and their only price was blood.
Ours, to start, then all we could spill.
We believed in them and all they offered.
We were two then, dark and powerful,
and no one dared challenge us.
Lover and Chandler, master of beasts.
They told us we could have it all.
No one dared challenge us, their champions--
so we thought ourselves, then.
Champions.
Lover--her name, her method, her reason for being--
always believed in them without doubt.
She forgot who she was, killed her Giveaway childhood.
But in the heart of Chandler lay an unkilled Noel.
Even as I sent my beasts, "my" beasts, to their deaths,
I doubted.
I knew, despite power, wrong from right.
They could not keep me.
They did not dare.
Their power called to me, and I lived my life--
my third life--
under the shadow of their eyes.
But they could not keep me.
And in the end we faced each other again.
We had been champions, the Two of the Ten.
She no longer knew me.
And we were, as we are:
Lover and Noel, protector of beasts.


"The Story" - Chisato Madison

All my life I waited for things to happen.
Things.
I think I had my fill of boredom early,
mired in a sleepy town in a sleepy world.
I chased excitement with all the fervor of a crazed fan--
because I was a crazed fan.
Of Things.
Adrenaline is a drug, make no mistake.

And then...
It happened. THE Story.
I saw it all--
cities, woods, the sleepy town of my sleepy childhood, the Chronicle--
Nede. Gone.
I grieved, but we'd known. We'd always known.
But I lived to tell about it.
"Wise Men Fall After Millennial Reign",
I thought,
or "Alien Visitors Doom Nede, Save Universe",
or "End of the World: Exclusive!!"
I lived to tell.
I lived to tell.
But... what good is a storyteller
with no one to tell?
The story of a million lifetimes...
a million minus three.

I wonder if Noel's busy...