Feathers Painted by Soot

Those years were dark years, ever so long ago. Children were born into the filth of the streets, lived there in misery, loved there in the dirt and ashes, died there alone in the shadows. Here they struggled, running with bare and bloody feet in the snow, for a future that would never come. Here they worked themselves to the bone, here they shook from pain, here they wept in bitterness. It was here that the brightest of dreams, made all the brighter by the surrounding blackness, hovered. It was here that they died, suffocated by that all too familiar cruelty we know as reality. It was here, too, that the purest of loves were kindled. Do not let them fade into the shadows of the past.

To say she was young was a vast understatement. To say she was innocent would be a lie. This girl, no more than fifteen years, had felt enough pain to know what hell meant. Her parents brought her to America at the age of eight to build a new life, free from the shackles of poverty that had fit all too tightly back in Paris. Here in the land of opportunity the chains had merely taken a different form. She was a pretty girl, silver eyes and dark hair that fell around skin that should never have felt such abuse as it had. Yet here she stood, a star burning out in the night.

It would be years before they met in the unyielding confines of the factory. It would be years full of pain and misery and darkness of which shall not be mentioned. Yet once they touched, nothing would ever be the same again.

Save me from the dancing dark with those silver eyes of yours
Pull me away from the twisting shadows with your saintly touch
There is no escaping that lovely cancer which has no cure
And our love will be the downfall of us all
And our love will be the downfall of us all