Is It a Battlecry?

It's the same echo we all love and adore. It's always there, sounding matte through the floorboards and walls. You can hear the spatter of the words, the vibrations in the plaster. It echoes. Sometimes it's loud enough for those outside of the house to hear. It dissipates like mist in the air, but before it can completely disappear it licks at someone else's ears. Sometimes when they hear it they cringe, or they whisper like snakes, but we all know that cry. I'm never really sure whether it's a cry for battle or for mercy. It seems to alternate from time to time. It happens all the same.

It almost sounds like Beethoven. The two start out by pointing the blame, or saying something they shouldn't have. It turns into bitter speech, seasoned with slight jumps and over-pronunciations. Eventually someone crescendos into a roar, and the other follows, turning what sounded like running water into a hot tea kettle. At some point somebody says something too sour, too harsh, and they fall silent. Maybe then a cadenza starts, one of them trying to soothe the other's temper, trying to pack away the crime. It only gets worse from there. The cadenza fades into another struggle - who can be louder, who can spread their arms wide enough to scare away the predator.

After that last, gut wrenching bout, the conductor ends the piece - somebody shuts a door. It's an amusing sound. Once that door frame is sealed all the noise just falls away, like it stepped onto a trap door. Silence resumes. It's an eerie one, in which you can still hear the other voice muffled in your mind, barely intelligible - smothered by rights and wrongs and regrets.

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