Boboiboy: Elemental Tales

Of Lullabies, Love and Loss

If you're wondering why on earth I wrote this: uni applications damaged me irreparably, and finding my old draft of In Time Gone By inspired me to cause more pai— ehem, expand the universe. Yes, this is set in the same AU as the last fic. Also, there's a part near the end that was written specifically for a dear reader of mine who commented on In Time Gone By: "Better [Solar] than Halilintar".

As for the choice of POV: I wanted to prove (partly to myself) that second-person fiction isn't necessarily bad. Let me know how that went.

I hope you're good at picking up on implied stuff!

Warnings: see previous chapter; mental health issues (implied).

***

When you're a guitar, you either witness very much or very little, depending on your owner's enthusiasm. Either you stare at the dark insides of a case for weeks on end, or you're loved and regularly played.

If you're lucky enough to get the latter, it's surprising how much of a story you see.

For example, you get to see your future owner carefully picking out an instrument in the store. You see how she inspects each guitar before shaking her head and moving on, moving closer to you. You see how her eyes light up, and you hear her say, "This one, please. This will be perfect for my boy," as she lays a hand on her swollen belly.

You're taken to a new home, and weeks later a screaming, kicking little creature joins you. From then on, every night in an obnoxiously colourful room, your new owner strums a gentle melody on your strings and hums a lullaby, all the while gazing tenderly at the creature. You watch it turn from a screaming, kicking creature to a snoozing, cuddling creature, and you start to empathize with your owner's gaze. The lullaby becomes familiar to you, the child dear to you.

The lullaby becomes a routine that lasts for years. You start to expect and look forward to the sunset, because that means your owner is coming soon to play that gentle melody to her child. You see them both every night, which of course is so often that you never notice any change—that is, until one day you realize with a start that the child is taller than you.

Then you can't help but notice how fast things change—how your owner's face gains permanent lines from laughter, how her husband's hair starts to lighten, how the child grows and grows and one day brings home a floating red ball whose abrasive voice bodes rather ill for your peace. You notice how your owner doesn't bring you out every night anymore.

Nowadays you see the world outside your guitar case less and less, and every time things have become more and more unfamiliar. The scribbles on the fridge disappear. Sports equipment comes and goes. Here, a shiny new motorbike helmet. There, a palm-sized box with something circular glinting inside.

You see a new person enter with the child, who isn't a child anymore, beaming brighter than the sun outside. You see the ring on her finger, the same ring you saw in that box once. You see her belly growing.

One day, a rather long while after your owner last played, different hands take you out of your case. It's the child—a grown man now—who carries you down the hall to the nursery, just like the days of old. He sits down in the same place his mother used to sit, overlooking the same crib where three babies squirm instead of one. His fingers find those familiar positions on your strings, and he plays the lullaby.

You watch these children grow, too.

You find it mildly amusing that your new owner needs to tie ribbons around his sons' wrists to tell them apart. Oh well, it benefits you too—you come to associate the cranky child with red, the cheerful child with blue, and the calm child with brown. And you love them.