Fire & Ice . Lyrics by fakemink
Listen to me
This had to happen
This was never going to unfold gently
Do not be afraid
What was placed inside you before you even knew your own name cannot be confiscated by the world
Fate is not a fragile ornament someone can snatch from your hands
It is branded on you, beneath your satin skin like inheritance
But the stars that stood witness at our beginning are retreating now
They withdraw one by one behind us, above motorways slick with rain glowing like veins of mercury
Above sleepless hotel ceilings, above departure halls where the air tastes faintly of metal and goodbye
Our lanterns drift into night’s sea
But they are not abandoning you
They are making room
Because it was never permitted that we remain in that narrow province where we first learned our names
That small territory of childhood light was only a threshold
You were not made for thresholds
You were made for descent
And so we go further
Further than comfort, further than innocence
Further than the polite geography where ordinary lives are lived
Deeper into the architecture of pain
Deeper into the chambers where the soul is dismantled
And reassembled into something unrecognisable, something luminous and terrible
You must not soften the story
Tell it correctly
You must let them know they must not pass through the cathedral of pressure
Their spirits will be heated, bent, cooked, and remade
They will not be able to bear it like you do
Tell it so precisely that the bones of it ring
Because if you do, they will follow you
Through you they will pass into the city of weeping
Through you they will hear the language spoken among the lost
The abandoned and condemned
The magnificent failures who miscalculated
The angels who fell not from wickedness but from unbearable longing
And those who refuse to listen will feel it anyway
It will thread through them like voltage in the marrow
It will rearrange their breathing
It will make their hearts behave strangely in their chests
And don’t you dare forget those who have been waiting for you
Do you understand that?
They have watched your steps since the first fracture appeared in your life
They have waited in the quiet fluorescent corridors after the crowds disappear
They have waited in train stations that smell like iron and rain
They have waited in the dim half light of rented rooms where the ceiling spins slowly above a restless mind
They have followed you from city to city, from stage to silence
In the quiet after applause, from intoxication to revelation
And they do not wish you well
Mmm-mmm, no, not at all
They hope you will break
They hope you will mistake exhaustion for destiny
They hope you will kneel before the dull gods of comfort, lust, and indulgence
And forget what you were summoned here to become
They pray quietly, desperately that your eyes never grow strong enough to endure the radiance of Heaven
But listen to me
Will you look at me?
Will you look at me?
You have already walked too far to return
You have seen the machinery behind the theatre
You have tasted the ash that hides beneath every beautiful promise
And still you kept moving
That is why they fear you
Because the path ahead is not mercy
It is initiation
They have come to escort you now
Across the black water, toward the farther shore
Through fire, through ice
Through every exquisite trial designed to separate the living from the truly awake
Lift your head and walk
Because what waits for you beyond this passage is not comfort
It is transfiguration