“The Stone Rain of Azeban”
A bit of Azeban was set aside
A shard of essence kept to call upon
The raccoon thief of myth was stolen from
To sate a lonely caster known as Clyde
Clyde was young, but he lived a life apart
In a town called Stone Rain outside Quebec
He thought that a cryptid caused a train wreck
That orphaned and hardened his granite heart
In three years since, he’d learned a secret way
To find the myth and acquire its essence
To map Azeban the trickster’s presence
And take back what had been taken away
After he had what he thought he deserved,
Clyde was the worst kind of bully caster
He taunted the essence as its master
Through malice, he thought his loneliness cured
But Azeban was a selfish cryptid
So, its essence knew how to steal a friend
that it could keep until a bitter end
and this is what the raccoon said
“I stole a bracelet from a first grader—
A gift from her grandma on her birthday
That child has grown forty years old today
I’ll give it to you, and you can trade her—
“There’s a coin on the shelf in her corner
That will complete Bill Kirby’s collection
He bought a pawn shop ring of affection
That he’ll gladly give up for that quarter.”
The ring, Azeban said, goes to Alice
In exchange for an off-Broadway program
That will melt the heart of Miss Irene Chan
At the noodle bar, Emperor’s Palace
She has a photo she keeps in her home
Of parents and kids dining at her work
One of those parents is Jonathan Burke
Whose child, the raccoon said, has since passed on.
In Stone Rain, everyone was connected
With a part of each other in their homes
Such that Clyde did not have to be alone
If he honored the oaths he’d collected.
By the time he’d met almost everyone
His place in the rain seemed secured at last
But the present had to pay for the past
When Azeban revealed what he had done.
“You were mean to me; it was uncalled for
That pencil I stole? It’s long since gone
A tale for a king to deceive his pawn
A tyrant welcomed at each neighbor’s door
You blamed Azeban, a stranger to this
You were lonely because you chose to be
It had next to nothing to do with me
But you made it my fault—so now it is
“So, go back to the promises you made
And plead to everyone that you were wrong
That they should know you can’t be counted on
A stone heart in Stone Rain is what you paid.”
Clyde had to do what Azeban said to
In shame, he suffered this malevolence:
“You were cruel to a bit, just an essence
Imagine what the whole could do to you.”
