Aurora Lyra · The Black Bond · Track 04 of 12
The Tunic
“the grief of it was a thing I had not known I had been saving”
Strings rise as the bond spills the first thing it cannot let either of them lie about — the unspoken inventory of a year of hatred.
Movement
Threshold
Length
3:20
Scene
Ch. 12
Listen
Stream “The Tunic” everywhere.
Part of the twelve-track Aurora Lyra album, The Black Bond — Companion Album.
Full lyrics
“The Tunic”
Intro
instrumental, ~15 sec on fingerpicked acoustic guitar + violin entry
Instrumental.
Verse 1
The tunic was wool the color of cold tea
It had been folded so long the creases were the seams
The bond is not only the magic, I had been told
It is the thing that knows what your hands keep
And I had been keeping this without knowing whose
Pre-Chorus
Smoke from a fire that is no longer burning
Smoke that stays in everything
Smoke from a hearth on a continent away
And the wool remembers what the wearer left
Chorus
The grief I had not known I had been saving
Was a wool I had not known to put down
A smoke I had not known I had been keeping
A name I had not yet said
Verse 2
He saw me in it on a Wednesday
And the bond did not lie about what crossed it
Three years of folding, three years of unfolding
And the tunic was the answer to a question I had not asked
Pre-Chorus
Smoke from a fire that is no longer burning
Smoke that stays in everything
Smoke from a hearth on a continent away
And the wool remembers what the wearer left
Chorus
The grief I had not known I had been saving
Was a wool I had not known to put down
A smoke I had not known I had been keeping
A name I had not yet said
Bridge
He did not say it was his
He did not need to
The bond did the saying
And the wool stayed wool
Final Chorus
The grief I had not known I had been saving
Was a wool I had not known to put down
A smoke I had not known I had been keeping
A name I had not yet said
And the wool was the truth of it
And the smoke stayed in everything
Lyrics © Aurora Lyra. All rights reserved.
The scene
Ch. 12 · Lie-detection bond, Level 2. The grief Mira had not known she was saving.
The line the track turns on
“the grief of it was a thing I had not known I had been saving”
About the track
Strings rise as the bond spills the first thing it cannot let either of them lie about — the unspoken inventory of a year of hatred.
The Black Bond is the first novel of The Skarn Reach, an Aurora Lyra romantasy. Every Aurora Lyra novel ships with a companion album — twelve original songs scored to the book’s emotional spine. This track is one of three in the Threshold movement.
The world before the bond. Five tracks moving through the rite, the cold formality, the loft, the bond's first leak through the partition.
All twelve tracks
Hear the full arc.
Twelve songs in three movements. Threshold. Storm. Cost. The album scored to the spine of The Black Bond.
See the full track list →The novel this scores
The Black Bond
She put him in a cage. Three years later, his dragon chose her.
Read the novel