Assigned Song - "Holy Water" sung by: Big 'n' Rich
Somewhere there's a
stolen halo
I use to watch her wear it well
Everything would shine wherever she would go
But looking at her now you'd never tell
She stood at the edge of the pond, looking
into the water,
taking in the sight of the person staring back at her.
She should know who she is but it’s like
she’s
never seen her before. It could be
the hair that used to hang in a thick ponytail down her back now comes
barely
past her ears; or maybe it’s the faded calico
dresses having been replaced by
shirts whose sleeves hang over her hands or pants that are meant for a
young
boy because they are just the right length for her.
Though all those things are a shock to see,
it’s not what
causes her heart to break when she looks at this girl.
She doesn’t know who she is anymore. She
used to laugh but there’s no laughter in
those eyes that are staring back at her. They
are empty – they seem afraid to show emotion. Those
dark eyes have
no more tears to shed
and spend all their time cast down to the ground lest someone notice
the long
lashes and the frightened glances going out to every man
she passes on the
street.
Someone ran away with
her innocence
A memory she can't get out of her head
I can only imagine what she's feeling
When she's praying
Kneeling at the edge of her bed
A week ago she was a child, an innocent
child, with no idea
of what the world was really like. Yes,
she had had to work during a lot of her childhood and
had even had some
heartache along the way but no one had ever laid a hand on her until …
And she says take me
away
And take me farther
Surround me now
And hold, hold, hold me like holy water
Holy water
She turns her head away but then something
draws her back to
see if that girl will meet her eyes again. She’s
still there, waiting for someone to reach out and
want to help her
but knowing that a gesture of that magnitude could get her hurt worse
than she
is now. Or is that even possible?
She wants someone to
call her angel
Someone to put the light back in her eyes
She's looking through the faces
The unfamiliar places
She needs someone to hear her when she cries
She reaches out her hand but she’s too far
away to
touch. She stretches as far as she can
but still there’s no connection … just emptiness. And
the one time
someone did reach out to
her, it shattered all the goodness she had in her.
She’s dirty now. Try as she
might, it won’t wash away. Will that mouth
ever turn
upward into a smile
again? Will those eyes twinkle at the
sight of a pretty flower or a new dress? Will
she ever be able to use her real voice when speaking
to
someone? All those questions can’t be
answered by the person she’s looking at because that person needs so
much help
– help that she doesn’t know how
to find. How can she trust again? And
who
would listen to her anyway?
And she says take me
away
And take me farther
Surround me now
And hold, hold, hold me like holy water
Holy water
“I will,” she said out loud, without trying
to disguise the
softness to her speech. But that
softness is not the same as it was a week ago – it’s now got a hard
edge to it,
a determination that wasn’t ever there before. But
will any of that do any good if she can’t get past
what happened. Oh why does it have to keep
surfacing,
threatening to drive her mad? Is there anyone who would be able to
understand what it is that has turned her into this person no one knows
anymore?
She just needs a
little help
To wash away the pain she's felt
She wants to feel the healing hands
Of someone who understands
Drawn to that face that is begging for
someone to hear her
sadness, she takes a step to bridge the gap between them … then another
step …
then another until
she is so close to the girl that it’s hard to see her
clearly. But she knows she is still
there. She runs her hands through the
water, trying to take all of her in, in
one big hug. The water, it feels so cool,
so refreshing,
so alive, maybe it’s what the girl’s body needs … what her body needs. She cups
her hands and gathers
up as much as
she can then brings them up over her head and releases the liquid. She closes her eyes as it runs down the sides
of her face, past her eyes, and
over her nose. She begins to feel
energized; she takes another handful
and repeats her
motions. She does it over and over again,
each time looking up to heaven,
to the one person who might be able to help
her, who might be able to give her the answers she so desperately needs
to
hear. The little girl inside of her
needs
to know it’s alright to live again; that it wasn’t her fault; and that
this hasn’t ruined who she is. She wants
to get away from it all … far, far away.
She pours another handful of water over her head then with her hands resting over on top of her drenched hair, she glanced toward heaven and said, “Cleanse me.”
And she says take me
away
And take me farther
Surround me now
And hold, hold, hold me
And she says take me away
And take me farther
Surround me now
And hold, hold, hold me like holy water
Holy water
INSPIRATION:
Well, first off, I love song fics. The lyrics have so much emotion to them that they almost beg to be put into a story.
So it took until reading the beginning of the second stanza of the song - someone ran away with her innocence - for me
to know it had to be about Lou. And from each line with the 'her' and 'she' references, it's clear that the person
speaking sees this girl and knows what she's been through. I immediately set it in the time frame of Lou having just
escaped Wicks and didn't like the idea of it being from Charlotte's point of view so the only other person who knew what
had happened was Lou herself. It just sort of came together from there that Lou was seeing herself but it wasn't the
person she used to know, it was someone else.
I almost couldn't write it fast enough once I got the idea of her looking at her own reflection in the water. And it
seemed to fit in nicely with the Holy Water title of the song. Hopefully that is all explanatory from reading the story.