Haku climbs the stairs to the stage as an emperor ascends his throne, and rather than launch into his song immediately, simply stares out over the crowd, sweeping his eyes over their heads as if evaluating their right to hear this.

"When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky..."

The song starts gently, low and conspiratorial, as a mother would whisper to her child when telling a bedtime story. It turned harsh and dark by the middle, telling a legend of angry gods and defiant people born whole and haughty without love to humble them. The gods had torn each one in two, and the halves scattered from each other, and that longing for one another, for that lost half of self, for the agony of their joining, of their separation. The pain they called 'love.'

And the way he sang it, Haku had felt that much for himself, whether or not the story was true or not. Coming from a god, there was no telling.

"It was the sad story,
How we became lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of the origin of love.
That's the origin of love..."

Haku bowed and jumped off the stage without preamble. He'd had enough of being in the spotlight, for now.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9FpWX57E) ()