another one that makes the rondel sound incredibly natural, and your vocal melody is swooping and dramatic and lovely. I feel like this style would possibly have been a little too theatrical for me with a bigger arrangement but you keep it sparse and intimate and that lets me focus on all the strengths without triggering any of my biases, superb work.

Holy crap you are such a talented song writer I am in awe of how you write your lyrics. You have a real way with words and your voice and piano work just lifts it so much. Nice work, really impressed with everything you have done this year.

You hit the challenge squarely on the head. A rondel, one time through. And if I didn't know about the challenge I would have had no idea that was what you did. You excelled at making the challenge transparent while taking no liberties at all.
Your vocal is stellar. The backing vox with reverb is perfect. The keys are great. The balance in the sparse arrangement is good (if not perfect.) You nailed this challenge and the song is very good as well.

How? Just... I mean, how? You're like 20 years old, right? How are you writing songs with this fully-formed voice that sounds more mature than any of the rest of us? This song stopped me in my tracks and quieted the world around me while I let it play out. Everyone in this round used the rondel form, but yours actually felt like a subject matter that worked in conversation with the form, where no one else this round did that (except maybe The Lowest Bitter, who used language to push against expectations in a way that didn't work for me). This song, though, it's just total chills from start to finish. Your melody is strong. The lyrics sit wonerfully in the meter. It's a striking lyrical meter, too! You're switching between iambic hexameter and iambic heptameter, both of which are unusual for formal poetry, but I honestly didn't notice it was out of the ordinary until I stopped to count the stresses, at which point I realized that the swap from hexameter to heptameter is a driving force behind the momentum change at the top of the second and third verse. But since the refrain lines are hexameter, that momentum can't stick, and your narrator is forced to quell her passions and sit, in the relative stasis, missing an iamb as she waits for the sun to fall. The historical fiction setting suits this poetic form nicely, and it allows for turns of phrase that might not work in a more conventional pop song, phrases like "So we can meet in secret under lilac trees," or better yet, "These days mundanely wane within these paisley papered halls," the latter of which made me literally gasp when I heard it. And of course, the subject matter, this tender forbidden romance that, once again, plays perfectly to the challenge. Playing this solo piano with only a few background vocals for accompaniment was a daring choice, but I think it was just exactly right for this song, for the intimacy you wanted to convey. What more can I say? You're the real deal, and I think your win this round was well-earned. Congratulations!

I apologize to the shadows. You were all great too, especially Mandibles ( 😉 ) and Dented Bento, but now I need to go write some reviews for "The Only Way Out."