“Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other---other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and foremost he is child.” ---Gormenghast
The last, moist tears of rain were brushed away by an impatient hand as she found her way down the street, water rushing past in lilting notes, littering them with the forté of refuse and garbage. A rough patch of stone on her hands, the wall guiding the way through a black-tinted world. Allegro. Not much time.
A sharp pain of a knife stone edge, she turns the corner, the staccato of footsteps wavering for only a second. The pain is red, the stones blue as she leans against them savoring their waning coldness. It is hot, this night. So much darkness resonating through the grey alleyway.
The darkness is shattered, the violence of the intruder colors the streets a twisting fractal spiraling into the night. Only then, to arch skyward, to dance for nothing but the moon, her fickle majesty.
The silhouetted figured stopped. She had to listen to the rich harmonies that wisped around in sleek tendrils of the dusk, coloring the world with the fire of a violin. It followed her, though she sought escape, the violin would not relent.
The stones, the pain, the hot smell of slick pavement faded back into the dream as she was embraced by the bonds of strings. She could feel it, now. The music entered her, coursed through trembling hands, and stole away precious thoughts. It held her, caressed her, and spoke secrets most intimate, until she shook with the force that music brings. Cries of ecstasy keened through her and with a gasp she met roughly with the uncaring stones. The world of solid and unfeeling misery…cast away for a second of transcendence by the unseen, untouchable, violin.
The rain was coming again. The slow staccato of sightless eyes and deaf ears, impervious to told and secret sins. But it was not raining.
She felt for the moisture at her face. Her fingers slick and cold. Blue again, the smell of damp skin. Perhaps she wasn’t a statue after all, saint’s statues whose eyes could not see the sins of the world, whose ears could not hear its confessions….perhaps...she was the violin.
Sonata of the Unseen
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(This story is continued (sorta) on the Sons of BelialThread)