Ficlets: A Song

I originally wrote this in 1990. Why yes, I was a goth back before I knew what goths were. :) The original was exactly one character too long to be a ficlet, so I changed the word "beautiful" to "glorious." Seems to work out well that way, too.

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A Song

A solitary figure walked across the darkening quad. Her eyes were hooded, her face expressionless – and yet, at closer glance, grief and her very aloneness haunted her countenance.

She lifted her arms to the wind as it strengthened, as she began to sing. The wind moaned in harmony, and those who might have listened heard an enchanting melody begin. The song pervaded the blackened quad, transforming the silence into glorious strains of music, charging the air with whispered excitement, and gradually it crescendoed into an intense, resounding cadenza of thunder and delight! She danced furiously as the wind whirled around and swept the dried, fallen leaves in circles about her feet. The music cascaded through the dusk; her features were captivating – ever onward the song flew on, into the night and away. Slowly, she became still.

The wind whispered, gently and softly, and then died. Echoes of an enchanting tune – tragic echoes – lingered, hinting of what had been, then disappeared. She was alone once more.


Sequel: Track Two by alcar

Across the quad he watched from shadows, hearing no enchantment in wind, catching fragments of song like static from a TV set. She was enchantment enough, that anyone would dance like that during the dark of night without reason. He made no sound, not wanting to break the spell.

There was a song inside him too (everyone has one, if they listen the right way), but to him the silences mattered more than the song, when it was just her moving, and the wind, and her singing without a voice as the song ran past him and away; it did not matter, to him the singer was more important. He held his silence, not daring to break the moment, feeling something ease inside his heart, or an old wound break open.

And he was too afraid, of her stillness and his silence, and did not ask her a name, nor tell her he watched, even when he returned the next few nights, in case she moved through stillness, or might have guessed his own song.

In a different story, he would have carried a knife.

This is not that story.

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