Song in the Silence - Chapter 1 - Song in the Silence

Silence. 

Long has it stretched on. Nothing before, nothing after. Absence about and within, a darkness around, within, without. 

Darkness, the vast emptiness stretching on and on. 

The emptiness is broken, infinite no longer. A flicker, small and threatening to fade in the darkness. Absence recoils, withdrawing from the flicker. 

Color, a bright display, sparks to life in the flicker. Hyacinth, the soft purple flicker radiates. 

Absence gingerly approaches the flicker, gently coiling around it. 

A single soft, feminine gasp leaves the absence, the darkness retreating more so as consciousness enters it. 

“Gah…!” My voice fills the void around me, the silence quickly swallowing my protest.

Awareness, consciousness is mine. I look around the darkness and silence, what was once my unconscious existence, now my prison. 

The small flicker of Hyacinth is me. My consciousness is it;  the flicker of my soul is weak and brittle. 

The darkness fights to envelope me again.

“Where am I! How long have I been?!” I cry out to the void, my cry voiceless and silent.

No sound answers me, my questions go unheeded. 

Has eternity passed me? 

“Who am I? What am I?” 

Again, silence. 

Who can explain my soul to me? It is strange to me, foreign, who am I?

I gaze into the darkness, hoping it will gaze back. To speak out to me as I had to it. 

“Someone, please, answer me.”

Is there another who can reach out, touch me, make me understand? Awareness is mine, yet everything is foreign.

The darkness lashes out at me. 

Unseen tendrils drag against me, leaving screams and cries of memories. A offending hand grabs my face, the ghost of what once was passion lost from it, now only hatred and rage.  The hand peirces my breast, an angry voice of betrayal echoing in the darkness, the language foreign. 

My brittle spirit weakens, quaking beneath the raging voice and angry hands.

"Please, stop! You had said you loved me!" I fight to scream out. 

Why is abuse my reality; would not the void be better than this? Is there a existence besides this fury?

Another hand, weak and dying, gingerly takes my phantom hand. A near unheard voice reaches me as the memory of a presence pressed against me floods me. 

"Mother... I'm... afraid." Croaks the weak voice of a frightened girl.

The hand fades from me, leaving behind memories so overwhelming the only compensible reality is redeeming rage.

Rage against the abusing phantom.

"It was you!! Not I, who betrayed! You swore to protect me, protect them, us! You, who did the evil reverse!" 

Tendrils lash out to drag me down into pain and despair.

"No! Do not act from the void, coward! Raise your hands against me before my eyes! Who are you!" 

Who deserves this hatred?

—

Another flicker has sparked to life. It has a strength and call I can not resist. Before me, near enveloped by the darkness, a small speck twinkles. A small speck of something, a glimmer of difference to the void around me. 

I must reach out to grasp the reality, without hands to hold or crush, without feet to run towards. 

The weight of darkness is too much to bear anymore. 

This new reality must be mine.

I envelope this tiny speck, as to guard it with a physical form I do not possess.

—

Crimson, bright and hot beats around me. Gone was the darkest black, a violent expanse of all consuming fire, above, below, and all around has replaced it.

This is not the reality I felt. This anger only feeds my own. I do not want this all consuming expanse.

I now feel it, a faint presence brushing past me. There is a consciousness to this all consuming place, feminine just as I am, but I can not call out to her. Her memories, while sung in a different tongue, beat akin to my own. We are alike. 

Angry hands of memories forcibly reach out to take me, restrain me as they are restrained. They make to grab me, but cannot take hold; I am within, but apart from this consciousness. 

Again they try to bind me, but I rebuke them, suppress them without hands to do so; the frightened voice of a young girl cries out from far below me and the vain attempts to bind cease.

Where is the reality I seek, I demand to the red expanse. All around me shutters at my word, and a small speck appears before me once more, different from before.

Hands I do not possess reach out to take hold of the speck, as the red shutters and make to close it. I lay hold to the speck, and at the cries uncared for I wretch it open, as no reality will be kept from me.

A hand, clothed in some sort of second skin and oddly colored, rests below my vision. The fingers bounce a single strange thing, flat, circular and dull.

I desire to see beyond this strange thing and this hand, yet the portal will show nothing else. The hand does not yield to my commands to stop. The things of this reality hold a phantom of value to me, but such value escapes me. 

I call the red void to answer me, but it only lies in silence. It keeps from me the reality I desire, and I will not stand for such audacity.

My command I declare from my deepest parts: all about me will yield and bend to commands and demands. 

Wails resound about me, the red void quivers about me as my consciousness spreads to its utmost. 

I am filled with sensations, logic and order made to the world around me, a lexicon arrayed before me.

Cotton hids my most sacred places, and treated cloth and leather shield me more so. Leather cloths my feet and hands, a heavy cloak of dragonhide dons my shoulders and head.  A shell of crystal hids my face.

I make to move my hands, but they do not heed my call, my eyes and head do not move. Still I look at the ancient coin, supposedly cursed according to the fool who had begged me to take it. The hand closes around it, dropping it into a pouch on my waist, before the other brings forth a parchment pad, which is quickly scribbled upon. 

A message about how the cursed item would no longer affect the man. 

This body was not mine, but the girl who I reside in, who holds me captive.