9 - Faint Whispers in the Wind

They did not understand. She needed money, she needed to save for plane tickets because she needed to get away from it all. She didn’t want to stay, not in the place where she was tossed from house to house as a child, not where her birth parents were. She wanted to leave the place, and the college she chose was as far away from the bars where they saw her as nothing more than a tool, where they had hunted her out like vampires and they ate her up and left her like she was a piece of gum, and she knew it.

She laid her head upon her knees. Wet her dress became, and she began to shiver in the cold and biting wind. Her heart turned dark within her, and already in desperate strains, she raged in tears against the very weather that mocked her, and seemed not to care. Her sorrow burst from her chest in utter groans of despair.

Like the whimpering of an abandoned baby, she quieted down and simply listened. The wind and night birds went on, went on with life, but she alone in the dark felt her spirit dying and knew how mortal it was. She thought—she had a small bit of cleaner under her dresser. She had snuck it when she moved in. She could wait, and use it, should she, should she not…

She realized, there were faint strains of something in the wind. Something breathtakingly beautiful, something she had never known before. What was it? Beyond this world, perhaps? She sat and listened. First a male voice sang it seemed, something soft and sweet, calming. Already she felt her soul’s burden lighten, she felt, ah, as air, the darkness falling away. Already the darkness came to embrace her, not as some evil entity, whispering for her end, but calling, gentle, for her to come into her healing. There then came a lovely lift, beyond all words, some women, one rising higher than the rest in notes that rose to the heavens.

Her breath caught. She bent all her will on listening, and felt her soul knit together again from the moment. This song—it held promise, everything she wanted, everything she needed. She was surprised that she knew, but she knew. She must have the song, she must find who sung it, it was a matter of life and death…

All the voices rose together, and after a pause, they went on a postlude that left her with nothing but chills. Her determination burned, all else forgotten.

The voices faded into the wind, and distant as they were, she was left with their eternal impression. She sighed deeply, and was calm and at peace, for the first time…maybe ever. Ever? How could it have been ever?