Trailing

On this night of all nights...

The piano struck a chord, the notes floating in ethereal bliss above the sound of the waterfall just past his door. The pianist. Her breath caught in her throat as she gazed upon his dishevelled state, the ragged ruins of his nails seeming to complement his attire. She wasn't sure what part of her could notice such a small detail, but as the mournful notes rang through the bare halls, they seemed to tease her forward, elude and entangle her senses, until her steps formed glimmering puddles across the dark floors.

His gaze never faltered from the keys his fingers barely seemed to touch, but his eyes closed at each strike, the shivers running through his very bones and seeming to tangle and entice his body to elicit breath.

This was all he was, she knew, all he had been...for memory fading. And memory did fade as she neared him. Every step a fractured cascade into another world, another life, where all she had been and was rippled away on the breeze, unbinding from her form in ribboned wonder. She turned her head to watch a flow, and some part deep within her felt surprised as she saw it simply halt, ruffling in the air as if time had no sway over it. She found herself nodding, it was simply as it should have been.

He was watching her. How she knew she could not tell, for his motion had not changed, his eyes blinking at each languid strike...but somehow he was. The third eye of the world had glanced at her and she had never noticed, even as she shivered. But the siren's call was a man in a tattered shirt playing a piano in the shadow of a waterfall. The madness of reality had tilted to sane and she had stepped beyond its pale echo, with the aid of a bridge she had never seen.