A Deep Melody of Night
Let us wander into a deep melody of night—summer, one-hundred years ago:
A young woman, smartly dressed, in her wool coat and cloche hat, ornamental buckle of delicately wrought silver, stood at a bus stop, nervously tapping her low-heeled strap-ups against gravel. Not another soul in sight.
It was an empty block of downtown. Skyward, foreign constellations peopled some strange new heavens, intruders in repose, archetypes of unknown origin depicting scenes of sacrifice and war, life and rebirth. She watched new shapes and symbols dance along the firmament, right up there above her, pole stars skipping out-of-time through a crime scene: a crashed chariot harboring a pair of frightened hounds. There was no moon up in there in that sky—instead, many fictions.
Then, she heard a whisper:
“…”
…but couldn’t quite make out the words. She turned her head and found exactly what she expected—nothing.
“Okay,” the young woman said. “But this is the right stop?”
Across the way, streetlights flickered in affirmation. She relaxed, at ease knowing that, at the very least, wherever this place was, however she got here, wherever she was before, she was right where she needed to be.
Down the street—a bus. Chrome impressions flashing across aerodynamic curvature, motion sweeping her way, a mechanized weight she could feel, deep in her blood. What a thrill. The young woman took one last look at that unknown sky, looming like the heavy body of someone else’s deity tattooed in divine pictograms.
The bus pulled up. The faceless driver, her chariot man, opened the door: that’s when she knew. This was her ride to those gray fields of dimensionless time, out to those pastures of final harvest, razed for good—and the young woman smiled into a deep melody of night.
