Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

- Dag Hammarskjold

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. - Eric Hoffer

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

- Aldous Huxley



The surreal presence of a cold finger ran down her neck, brushing the effect of its nail crossing across her windpipe. Livvie held her own hand against her throat, dancing the ghostly movements with her fingers.

The faint aura of candlelight gave a glitter to her dark eyes. A cover for the hollow film that coated them, that no one seemed to notice in the nunnery A wind struck its shoulder against the dark rectangles that made up the building's stain glass window.

A glass mural of a man staring at the sky spliced in half of stars and light.

The man himself was a shepherd, a small lamb at his side.

Her eyes turned attentively to the almond face: There was a distinct demonic line drawn in those features. She stole a second look. The line looked more regal now, splintered with tiny veins across the forehead. It looked almost like the man was scowling at her.

She turned to head for the door, when the wind having grown strong enough, began to push through the glass, spinning the rectangles on small axles. Like a chime, small tones and whistles hummed, filling her ears with a soft whisper from it's hymn.

"With some people solitariness is an excape, not from others..."

Her heart seemed to skip a beat from the soft words that rolled out of the music, but quick composer won her over.

"But from themselves."

It was only her mind making out words that weren't even there from the wind's howl as it merged with the dwindling lullaby...

Two rings on her fingers clinked together as her hand formed a fist. Something wasn't right. There was a tension that spidered through the walls. Echoed across the cathedral's dome skylight above her head. Gazing upward, she saw the moon shimmer above through the glass like a reflection on the water's waves.

The night she could tell was clear. The stars, glittering the ceiling with tiny flames.

Suddenly she found all traces of alarm gone. Her small limbs rising above her head.

Making a small frame with her hands, she boxed the sight in. Beautiful.

"For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves."

Dancing the same movements along her neck, her body swayed. The music 's volume increased and she swayed faster. Her eyes rolled back into her head on the final count.

She evaporated.

____________________________________________________________________



Two long fingers straddled against the box's felt lid, lightly pushing it down.

____________________________________________________________________



Caleb knelt down over the woman's body. She looked radiant now, even more so when he had carried through the woods. How the moonlight had hit her skin then. Illuminated her face, like porcelain. He recalled the memory it had stirred of him laying her dying body down in the sunlight. How he watched her last breath leave her to the final task at hand. Death had a rare touch to her beauty.

Here, she laid now in that same position on the catacomb's floor. Leaning over, his lips touched the lobe of her ear.

"It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise."

He stood back on his knees, tricking his hand all over her before stopping a finger on her heart.

____________________________________________________________________



Cherishing the music box in his arms, he was gone.