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Description
The old woman walked swiftly down the narrow streets, flanked by reflective skyscrapers which gave the place a curiously menacing air. The patch of sky above her head, barely visible between the monolithic buildings, was a pearly gray instead of its normal blue. Her quick, precise movements revealed a remnant of a past grace, perhaps even beauty, now gone; dark glossy hair had long ago faded to a mottled gray. Still, her eyes remained black and deep as the night she was born in, and she possessed a timid elegance, an intriguing quietness that made her almost striking, but not quite. A man looking down from the polished windows above watched the crowd surging past, seemingly randomly, until he noticed a tiny figure passing hurriedly through in the opposite direction, the tide of pinpricks flowing and parting around it like seawater swirling past a rock. He made nothing of this peculiar pattern and went to make himself a sandwich. He hadn’t noticed the color of the sky either.

Aria Ortega looked down at the sidewalk and put one foot in front of the other, in her mind clinging to the warm brick under her feet. The shuffle of feet and subtle crinkle of shirtsleeves pressed something inside her into sharp relief; a tightly coiled fraction contracted within her, and she flinched away from it. Unseeingly, she recognized an unremarkable door in an unremarkable building, and with a last jarring clamor the sounds receded behind the click of the lock. She took out her key with a vacant purse of the lips and climbed the three flights of stairs up to number 17.

Here she lived alone. The entire place gave an atmosphere of curious white emptiness, as if a perpetual for sale sign still graced the lobby windows. The windows, in fact, were the only remarkable feature in the apartment. They looked out onto a dusky courtyard, with greenery and flowers strewn haphazardly among the wrought iron benches and brick paving stones. She sometimes wished she could escape into its verdant shade, but it belonged to some rich old man who abhorred company. The summer she moved in she had tried to open the windows to catch a hint of a breeze, but they were too heavy, and from then on she didn’t try.

Silence pressed down, heavy on her shoulders, like a thick blanket of snow smothering her with its chilly purity. She sat and closed her eyes, trying to fill the gaping hollow within her chest, searching for the memory of the living, burning chords that had once sealed it.

They were not the only thing she had lost.

As a child, she had lived without reservation, showing herself to the world exactly as she was, with an innate exuberance, thirst for discovery, and lust for the unknown. But everywhere she went the looming figures of adults stood, with displeased frowns and shaking fingers and words of discouragement. They put their oversized hands on her to calm her ever-moving frame, and said, “No.” The “noes” and angry words turned into barbed shards of glass that bloodied her hands and tortured her thoughts, driving her out of herself until the only refuge she had was the isolation of her own mind. When the last ray of sunlight was extinguished and she thought that she was alone and forsaken at last, she heard in the silence of her own mind a note. Like a drop of water shivering on the underside of a railing, the note reverberated, and in an instant it swelled into a melody and dripped into her mouth.

From that moment, the girl lived drawn into herself, seeing and observing but choosing to stay apart, wrenching herself away from the outside world. The music that pulsed in her chest filled a gap she hadn’t known existed, and she felt happiest when she could surrender and let the music fill her up from the inside until she overflowed.
As she grew, the music grew louder and stronger, and when it overpowered her, she began to dance. At night she would unbridle the strains of melody she had kept captive all day inside her, and her body would submit and bring to life the untamed stallion inside.

Her habits set, though she was still young in body. It must have been a mesmerizing sight…

A girl’s lithe silhouette was dimly illuminated by the brilliant starlight. Her movements urgent and graceful, filled with a wild energy and desperate freedom, she danced to unearthly music springing up from her chest and insisting on release. The abandon with which she leapt and twirled stirred the dry leaves under her bare feet. When the notes quieted to a pulsing whisper, she stopped still for a moment and stumbled to the ground, overwhelmed by the sudden fatigue in her shaking limbs, her feet bruised and bloodied from the rough cobblestones of the secluded alley she had chosen.
The girl walked to school every day. Her broken skin throbbed with every step, but the pain gave her a meaning, and made her glad. During the day, no trace of her burning dance was evident in the shy sweep of her hair and the wary gleam in her downcast eyes. Clenched inside of her was the music she could not let out. She had tried to reach out and speak, but when she did the words and thoughts were all twisted up inside her, caught in the perforated strands of melody streaming from her chest. Instead, she passed the day with a straight spine and a cautious silence. Only when she slipped away at night could she escape into the place where she flew in silent ecstasy.

One day a boy who had seen something unusual in her invisible tread, something glimmering under her skillfully woven façade, braved the shivering dark to follow her. He witnessed her feverish dance under the stars and was overcome by the emotion he saw in the graceful movement of her tall, slender body. He was not sure, but he thought he heard a few scraps of a haunting song. When she slumped to the ground, clutching at a ghost of the receding music, he stepped out and took her hand. There, he fell into the abyss of her black eyes and tried to give her a taste of the passion she had imparted into his soul. The girl was afraid. She tried to run from his choking embrace, but the music had wrapped around the boy and drawn them close together. His arms were strong, and in the blackness she envisioned a serpent slowly suffocating her, the tail beating a syncopated rhythm on the ground. As she stood paralyzed with fear, she felt the music catch hold and leach away into his skin.

She fled.

From that night on, the comforting routine of her life was gone. No longer could she let the music out at night, and the dark cavity it had once occupied in her chest still knotted and tangled if she tried to speak. She withdrew into herself, took a job writing letters at a newspaper, and moved to the city, where the chatter of the impersonal masses masked the silence inside her.

Aria opened her eyes, but they did not focus. She seemed to be looking at something far away only she could see, beyond the windows of her little room and into an unknown.

Aria stayed in her apartment that day. The pages of a book busied her hands, but her wandering eyes searched for an escape. As the clouded sky darkened into night, they saw through the fastened windows the lights of those awake in the city. Darker and darker the sky became, and when the light hit the panes just right, the windows became a mirror. Aria looked into the night and saw her only own sunken eyes. A flicker of light became a strip of cloth that wrapped itself around her mouth and pinned her to the pure white room. Her eyes widened. Inside of her, the silence and loneliness took hands and began their endless, shifting ballet, and she felt a single teardrop slide down her cheek and land on the cold, unyielding floor.

Description
The old woman walked swiftly down the narrow streets, flanked by reflective skyscrapers which gave the place a curiously menacing air. The patch of sky above her head, barely visible between the monolithic buildings, was a pearly gray instead of its normal blue. Her quick, precise movements revealed a remnant of a past grace, perhaps even beauty, now gone; dark glossy hair had long ago faded to a mottled gray. Still, her eyes remained black and deep as the night she was born in, and she possessed a timid elegance, an intriguing quietness that made her almost striking, but not quite. A man looking down from the polished windows above watched the crowd surging past, seemingly randomly, until he noticed a tiny figure passing hurriedly through in the opposite direction, the tide of pinpricks flowing and parting around it like seawater swirling past a rock. He made nothing of this peculiar pattern and went to make himself a sandwich. He hadn’t noticed the color of the sky either.

Aria Ortega looked down at the sidewalk and put one foot in front of the other, in her mind clinging to the warm brick under her feet. The shuffle of feet and subtle crinkle of shirtsleeves pressed something inside her into sharp relief; a tightly coiled fraction contracted within her, and she flinched away from it. Unseeingly, she recognized an unremarkable door in an unremarkable building, and with a last jarring clamor the sounds receded behind the click of the lock. She took out her key with a vacant purse of the lips and climbed the three flights of stairs up to number 17.

Here she lived alone. The entire place gave an atmosphere of curious white emptiness, as if a perpetual for sale sign still graced the lobby windows. The windows, in fact, were the only remarkable feature in the apartment. They looked out onto a dusky courtyard, with greenery and flowers strewn haphazardly among the wrought iron benches and brick paving stones. She sometimes wished she could escape into its verdant shade, but it belonged to some rich old man who abhorred company. The summer she moved in she had tried to open the windows to catch a hint of a breeze, but they were too heavy, and from then on she didn’t try.

Silence pressed down, heavy on her shoulders, like a thick blanket of snow smothering her with its chilly purity. She sat and closed her eyes, trying to fill the gaping hollow within her chest, searching for the memory of the living, burning chords that had once sealed it.

They were not the only thing she had lost.

As a child, she had lived without reservation, showing herself to the world exactly as she was, with an innate exuberance, thirst for discovery, and lust for the unknown. But everywhere she went the looming figures of adults stood, with displeased frowns and shaking fingers and words of discouragement. They put their oversized hands on her to calm her ever-moving frame, and said, “No.” The “noes” and angry words turned into barbed shards of glass that bloodied her hands and tortured her thoughts, driving her out of herself until the only refuge she had was the isolation of her own mind. When the last ray of sunlight was extinguished and she thought that she was alone and forsaken at last, she heard in the silence of her own mind a note. Like a drop of water shivering on the underside of a railing, the note reverberated, and in an instant it swelled into a melody and dripped into her mouth.

From that moment, the girl lived drawn into herself, seeing and observing but choosing to stay apart, wrenching herself away from the outside world. The music that pulsed in her chest filled a gap she hadn’t known existed, and she felt happiest when she could surrender and let the music fill her up from the inside until she overflowed.
As she grew, the music grew louder and stronger, and when it overpowered her, she began to dance. At night she would unbridle the strains of melody she had kept captive all day inside her, and her body would submit and bring to life the untamed stallion inside.

Her habits set, though she was still young in body. It must have been a mesmerizing sight…

A girl’s lithe silhouette was dimly illuminated by the brilliant starlight. Her movements urgent and graceful, filled with a wild energy and desperate freedom, she danced to unearthly music springing up from her chest and insisting on release. The abandon with which she leapt and twirled stirred the dry leaves under her bare feet. When the notes quieted to a pulsing whisper, she stopped still for a moment and stumbled to the ground, overwhelmed by the sudden fatigue in her shaking limbs, her feet bruised and bloodied from the rough cobblestones of the secluded alley she had chosen.
The girl walked to school every day. Her broken skin throbbed with every step, but the pain gave her a meaning, and made her glad. During the day, no trace of her burning dance was evident in the shy sweep of her hair and the wary gleam in her downcast eyes. Clenched inside of her was the music she could not let out. She had tried to reach out and speak, but when she did the words and thoughts were all twisted up inside her, caught in the perforated strands of melody streaming from her chest. Instead, she passed the day with a straight spine and a cautious silence. Only when she slipped away at night could she escape into the place where she flew in silent ecstasy.

One day a boy who had seen something unusual in her invisible tread, something glimmering under her skillfully woven façade, braved the shivering dark to follow her. He witnessed her feverish dance under the stars and was overcome by the emotion he saw in the graceful movement of her tall, slender body. He was not sure, but he thought he heard a few scraps of a haunting song. When she slumped to the ground, clutching at a ghost of the receding music, he stepped out and took her hand. There, he fell into the abyss of her black eyes and tried to give her a taste of the passion she had imparted into his soul. The girl was afraid. She tried to run from his choking embrace, but the music had wrapped around the boy and drawn them close together. His arms were strong, and in the blackness she envisioned a serpent slowly suffocating her, the tail beating a syncopated rhythm on the ground. As she stood paralyzed with fear, she felt the music catch hold and leach away into his skin.

She fled.

From that night on, the comforting routine of her life was gone. No longer could she let the music out at night, and the dark cavity it had once occupied in her chest still knotted and tangled if she tried to speak. She withdrew into herself, took a job writing letters at a newspaper, and moved to the city, where the chatter of the impersonal masses masked the silence inside her.

Aria opened her eyes, but they did not focus. She seemed to be looking at something far away only she could see, beyond the windows of her little room and into an unknown.

Aria stayed in her apartment that day. The pages of a book busied her hands, but her wandering eyes searched for an escape. As the clouded sky darkened into night, they saw through the fastened windows the lights of those awake in the city. Darker and darker the sky became, and when the light hit the panes just right, the windows became a mirror. Aria looked into the night and saw her only own sunken eyes. A flicker of light became a strip of cloth that wrapped itself around her mouth and pinned her to the pure white room. Her eyes widened. Inside of her, the silence and loneliness took hands and began their endless, shifting ballet, and she felt a single teardrop slide down her cheek and land on the cold, unyielding floor.