Joshua Patterson

"Show me your face," he said. "Your human face."

She hesitated then. She wanted to show him, but it had been so long and she'd nearly forgotten. Then...

She changed. She felt it, the lengthening, the filling out, the ripening. His jaw dropped, blue eyes widened.

"You are beautiful," he breathed. He laughed, held up his hands. "I'm shaking." His gaze flickered around her, came back to her eyes. "Why did you ever hide? You are lovely enough to break the hearts of tyrants."

All the long and lonely years rushed back to her, piling up about her legs - legs she hadn't seen in decades - like limp snakes, long, silent and bitter with sorrow. It was too much to express in a voice so unused. But she opened her mouth in hope and something billowed up from her chest, scrambled up her throat and leapt off her tongue.

There were no words, only notes. So wrung with sorrow and the weight of long years in silence they fell more like tears than rose in song. Notes so pure they could have levelled mountains of diamond and he sat in rapt wonder, eyes never leaving hers unless she squeezed them shut with the rapturous sorrow of her song.

She sang until the tears came and, with a sudden lurch, her heart shook itself to life, stuttering like an old engine. Hesitating, sputtering, but with undeniable strength it stumbled up and began beating. Her eyes shot open as her transformation became complete--not quite with pain but something akin to it, just deeper, closer to the soul. She sang as her new-woken heart shot fire through her sleeping limbs and she sang that too. The notes rushed at each other in their zeal to emerge. It pulsed in her fingertips, throbbed in her toes.

And he watched as a light grew about her. Not a holy light - some heavy sun disc of the saints - nothing so weighty or unwieldy. No, it was as though the stars themselves had conspired and sacrificed some of their most precious light to bathe her in.

If he hadn't loved her before, his fate was sealed in that moment. Overtaken by much too vast a feeling for any single human to absorb, he gathered her into his arms.

He dried her tears as she sang. It was enough. Music was always the quickener of the heart and this music would have fired a thousand.

What happened to them then, you ask? I really don't know, but the wind passed on by with a rustle and an airy grin, taking audacious newsprint and listless leaves down through the old covered bridge, over the slow gurgle of Muxatawney River and out over the long, grey fields towards the mountains. It faded out in the foothills, but looking back it seemed as though the gentlest star had fallen and lay aslumber in the far groves of Hollowdale. There let it lie; leave the two lovers so long apart in peace. Your questions are bothersome and I'm for some sleep. Let be, young sir, some things haven't any answers and, despite what you think, it's better that way.