The clock reads 2:54. Red, glowing figures taunt him while he loses himself in empty thoughts. He tries to grasp the last fading wisp of heaven, but the noise owns him now. It has been a week, and the routine is all too familiar. Arise from thy bed of delusions would-be Hypnos, it is time to meet Selene. He adorns himself with the usual egocentric garbs and splashes some water upon his face, as if trying to awake. It is a delicious ruse; one the affliction has not yet done away with. Click. Bang. Click. Thump. Creak. And there she is. With hands thrust in pockets, he glances towards the sky, and is already moving. His descent against the cool, yielding air of night has begun.

Striding along the tree-lined path, he begins to recall his first thoughts. Real thoughts mind you, not those vague recollections of a distant childhood. He remembers those feelings of anger, disgust, confusion…all the emotions of a flawed existence. They led to reflection, the reflections led to a conclusion, the conclusion led to an identity. Then the noise came. Even now he found it frustrating to comprehend what was occurring inside, but he learned to accept the limitations of thought long ago. He had grown fond of using a simple rationalization to explain the noise. Once you begin to think, and have thought everything there is to be thought, and close your eyes and come to the end of that tunnel, and see the conclusion you once came to mutate before your eyes, and realize that the gray, fleshy matter inside your head cannot mesh with the mutation and what it entails, the noise appears. The noise exists inside your being until you can accept what you saw at the end of that tunnel behind closed eyes. At least, that is what he had grown fond of believing. Every night since then he had taken the same route. He would cross over bridges, streets and sidewalks until he reached an empty lot. Through that empty lot lay a paved walkway, alongside a river, lined with tree upon tree. Tonight they glistened with remnants of a late afternoon shower. Tree after tree, leaf after leaf, shining with pieces of the sky. He no longer walked in the traditional sense of the word, because now he was amongst his thoughts once again. Inside himself he no longer fought the wind, because now he was flowing. A ductile body in a brittle world was what he had become, and he moved like a piece of the sky as Selene illuminated her children.

Then all was still. Before him again was the end of the tunnel. The paved walkway had ended long ago, and now his feet took the shape of moist, pliant ground. A weeping willow was off to one side, its long appendages gently caressing the face of his companion, the lake. The lake was still, silent, and locked in an eternal gaze with Selene. Sometimes the gaze would waver, the willow protesting the silence, and she would shiver as if a gust of cold winter had intruded upon the most intimate of friends. Yet the gaze would always return, and the willow would resume his observant silence. Now he felt Selene beckon, so he moved towards the friends, feeling welcome in their company. Then the willow, the lake, Selene, and he would gaze at each other, communicating without words, touching without contact. And all was silent. They would explore each other for an eternity, for time does not exist when all is silent. And when the wind returned, and the friends broke their gaze, he died. Every night a little more of him died. The noise would return, and he would retreat inside his empty thoughts again. But the night always returned, his eyes were always locked in that eternal gaze, and Selene would never cry for him, because he was awake.