literature

Art of a Listener

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The cold bars over the window let the light fall down in patterns.  The moonlight and the white drift of the new winters snow came in slowly through that dark stone frame, falling aimlessly across the ground in which the old man lay.  Cold and wet, with the silver flakes falling on his back as he lay with his ear pressed to the ground.  The floor cold to the touch, biting at his face as he concentrated hard to hear the sound that none could hear.

Cold and bitter, he remained still, the voice of the stone, the pain it felt at the torture this room was responsible for.  The stone wept for those who were kept here.  It wept and pained for those who were confined inside its room for reasons it did not care for.  The pain and anguish of those who had felt this before, now was creeping through the stone in waves, as if tears from a crying child's eyes.

"I know, my friends, it was not your choice."  He whispered softly, so quiet that he might not have said anything at all, but only imagined it.  "I'm here now, and I can set you free."

It was a truth, but only a part.  You can't destroy a stone enough to make it not a whole, and not a part.  The stone has many voices, and many parts, all finding itself in unison with itself.  Parts becoming one, and one becoming parts.  To break one, would not damage the whole, but would only spread the voices, and only unite them at that same moment.  Souls were difficult in themselves, but when you learned that all things were part of one understanding, things became complicated.

The old man sat himself upright, breathing in deeply the crisp air around him.  The sting of the cold in his nose, the shudder he suppressed as he kneeled on the stone ground.  He listened to the air, to the stones, and to the cold itself.  These things he could hear, and these things he could understand.  Such was the way of a true Listener.

The arts were a condemned thing, a lost art now passed between teacher and student, with every new generation losing a part of itself in the slow progression of time.  Such was the way of secret workings, and so it would die in time, just as all things do.

He listened again, lifted his finger to the air, let a soft whisper of breath touch it, before bringing it to the stone floor.  There, he began to draw.  His finger moved, leaving small trenches in their wake.

The details are always the most important thing in a piece of voices.  It is in details that we find the differences of all things.  This was a stone, made of many stones, that much was obvious, and anyone could tell you the same.  What only a Listener knows, is how to find the details of the stone.  He found the voice, he found the life, and he found the heart of that stone and knew it sure as he knew his own flesh.  The touch of that cold rock on his finger, he felt from both sides.  The stone against his finger, and the flesh tearing into his solid hide, both apart of him as he worked the stone.

Proper art wasn't taught, it was learned.  All things are different, and as such, all things should be drawn new with each art.  A rose may resemble its own kind, but it is only a rose in the same way that stone is separate from flesh.  This was the reason you could not be taught how to perform the art, there would be nothing to compare.  Art is learned in the same way a child learns the world around them.  They listen and adapt, they see that people and things are different and can find the names of these things.  Listeners slowly learn how to recognize the things around them.  Step by step they learn to find the voices of things, and once they are able to do that, they learn to draw that soul and essence into form.  This was art, and this was the art that would free the old man from his prison.

Gradually the stone began to show the signs of the art, slowly forming into a mass of curves and lines that would be the physical art form of the stones that made up the prison cell.  The intricate workings of a thing are never simple, nor should they be, and so the art takes a life of its own as it takes the image that no one else can see or hear.

He drew into the night, the cold becoming greater as the moon faded behind the mountains and the night stretched into later hours.  The darkness did not hinder him.  When drawing, it is beyond sight and thought, and becomes nature.  And so, he drew on, his finger leaving marks into the stone as if left by a chisel.  The art was forming across the floor, and later drifting to the walls around him.  Lines crossing others in places to show new emotion and confliction, lines flowing along others to show union of the stones emotions to its thoughts.  These were just a few of the things expressed in the art as he drew.

Eventually he was able to see once again, the kind of sight that eventually comes natural after prolonged exposure to the darkness.  At this sight, he knew his work to be done.  He looked over the marks and etchings in the stone, not thinking over them or second guessing the voices, but marveling at the magnificence of the life he now portrayed in art across the stone floor.

"I am sorry,"  he whispered to the stone again.  "It must be done if I am to be free, but you will know the freedom you gave me as if it were your own."

With a light touch, he placed his hand on a piece of the art, and drew a line through four lines that moved around each other.  As he moved between them, the wall started to shake, to move and bend to his will.  The groaning of stone not only came to him in the world, but in the voice as well.

He moved to a new piece of art, flowing one line to connect with another, bringing more lines and curves to find each other in breaks or junctions.  Ever more the stone moaned in its pain of being written and forced in such a way.  But slowly, the stone began to form to its new art, to its new life.  Slowly the stone gave way just beneath the window above, and slowly, an arch just enough for a man to pass under was forming in the side of the wall.  Slowly, the opening became finalized, and the intricate arch led out into the dark night.

He passed underneath it slowly, letting the snow fall against his face, feel the cold earth beneath his feet, and breathed in the air that was freedom.  He walked slowly at first, and then began to quicken his pace as he escaped the prison those fools thought would hold him.  The old man walked and felt his chest ache for the pain the stone had gone through for him, but on he walked, until he could no longer see the large palace that had held him.

It wouldn't be too long until someone came to the cell to find him gone.  Morning perhaps, when they would find a large intricate archway leading to the outside, nothing left but strange markings on the stone, and a barred window letting the first snow of winter fall in gracefully.
Loved this piece and how it came out, hope you enjoy it too.
© 2012 - 2024 RaVen-277
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PrrfectlyFlawed's avatar
You put so much emotion & passion into your writings, I absolutely love them. They are beautiful beyond the words upon the page. Great job!!!