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The night is cool but not unbearably cold; somewhere, in the distance, a faint tune carries on the breeze. Whether you choose to follow it or not is up to you but the tune is vaguely familiar. Maybe you can place it, maybe you can’t, but it resonates with you and you find yourself full of emotion. If you choose to follow the music you wind up in an isolated lake in the park. It’s frozen over, but you see a figure skating across the ice, playing a violin. They will skate and play for as long as you watch, but at some point--between one blink and the next--they disappear, like a shadow on the wind. The tune echoes but fades quickly, leaving behind only a strange emptiness. The figure never communicates and never leaves the lake; they never stop playing but if anyone gets too close they simply disappear. The music seems to play on any night it snows in the park.
The sound of music in the air was a welcome distraction from the silence of the forest, though Lopezite could not quite place the tune. It sounded old, and sad, at first; he thought it might have been some jogger's music playing too loudly, but no matter where he went in the park it always seemed to play at the same volume. He was too far from town for it to be some Christmas song, though truthfully it didn't sound like any holiday tune he'd ever heard.
It made more sense as to why that was when he happened upon movement in the distance. There was no energy signature--just a civilian, then. Someone skating with great ease across a frozen lake. He was impressed with the dexterity they had--and the fact that they somehow managed to play a violin the whole time they were gliding across the ice.
He found himself leaning against a tree, arms crossed and eyes steadily focused on the dark figure in the distance. It was impossible to make out details, but he wasn't particularly concerned with who was playing. It was simply...nice.
He breathed a sigh of relief; he knew the shadows hid him well enough that he could enjoy the music in peace.
Lopezite wasn't one to slack on the job; he might have chosen to take an easy route but it wasn't out of laziness. To be caught unawares could be the death of him, and yet, he found himself closing his eyes to listen to the tune for a moment longer. It felt like it freed his mind.The longer he listened, the more he felt like he had heard the song somewhere else, but no matter how hard he wracked his mind he couldn't place it.
The song never seemed to end, and it must have been after ten, fifteen minutes of listening, Lopezite finally opened his eyes.
The music faded on the wind in that singular second and he blinked, searching the ice for the mysterious performer. There was no one there, though he was certain that the music had always been coming from the same location. A frown on his face, he approached, walking along the border of the lake. There were no footprints in the fresh fallen snow aside from his own, and no cracks in the ice.
The musician had been playing there, though a closer inspection of the ice showed no tracks. It would have been impossible to skate along that surface without leaving a mark, though after his last run in with ice on the ground there wasn't any chance that Lopezite was going to walk out that far to investigate.
No energy signature meant that it would have been impossible to just disappear like that.
A deeper frown settled on his face and, exasperated, he reached up to rub at his face.
He knew he wasn't crazy, but the longer this winter dragged on, the crazier he felt. He rubbed at his eyes and peered across the ice, into the forest, one last time.
He didn't expect to find any answers but he was still disappointed.
He went home with questions, and a song he wouldn't forget any time soon.
