Quote:
The Calling (12) : A beautiful melody drifts on the air from somewhere far away. The vocals are in a language you don’t quite recognize, but feel somehow familiar to you. Something about the song calls to you, but no matter where you go, the song seems to sound the same distance away. The longer it goes on, the more emotional the song becomes--and the more emotional you become. Something about the song is possessive and consuming, like it’s all you can think of. Something resonates in you as the song crescendos, and the feeling is at its strongest--be they good, bad, anything, but suddenly the song fades, and there’s only an emptiness inside of you. The feeling of loss is strong, and can leave someone feeling emotionally numb. Someone out there was calling to you, and you couldn’t find them.
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At first he didn’t hear it, then it was only intermittent. It was hard to make out over the din of the city but something about it made him want to find it. Find the person who was singing it. What was the song? Where was it from or when was it created? Nothing he searched on his phone was anything close to the song he was hearing. Pat started to check the stores around where he had been shopping, maybe one of them was playing the music but none of them were. No one around him knew the song, or even acknowledged hearing it. He wasn’t going crazy, no matter what some of those looks he saw said. He knew he heard the music. The ethereal, heart tugging music. He had to find it.
It was both happy and melancholic at the same time. As if you were at a birthday party for a person turning 100 who you knew was going to pass away in a few days. Or snuggling your dog after a day doing everything they loved knowing that tomorrow they would be put down because they had cancer and it was a more humane choice. A celebration of the life that was lived as well as a morning of the life that was soon to be gone. Things like that, hundreds of moments that were both good moments and sad moments. Ones that brought tears to your eyes even as you smiled so hard your cheeks hurt. A song that brought all these feelings to the forefront and Pat couldn’t locate it.
Even as his sight went a little blurry as the emotional tears from the music started to well up he still powered forward, searching for the music. Looking for the song. Needing to locate it, if only to know who was signing it. He didn’t know why it was so important to him, he just knew that he had to. It was imperative. The redhead was so focused on the song that when he stumbled into a park and the music swelled around him before just fading away he just… slumped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. The tune he had been searching for was gone. It was just gone.
He sat there in the grass as tears dripped down his face but feeling absolutely nothing. No anger. No sorrow. No happiness. Nothing. It was gone. Everything was gone. Even the sounds around him seemed to have faded away. There was nothing that grounded him to that place anymore. Nothing that provided an anchor. It was gone. How could it be gone? As he sat there things started to come back into focus. First it was the distant laughter of kids, then the sound of traffic, the wind in the trees, and even a dog barking. Sound was coming back, followed by the feel of the grass on his legs and the breeze tugging at his hair.
It wasn’t until a dog ran up to him and started to lick his face that he really came fully back from whatever trip that music had taken him on. After pushing the dog off and assuring the owner who had jogged over to apologize, passing him a little multicolored star charm thing as an apology. Pat climbed to his feet, now feeling quite embarrassed over the whole thing, and pocketed the little charm. He didn’t quite understand what had just happened but knew, deep down, that the loss of that song would haunt his dreams for a while.
