Adagio for the dead
The plane was dark, and within the dimly lit air of the pale whiteness, the darkness gathered slowly together, circling toward the center into an even darker darkness. After a moment of shaping and gathering, it slowly started to slide across the plane. After the voices left him, his mind still numbingly echoing with the stir of the waves from a stone, he just stood there surrounded by horizons on all sides. It was as if the voices had collapsed his senses, taking down the drapes of the world around him and throwing him alone onto the naked stage. In his body, memories were being washed into his head in an epiphany of catharsis, one event after another going past his eyes like a screenplay, clicking around into unrecognizable mess of silhouettes. Blinking his eyes into the memories, he thought he could see the bare shadow of a figure embedded in those blinding moments between flickering pictures.
His heart began to pound once again, his whole body aching from the all the walks and slumbers he experienced as if he was in a dream.
Everything was still and quiet, snow falling from the sky onto the white ground, barely visible. Nothing seemed to have changed in the reflection of his eyes except for the deeper cover of darkness upon the land. With a single restrained motion his body slid across the snow, following the path still visible through the plane. The motion brought with it a little shiver, and a little growl from his stomach, almost magically appearing from a chasm of his coat.
The icy touch of the open began to penetrate into his body, calming the last sparks of his life down unto the milieu of pale ground contrasting against the darkness above. His body was slowly numbing away piece by piece, and his vision began to fade, making the plane of snow continuing into the darkness shimmer like the surface of water.
As his vision faded, stars rose unto his mudded sight, flickering eerily like lights of a candle. Beyond the stars gigantic columns of light soared into the dark, brightening the layers of cloud covering the air. His visions slowly came back to him, focused onto the lights from the horizon. It was a huge city, filled with buildings that pierced into the sky, continuing endlessly into the dark above. As he dragged himself forward, the columns of light continued to soar against the dark from the thin line between the pale land and the darkening air, like a gateway to heaven.
