Monochrome

The sun hid itself that day. The clouds flooded the sky like the ocean's lap upon the beach at high tide. Cold wind suffused the forest with the breath of some great unknown force. The inanimate trees dripped of rain as the sky lost its dying light.

The thin mist echoed with the clear voice of an upright piano. Its music calmed the air, but it also sided with arising darkness and the cold wind. In a small isolated gazebo, a young man sat and played expressively, waving his head to the music and quietly singing lucid notes.

Resolving to the final chord, his fingers searched for the right keys, and with a sigh, his hands descended with relent. The sound echoed throughout the forest and in his mind. As he closed the piano's cover cautiously and left along a faint trail, humming to the music that guided his path.

He swam in a river of thought. He could feel the puzzled eyes of the oblivious staring at him, wondering what he was thinking. He was pressed by the outgoing nature of those in his life, who considered him abnormal for spending time alone.

All these troubles entered his sight as he left his sanctuary and headed home. Emerging from the fog, a house appeared in faint color. He disappeared from the forest. So the sun set behind a cloud veil.

The next day he returned. Flakes of crisp snow collected on the soaked ground as grey clouds scrolled past the landscape. He paced slowly through the air.

Finding a dry place, he sat and thought. The forest seemed alive to him, alive with the chilling and calming wind, the gentle snow that decorated the ground, and the shadows of clouds that marched across the sky like ominous spirits. He felt connected to the unknown supernatural force that gave him life, as through meditation he breathed with it. "God" he called it. Its ways were unknown to him, for he had been raised in an atheistic family, and he was merely an agnostic himself. He only faintly held on to the belief that it existed, for now it seemed closed to him. At times it seemed like a set of rumors to answer all of the common questions, but now it seemed so alive in his mind, the mind which he had questioned.

He continued his meditation on the piano, composing music of mysterious subconscious worlds with such emotion that echoed in the winter sky. He had always seemed to find a way to express his emotions through music, whether rational or irrational. Now, as those emotions resonated in the open landscape, all was finished.