Lauren--Part Five

Splog # 20

Five

   It was almost completely dark out now, so Lauren figured that, after a brief rest, she had better hurry home.  She was further from home now than when she had started heading there after the sunset. The thought of the sunset caused her to reflect upon what a strange evening it had been. First, being surrounded by all those colors. And then hopping up the hill, wishing on a star, finding the coin, and an avalanche of marbles that had rolled down a path which she had never seen before. Then there was this wheelchair and that strange music. Music? Yes, there was a faint sound of solemn, slow music. It was very soft but, in the quiet of the night, it was quite audible. Just a steady beat with not a lot of variety in the notes. It was too soft to decipher the instruments but it seemed as though something with strings would sound that way. Something large with strings. A bass or a cello...

   Concentrating on the music, with her head leaning back and her feet up on the rest, it gradually dawned on her that the chair was moving. For a moment, she thought the chair must be slipping down the hill. But she wasn't going backwards and the chair had been facing up the hill when she sat down. The chair must have revolved while she was concentrating on the music and she hadn't even noticed. Well, it wasn't going very fast and it was a pleasant sensation, but she'd better end her ride soon or she'd never get home. Besides, the chair might bump into something and that could lead to a nasty fall. So she put her feet down to stop the chair.

   The moment the chair stopped so did the music. The music, as quiet as it was, had become such a part of the night that, when it stopped, Lauren was taken aback by the immediate and complete silence. There was no wind. There were no insects, no birds, and no frogs. Just the tiny sound of her breathing. And as soon as she heard it, she held it. It seemed as though she were breaking a silence that shouldn't be broken. Then she opened her mouth and tried to let her breath go in and out without the least sound.

   Sitting there, with only vague forms around her in the darkness, and in a silence that she had never experienced on her hill before, she began to feel just a tiny bit, well, she wouldn't say frightened but...she might admit to anxious. She didn't really feel like getting out of the chair and walking back up the hill. But there really were no other options. Only, she'd feel better if it wasn't quite so quiet.

   So, she decided to let the wheelchair roll a couple of feet further down the hill - just so she could hear the sound of the wheels going over the path. Then she'd get up and...maybe she'd run home. She'd probably be there in less than five minutes. So she lifted up her feet. She didn't bother to put them on the rest since she'd be letting them down again in a few seconds. She merely held them up off the ground and waited for the release that sound would bring.

   And at last there was sound. But it wasn't wheels rolling on a path. It was music. The same solemn music she'd heard previously, soft and slow. She let her feet touch the ground and the music stopped. She picked them up and the chair rolled and the music started - right at the point where it had left off. She dropped her feet and the chair stopped rolling and the music broke off in the middle of a note. She figured the chair must have an inner mechanism that made the music when the wheels turned. But what confused her was that, when the chair rolled, even though the music was very faint, there was no sound of wheels moving over the ground. She lifted her legs, put her feet on the footrest, and tried to hear what experience told her always happened when wheels moved over ground - even if it were only soft grass. There was always some noise. The music wasn't loud enough to cover any sounds. She tried breathing heavily and, when she did, it became difficult to hear the music. But when she stopped, that was all she heard. Music and nothing else.

   Sitting and pondering the strangeness of this, she realized also that the chair was moving at a slow, uniform speed. Again, not what she would expect from a chair on wheels that was sliding down a hill. There was no rushing of wind, no speeding up as gravity pulled the chair inexorably downhill. The chair was moving almost as the music was. Slowly. The chair almost seemed to be moving to the music.

 

   As she concentrated on this phenomenon, she started to think she could feel the pull of gravity. But it was behind her. Leaning back in the chair, she felt that, if she put too much pressure on it, she would fall over backwards. But that would mean that the chair was rolling, unaided by her, uphill.