Sound

This is a part of a story that I haven't finished writing yet. I know there are a lot of loose ends, so if you have criticism, please give it to me.

(…) We were on the van on our way home. It was late on a cold winter night and traces of snow were just beginning to appear. Most of us were tired and just wanted to sleep but we weren’t yet near our hometown as we had planned days before. The kids were on the back of the car, trying to find figures in the sky. The rest of us were just too tired to even talk.

�"I hate it when it gets this silent. It’s overwhelming! I feel as if night believes she’s so important, she makes everyone whisper whenever she’s around.

�"    I guess her presence is so powerful; you unconsciously want to be silent.

�"    Yeah, I don’t think so.

And we were silent once again. Its as if somehow, regardless of anyone’s opinion, the night knew she was powerful, and used it in her favor. You can feel it, the way she covers you up with her darkness, the way she silences you, the way she…

�"    Mom… What is silence?

�"    Darling, I told you to go to sleep an hour ago.

�"    I know, but I started to think…

�"    It’s really late, sweetie.

And like that, we all started wondering. What is silence? Was it an absence of sound? No. An absence of what? And then it hit me. What is sound, anyway? As soon as all the kids fell asleep, we started talking. Wondering what silence was and what sound was at the same time. We didn’t really agree on anything, until she talked. The way she started speaking startled everyone. Not for its loudness, no, but for it was calm. It was as calm as the night we were once trying to describe. It was as if darkness itself had a voice and she just now decided to speak up.

�"    Sound is complicated. You see, sound is more than just things cranking up with each other creating something you can be able to hear. No, it’s more of a bunch of waves created by movement than when hitting your eardrum, you can detect and interpret. It goes the same with your voice.

A pause. She calmly looked deep in the eyes of everyone, sighed and the continued.

�"    It’s as simple and as hard as that. There are different kinds, lengths and forces of a wave. Each one is interpreted differently and even equal waves, on diverse occasions, may even be taken as dissimilar. Now, it’s important to remember that each wave will then reach you. It will be perceived and interpreted by you. If you’re not listening, it won’t be there.  And this is what scares me the most. The fact that if you, for whatever reason, don’t listen to sound, it ceases to exist. It’s not there, it maybe never was, and the doubt of its existence will all end up in your hands. You, the listener. And maybe, everything else in the universe works the same way. Maybe all of us are responsible for the existence of light, even taste. And who knows, maybe even our existence is only perceived by us. That is something wonderful and terrible to think about at the same time.

And so the night, with all its power, silenced us once more.