I return home to the sound home to the sound of music.

Hundreds of worshippers, the entire growing population of the Pericles gulch,

more, I think, even than when we left for the south,

have gathered before the gates, in order to greet me properly. Their song drifts through the pines and raptures welcome, and sibling rain winds down the

windows so we can hear them, a choir so immense that the disjoints and the bum notes are utterly lost in the sea of voices a sea so immense.

It sounds absolutely harmonious and perfectly single-minded.

My people are singing a drowning song for me.

Music and lyrics written some 200 years ago by a Catabasian shaw, who wanted to capture

the unease, the dread, and the beauty of the sweet music she'd heard beneath the water's surface.

A sensation that she knew could never be captured in human chords or human notes.

But she wanted to make the attempt, all the same.

She died still working on it, I think.

But it's beautiful, no matter if it's incomplete.

I listen, and I listen, as the sound swells all around me,

and I watch as we swing up through the trees,

and all at once we can see that great crowd,

that seething tide of color, with banners raised high and children lifted upon their parents' shoulders.

And it's for me.

It's all for me. When I step out of the car,

when I step out from the back of the car,

my people dropped to their knees amongst the rubble and the roots without a single

care for their shins.

...