“Welcome!” the Elves called out in unison, beckoning her to join them. “Join us in our dance!”
Diane didn’t need to be told twice. She kicked off her shoes to join them in dance and play. This was the Eden she’d been looking for.
Or was it? Diane noticed that something didn’t feel quite right as she danced. The rhythm was there, a downbeat that kept it all grounded. But where was the Melody to keep it all aloft? Why did her feet sink so deeply into the cloud every time she took another step? Was it supposed to be this much of a struggle to keep from falling through?
“Something is wrong,” Diane said as she pried her feet out of the quicksand clouds.
The Elves laughed derisively. “Of course nothing is wrong, foolish monkey,” they cried as one. “Nothing can ever be wrong when you lose yourself in the music!”
But Diane couldn’t lose herself. She heard what the song was lacking, and she could see the notes wilt on the air, as the orbit of their universal rhythm eventually fell prey to entropy, just like everything else. It was then that she noticed that the Elves were not as eternally youthful as she had first believed. She saw that their hair was not blonde, but white, and their faces were deeply lined. Their skin was not simply rosy, but had been burned by the Sun, leaving it blemished and malignant. The fingers of the musicians were stuck in chord-claws, not capable of forming the notes to anything besides their desperate Ode to Youth.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” the Elves demanded, never pausing themselves. “Get out then, if you have no ear for the True Music! Leave, before you poison us with your toxic tin ear!”
Diane frowned, but did as she was asked. She put her shoes back on and left the aged Elves behind to their dancing, walking on until the road of clouds gave way to a simple dirt path.
On and on Diane walked down the dirt path. A thousand cloudless days and a thousand absent nights passed her by. She wondered if there was anything else on this road, or if dirt and a field of smashed guitars was all it had left to offer. Eventually her feet began to tire. She knew that she had to sit down.
And just as that realization dawned on her, the road ended. There were no warning signs when the road disappeared abruptly in a sheer cliff. There was nothing beyond except for dense fog covering what looked like a bottomless drop.
Diane went and sat on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling over, eternity kissing the soles of her shoes. Gradually, the fog rose up to usher the road and the Sun and the sky off to bed. Diane was alone in the blanket of mist, and she breathed in the solitude deeply. The Wind whistled through her ears. She finally remembered the Melody, and whistled along.
