Darkness...I've heard a lot of people say that the thing about the dark is it doesn't have a sound. Liken to silence, it seems to absorb the waves of anger, the cries of sorrow, and the melody of happy. In perfect darkness, there is nothing, no annoying ticking of the wall clock or chirping of a cricket trying hard to find a date for the night...in fact, there is no sound at all, except the beating of your own heart and the short intakes of breath as your body slowly allows itself to be equally absorbed and engulfed.

There are no shadows in darkness since shades are only present where they can find refuge in the light. In truth, unlike the darkness, shadows need the light, and don't run from it as most would tell you. Darkness, though, is different than those....it devours light as light, in turn, will come to devour it. The cycle has no break, no stopping, and no returning.

Yet, in the darkness, there are voices, ones that whisper where silence has allowed them purchase to those who listen hard. Each one speaks of different things....of dinosaurs conquering imagined worlds that consist of switch and dial mountains and lakes made of shimmering glass...of mumbled prayers hoped to reach unhearing ears and unyielding pride, gently read scriptures rolling off believing tongue...Ghosts that have lived and died protecting what honors them most, gone from the world, but having left memories behind still echoing off engine and bulkhead.

Among those are other sounds...cattle gently calling to each other, chewing on hay lay scattered over the ground...of laughter as one more basket is made to tie the game...of shouts and gunfire and pain as yet another job takes its toll, but never once taking them down...still there...always here.

Absolute darkness holding tight to the starless night...the moon captured by the unrelenting clouds. A firefly sits...her light stolen to be reclaimed at dawn...the one word written on her hull, a trail of black ash marring her beauty, but then what was beauty without a bit of