Charm

The night is gifted with that grace that so few possess. Though the world is asleep, there is no sense of foreboding to be found in the late hour. The sky's soft darkness is textured by clouds oddly bright and silvery, stealing away the moonlight for their own contours. You watch them pass with a specter's idleness, roaming along and towards another horizon as stars wink down at you between them.

Your curiosity is piqued by its allure. There is something indelibly innocent and very nearly wondrous about this feeling in your chest as you look up at the midnight stars. There are some secrets here, some whispers of inspiration untainted by others, previously touched but never truly realized. But it's not soothing; it's too enchanting to be peaceful, this sensation. 

As you gaze at it from your window, you hear a noise. No, not only noise. A faint hymn? A melody, rather. A piano, a voice? An accompaniment of sorts, and more complex than you thought. The longer you strain to hear, the more instruments you pick out, the more you make sense of their soft intricacies weaving together, rising louder, more ambitious, more compelling and excited. 

You remove yourself from your desk, at first unsettled, but more so intrigued. The music is coming from outside, and you were going there anyways ... to get a better look at the sky.

There is no denying it as you walk up the stairs: the music is coming from outside, just beyond your house. A tinkling of piano notes, of strings in the background, a girl's voice intermittently singing wordless harmony and other times speaking in chime-like words you cannot discern. It is so very nearly terrifying, but too mystifying and captivating to feel that fear. It's drowned beneath your curiosity, the possibility of something unimaginable.

As you unlock your door, a shiver seems to extend from the mechanism to your entire body. You don't need to pull the knob, because you now see rich, violet and emerald lights flowing against the walls of your home, reaching through the windowpanes, almost too timid to reach into that place of normality, but just bold enough to show you their color. But more importantly, you don't need to pull the knob because ...

The door has opened for you.

And the music has rushed in with it. In fact, their sounds have become more chaotic, yet more beautiful, as if incited by your entrance into their presence. 

A whole cast of characters are decorating your driveway as you step out in stupefaction. Dozens of performers are dressed in grand, bizarre costumes you would only recognize at a theater or a circus, but even then, that wouldn't quite be doing them justice. They're not from here; that's all you decide.

There is no fear, not as the music swells from the instruments, not as the lights shine brighter from the caravan of carriages that have lined your driveway, not as you watch a juggler cascade a quintuplet of knives into the air, not as an illusionist ascends by seemingly no effort at all into the air, accompanied by a trio of acrobats darting all around her by a means of strings attached to the trees surrounding your driveway. And not, certainly not, as a woman with a small top hat and a pair of finches on either shoulder walks towards you, and extends a hand invitingly with a bow of her head.

The door of the foremost carriage opens without aid as she motions you to come closer. The music rises. The performers begin to collapse their movements together in a crescendo of talent, weaving like fireflies in a competition of whose brilliance is brightest. 

And you are walking forward to join them, putting your foot in the first stirrup of the coach's steps, to watch the final moments of their performance, to slip inside between the curtained windows, and never look back, as the wheels begin to roll away.