A Rift in Time

The way he sat on the chair felt heavy. Like there was much anchoring down his neck. Like there were a lifetime of concerns that made him bow his head. It was like this he crushed the cuff of his wrist and watched the floor in darkness and stillness. As if the world was leaned up against his back, but no one and nothing was in the room as accompaniment. Just shadows and a rickety chair. Shadows as dark and unresting as his hair.

These shadows whispered. "You will fail." The room was small so the reverb was loud. "Look at all the times upon which you have failed. Then and now and forever a failure. And they will hear it, and they will know it, in their bones."

A rift warbled and rippled in the air as his familiar broke through dimensions and reality to be by his side; an owl—colourless, then grey, then black as can be. Its image doubled. Then recollected itself. Its clawed feet plowed onto the man's head, like its nest was his hair, and his ear was its focus as its neck craned down, and its beak tore the atmosphere around him.

The man did not react to it entering the room, or how its weight pushed down his head, or how its open maw seemed to swallow sound itself. The shadows stopped. And the owl's voice was the only thing in his head. A wordless, soundless language between them. But he understood:

"It was time."

His finger twitched. There was a glitch as he himself made a rift in time, in space. As though he'd sat there long before and hadn't yet arrived. He stood before reality could keep up, weaving his body flawlessly through folds of time, ignoring the histories where those very flaws had shown. Like a ribbon in the wind. Moving fast; remaining slow; feeling fervent; staying solemn. He walked like he was in mourning, or perhaps performing. His heels clacked and quelled each shadow with purpose.

No longer did his gaze have a need for floorboards. Those doubts gave way to a twinkle in his eye and a spark of something great. He released his wrist and let the pain flow freely, like blood no one else could see, filling and painting a container that wasn't really there. But he willed it to be.

Another step and the room fell away, spotlights suggested a stage. He stroked the head of his owl until his familiar turned into a bow. The paint pouring from his wrist did not touch his cuff as they swished and manifested into a cello. Its spike resounding like a gong in the center of the theatre of applause.

And all doubts, fears, and flaws receded as he set out to create something timeless.