The silence left by the dead dampener was not empty. It was a canvas. Into it rushed the true voice of the canyon—a soft, hesitant symphony of dripping water, the slow, deep respiration of the fungal forest, and the distant, grateful whisper of the freed Singers' fading song. It was the sound of a wound beginning to heal.
For a long time, none of them moved. The act of harmonizing had been more than a collaboration; it had been a fusion. Letting go of that chord felt like losing a limb. A profound intimacy lingered in the space between them, a shared vibrational memory that made words seem clumsy and unnecessary.
