The hour flies
“Deo Gratis!” the woman said with feeling.
The other voice – the one that seemed to be in Lucas’ head – came forth once again with perfect timing, the words forming organically like blooming flowers in his brain. As the words emerged the white light was transformed into a shimmering aura of translucent colour; pink, gold, violet and azure.
“ADSUN VIA AURORA AUSTRALIS ET AURORA BOREALIS.”
Her response was free of doubt: “You are lovelier than life itself. May you last forever.”
“FUGIT HORA”
This time the unearthly voice was accompanied by the crystal clear sounds of a thousand bells ringing in harmony inside Lucas’ head.
“Esto perpetue”, the woman murmured softly, taking the words right out of his mouth.
All of the ordinary words were taken out of Lucas’ mouth. Without realising it, he had begun to make a strangely meaningful humming sound of his own, in an entirely spontaneous – yet somehow appropriate – response to the bizarre situation in which he’d found himself.
As the girl and the omnipotent light-sound-force conducted their intensely cryptic dialogue without interruption, from outside the window of number eleven an extremely supportive and repetitive Ooo-hhh-mmm-mmmm….Oooo-hhh-mmm-mmm…Ooo-hhh-mmm-mmm Shanti was provided by this exceedingly handy man.
Lucas would remain outside this window for just over two hours, chanting the Ohm without tiring, while the woman of his dreams conducted a conversation with a voice that appeared in his head – from God knows where – and spoke in foreign languages.
For the first in his life he understood several dead languages and one that was dying, although precisely what was said he could never quite recall, try though he would to piece the night’s events together.
As the parish church clock struck twelve, the spell appeared finally to lift. The light disappeared from whence it came and the woman inside the room got up silently and left the room, closing the door behind her as she went.