There should have been an orchestra behind her but no one noticed its absence. No one would have said her voice sounded better with an orchestra, or that it was better when the room was immaculately clean and lit by candles... The sound was no more beautiful when her voice was limber and warm. Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried for the beauty of the music, certainly, but also for the failure of their plans. They were thinking of the last time they had heard her sing and longed for the women who had been beside them then. All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and half minutes of song, and when she came to the highest notes it seemed that all they had been given in their lives and all they had lost came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear.
~ ~ ~
It didn't matter that he didn't understand the language, he knew what it meant. The words and music fused together and became a part of him. Again and again he sang the chorus, almost whispering for fear someone might hear him, mock him, punish him. He felt this too strongly to think that it was something he could get away with. Still, he wished he could open himself up the way she did, bellow it out, dig inside himself to see what was really there. It thrilled him when she sang the loudest, the highest... He leaned back against the wall, dizzy and electrified. They were for her, these furious erections. Every boy there dreamed of crawling on top of her, filling her mouth with their tongues as they pushed themselves inside her... But for Cesar it was more than that. Cesar knew he was hard for the music. As if music was a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.

The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse.

More to come, seriously.