The chandelier tinkled in the very silence which it enhanced.

As a child, shorter than mid-thigh. David admired the chandelier, sparkling dewdrops and crystal frills forming a pattern so intricately beautiful, his breath nigh stopped in its paces. The light source was artfully disguised by the guided refractions of its otherwise random beams. But the tinkly sound, before his parents obtained sound-proofing for the house, was its main attribute.

David used to lie on the couch in the parlour, snuggled under a blanket knitted by his mother from morling wool, with the glistening fireflies of the chandelier gently swinging above in the draught. He dozed towards the afternoon nap which children under a certain age were thought to need...although he suspected that the grown-ups used it as an excuse to have some undeserved peace and quiet.

The tinkling became parts of his dreaming: angels in bright armour, for tiny tired eyes barely to see; or clouds of metally motes for snub snoring nose to snuff up; or the seething silvery scintilla for elfin ears to be sweetly deafened; or the exquisite pin-pricking of fairies’ sparkfish daggers...

Once he dreamed he’d never wake again. Each time he tried to escape it, the dream closed in on him. He felt he was within a slowly shrinking party balloon with simply nothing on the outside of its ever-wrinkling scrawny skin.

David then saw the tinkling. And heard the heavenly light.


(published 'Black Lotus' 1992)