Chasing Voices - Acidbathory
Everywhere on the air of the city were carried myriad sounds, alarming or frightful, sweet sometimes and soothing, or both, blended together into a noise that Anthony strained to hear in whole, but could not, for each component note or voice rose above or fell below the dithering rest before he could fully grasp it within his ears, though he listened with all attention put to the city sounds while his father spoke with the trader, it was as if the effort to hear the sound blocked his perception of it, and what he retained of the sound itself was neither true form nor full falsification, he thought, but something in between, a mixed rendering like the far-off projections of lakes and oases in the desert, where water appeared set among the dunes, and as the day's travel drew the vision closer, the lakes dried up and vanished and only the truth of the dunes remained; so with the sounds, which fled from his knowing just as he felt on the verge of comprehending their essential qualities and meaning.[Buy the Acidbathory 12"]