He breathes deeply, though the movement of his chest, his lips, is all that would indicate it to one examining him for life. His exhalation does not stir the air; where it meets the atmosphere no current forms, only a dissolution: a meeting of stillness and stillness. The air in his room is like air trapped inside a fissure, a sealed cavern deep beneath the ground; it tastes like air which no human, only the earth, has breathed.

The silence here is as if forged by reverence, a respectful holding back of words; though he is alone in this room, the only one who would speak, save the bird, who dwells in early morning slumber still; and it is not that he dares not speak, but that words are inadequate here, a distracting noise that would obscure the truth being told. What hangs here is a silence not deafening, but dissolving of deafness. If one pays close enough attention to it, it seems to admit the mind into itself, where it is revealed not as an absence of sound, but as the presence of everything. Reverence is justified here, for within this tiny room, a circle within a labyrinth of circles, all the powers of the world hold council.

All at once, as if in unspoken chorus of those powers, the still, small room becomes a chamber of echoes. Echoes not of sound, for the room is as silent as before, but of something deeper, like rushing, sparkling water through deep crystal veins, like memories and concepts and the glittering buzz of life within the wings of a thousand darting, brightly-coloured insects; echoes of existence, of all that once was and all that will ever come to be, united in understanding. They are not a competing cacophony, but layered and deep, strata through which one's mind can sink with little effort, pausing at each layer to analyse the richness found there. Here in this room all life is a symphony, and the sound of that symphony is a silence purer than any nature would ever allow.

The song of life is a vast banquet spread out before him, so much that entices, more than he could ever try to contain; he could sample the merest taste of each creation, or make a more thorough meal of one or two, but he could never know it all, and the feast laid before him never ceases to change. It stretches on and on, beyond the reach of his vision, beyond the clarity of each separate scent, to the point where all that can be discerned is a blur of colours and an enticing but indistinguishable fragrance. He is content barely to sample, but simply to be in this place and wonder; he pursues no greater goal today. To be sated by the knowledge of its existence is all that he desires.

In the midst of these diverse delights, there is a singular call; a winding thread that spirals through the tapestry, a streak of sunlit gold, tendrils sparking forth from its body and suffusing the reality around, until everything is shot through with a shimmering web of light and stone. It is more ancient than marble temples, more solid than diamond seams; it has dreamed for eternity of human love, and now, above all, it knows one heart, and they sing a melody which never had words, though if it did, they would have long since have been diffused amongst the fabric of time.

A heavy pulse in his hand, a rhythmic beat like that of tarantella drummers, passionate and insistent, calls him halfway back to his body. Gold glitters half-under his skin there, currents within rising to break the surface in faceted crystal splendour. No jewellery, save a simple silver ring whose purpose is more practical than decorative, adorns him there; for what ornament wrought by human hand could compare with this gem, the glory of all the earth distilled to a singular physical form?-- in its every curve and line there rise a thousand mountain peaks, in its every shift of colour innumerable flowers bloom; and every crystal that ever came to be was forged in likeness of its perfect structure, the template for every spear of quartz, every opal swirl. He listens to it thrum, hears between each beat a counter-beat, and in those gaps a subtler rhythm still; within each surging echo there is knowledge, and in each tiny respite, the quiet awareness of life.

To attempt to focus on it all is dizzying, more truth than a single mind can comprehend. Yet in the background of his mind it always hums, a bedrock of understanding, the foundation from which his words spring forth; as sure and unspoken as the knowledge that one's next breath will come, that the countless cells within one's body are working tirelessly to keep one in active health. It is a security he doesn't have to think about, a call that comes to him unbidden; a song from a harmonic world, a lullaby assuring order and safety, a mantra of eternal life.

He does not need to talk to it, but it brings them both joy that he does. He sings his praises to existence this way, and existence kneels to whisper in his ear, promises dripping like jewels from its lips, enchantment and succour in its infinite embrace.