Behind the Shroud

Chapter 1: Explorations

It was quiet, dead quiet. This was the first thing Sirius noticed when his bought of irrepressible mirth subsided.

"That's funny," he thought to himself, "I thought that there would be whispers."

Once again, the thought struck him by surprise. On what basis could his mind contrive of such a thought? Regardless, there were no whispers, no humming, no breaths of wind, nothing. The air was utterly still; to Sirius it seemed almost a crime to stir it with his breath. Surely such perfection should not be broken or fractured by the likes of him, or any living creature.

The monochrome gray seemed to sap all color from the surrounding landscape, if there ever was any color there to sap. Sirius groaned, shattering the silence of wherever it is he was, and lurched himself to his feet. After straightening up, which seemed to take an extraordinary amount of time, he, once again, surveyed the space around him. From this new vantage point, Sirius was able to discern that the ground was not all as level as the portion he had landed upon. Innumerable lumps and rounded shapes were scattered across the terrain. The gray haze obscured any further definition of these silhouettes and prevented any long-range observations.

Following his instinctual urgings once again, Sirius began to walk. He carefully picked his way around the prone shapes littering the ground. He felt no such urgings to further investigate these objects, as opposed that which he felt towards investigating his surroundings.

"What good would examining those random lumps do? It would just slow me down, just waist more time," he justified to himself. After the first few steps, Sirius could tell that this would be a futile effort. Even the odd shaped figures on the ground seemed to blend together in the haze, furthering Sirius's conviction not to take further interest in them. They were just another meaningless part of he landscape.

"What's the point?" He growled loudly to himself, "Everything looks the same and with the fog... if it is fog, there's no way I can tell if I'm even moving in a straight line!"

The sound of his frustration seemed to hang in the dry, yet somehow cloudy, air. Cringing slightly against the feeling, Sirius hastened his pace in attempts to escape it.

"This place is stranger than anything I've ever heard Dumbledore muttering about..." he likewise muttered to himself. His voice was quieter this time, less filled with emotion. He held his anger and confusion inside, so to avoid creating another atmosphere like to the one he had just escaped. He spoke to fill the oppressive silence but kept the volume of his voice in check so as not to shatter it.

"...Dumbly-dorfl??? Where did that one come from? I must really be loosing it, sounds like pure gibberish to me now. I don't know what's gotten into me..." Sirius muttered to himself for a bit in attempts to justify his momentary confusion to himself. The murmuring also aided in filling the intense quite that seemed to press in on him from all sides. After a moment's pause in his random ramblings he commented; "It's like to going deaf from some persistent roar, only with the absence of the aforementioned roar... or from swimming too deeply under the surface of the lake... If that makes any sense... which it doesn't, of course. When did I ever swim in a lake? Nothing I say recently makes any sense. Perchance I might think with more clarity if there were but some noise for my subconscious to concentrate on, rather than this unending nothingness...Just silence... There has to be something more out there. Where there's life, there's sound... and I'm certainly alive. Therefore there must be sound. Of course there's sound, but I'm making it all!"

The quiet, left as it was, was almost more than Sirius could bear. He began to whisper almost constantly to himself. He had the feeling that if he stopped talking and simply listened to nothing he would go mad. Little did he know how close to raving his ramblings had become. By attempting to wrest himself from the gaping jaws of insanity he was merely driving himself further and further in.

Sirius's eyes swept back and forth through the mist. They burned to observe some flicker of movement or sign of life. They were, instead, met with nothing, more monotonous shifting gray and distorted lumps upon the ground.

"It seems as if my eyes should be burning from all the apparent dust hanging in the air. Funny how they feels as if this gray cloud-like material were as insubstantial as air."

Sirius violently shook his head, trying to clear it form whatever alien impulse had caused him to speak in such a cryptic manner. Lines and phrases from ancient books and manuscripts filtered through his head.

"Ancient books and manuscripts?..."

The quotes slipped away before Sirius's mind could grasp them. Where they had come from, from what corner of his mind they had been unburied; he could not begin to comprehend.

"Surely I have some knowledge pertaining to such things, otherwise, how could my mind possibly contrive of such things in such a spontaneous matter? I'm speaking in tongues again! Why do I suddenly have such a tendency towards such elevated language? Such archaic language... Or have I always spoken as such? If I utter the word 'such' again I'm going to throttle myself!"

Emotion had crept back into his voice. The gray around Sirius veritably became alive with the irritation that his voice had portrayed. Feeling smothered by the amplified magnitude of the emotion hovering around him, Sirius quickened his pace once more. When he was, again, in a neutral atmosphere he allowed himself to slow down and gave some time over for consideration.

"Funny how only words as dead as this place itself maintain the peace in the air. Funny, or morbidly ironic..."

Pleased to find that his sense of humor had not left him and not pausing to take the time to wonder where he had acquired it in the first place, Sirius continued with his situational analysis.

"And the thoughts and comments that come naturally to my mouth are not those that I would willingly choose to speak. Yet, it is such comments that do not cloud my mind. When I fight the impulses, which cause them, I must also fight a renewed compulsion to lie myself down and explore no more. Logic states that I cling to such freedom granting graces, restricted as they may be..."

Sirius continued to mumble like statements to himself as he wandered. This acceptance brought him a satisfying feeling of peace.

"I don't need to fight it anymore... if only I knew what 'it' was... not that it matters anymore..."