The Will To Live (Sanctuary)

[Nora Saint-Clair]

Nora did what she could among the people sheltering in the Sanctuary. At first she tried to stand a little straighter, to summon that  calm Brotherhood presence Seraphis always spoke of. She tried to talk about  balance and inner flame and of weathering storms both without and within. She even quoted a passage or two from the Codex she had dutifully memorized, but no one listened.

The storm dominated every conversation. Wind speeds. Road closures. Power grids flickering across outer districts. Messages from loved ones.  So she stopped preaching. Instead, she moved from cluster to cluster, asking who needed tea, who had heard from family, who needed a blanket. She listened more than she spoke. When someone’s voice broke mid-sentence, she placed a hand lightly at their shoulder, though she never quite knew what words ought to follow. Comfort, she was learning, was less about saying the right thing and more about not leaving.

Still, tension hummed in the hall like a wire drawn too tight. That was when the idea came to her. Perhaps some of those endless meditations and breathing exercises might serve a purpose after all.

“Would anyone care to try something calming?” she asked a small group near the far wall. “A sound bath. Just to settle the nerves. It’ll give you something to pass the time anyway.”

The term caught a few curious looks. Curiosity, at least, was better than indifference. Within minutes she had gathered a grand total of five people seated awkwardly on cushions she hastily borrowed from one of the smaller practice rooms. The Sanctuary kept crystal singing bowls for formal sessions, arranged on low stands in ascending size. Nora had seen them used dozens of times, but she had never led one.

The bowls shimmered, made of clear quartz, each tuned to a different note. They looked fragile, though she knew they were not, and some were obscenely heavy. She arranged them in what she hoped was the proper order, trying to recall which size corresponded to which tone.

Nora picked up the suede mallet and hesitated.

“Well,” she began, offering what she hoped was a reassuring smile, “just… close your eyes.”

They obeyed, some more skeptically than others. She drew the mallet along the rim of the largest bowl.

The sound that emerged wavered thin and uncertain at first. Nora winced inwardly and adjusted her pressure, remembering to let the tone build rather than force it. The vibration deepened, growing fuller, until the note filled the air.

She moved to the next bowl. This one gave a brighter tone, almost too sharp at first. She softened her hand and slowed her breath. Inhale and exhale. Let the sound bloom instead of chasing it.

Around her, some shoulders began to lower. One woman’s tightly clasped hands loosened in her lap. A man who had been tapping his foot stilled without seeming to realize it.

Encouraged, Nora let the tones overlap. She had no grand understanding of harmonic theory and no elegant script to follow. She simply remembered how the sound had once felt when she had been seated among others, how it had pressed gently against the inside of her ribs and reminded her she possessed lungs.

So she breathed, and let the bowls answer. There were moments when the mallet slipped slightly or the note broke unevenly, and her heart jumped each time, certain she had ruined the effect.

When at last she allowed the final note to fade, the silence that followed felt different from the one before. There were a few nods of appreciation after.

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “Just… sound.”