--ey heard a soft rapping upon the upper windows, and a chorus of scraping and rasping as though a dense forest were pressed flush against the walls of their tower

But of course there was no forest

And there had never been a forest

---

I find it really difficult to sleep
Without some sort of sound playing
Because
When on the rare occassions I am
Forced to sleep in silence

I hear things

Sometimes it's something nice

There's an orchestra I hear somеtimes
I hear them tuning up
And thеn they play some composition
That I don't recognise

Most of the time, though
All I hear are
Voices
Lots of voices
All at once
Distant and indistinct to begin with like
Like I'm sitting in a busy cafeteria
You know?

I can't pick out the words
But
Eventually
As I drift off
One of the voices becomes louder
Than the others

I--
It's difficult to explain this
To somebody who hasn't experienced it

But
It really feels
Like somebody has leant over me
In my bed
And spoken
Directly
Into my
Ear
---

-- the echo of her call took so long to return that she almost mistook it for the voice of another - lost, like her, in the vast, seemingly endless hallway