Most things begin at the beginning.

I cannot start there, for our beginning has no survivors. However, I can tell you what the world was like when I was younger. It was bright: bursting at the seams with color and sonorousness and sensations. Each breath was a blessing.

You could drink in the sight of a bustling city and still wonder which strands of story connected which people, and why the man down the corner was stomping down the sidewalk as if it offended him.

It began when I was in my teens. I watched as everything was drained, as everything went dry. First people began speaking with wooden, hollow words; and then the hollow words cracked, leaving behind nothing but the resonance of splintering. The remains rotted, and no one has carved another sound from speech ever again.

There is no one perhaps me who would dare write, and I do it by candlelight in my attic where the air is close. This journal, reader, is my life: for we have no music, no lovely light.

We have no wonder.

We have no voices.