Where the vigil becomes a dream
The silence does not break; it changes. Rain and moonlight open the vigil into a dream in which he returns not through a report or a voice on the radio, but through music.
He appears playing the violin, and the photograph remains close. For a moment, memory gives them the nearness that the waking world has withheld.
The vision offers no proof of what happened in the sky. It may be memory, hope or the first shape of news still too distant to understand.
“If this is a dream, why can I hear you so clearly?”