Here, in the low blue dark of the clearing, the herd has gathered, and something is wrong. Or so the newcomer believes. For our subject moves in near-total silence, joined by dozens of its kind, each swaying, dipping, mouthing words to a song no ear can detect. There is no music here. And yet the specimen dances.
Observe the plastic band clamped over each creature's ears, glowing a fierce red. This is the key. Within that small shell pulses a private rhythm, a secret river of sound audible to the specimen alone, and by this device the entire herd has agreed to a most extraordinary bargain: to hear separately, and move together.
Watch now. Our subject throws its head back, arms rising, hips describing a slow ecstatic arc, wholly committed to a chorus we will never share. Beside it, another creature glows blue, lost in an entirely different current, colliding gently, forgiven instantly. To the silent observer beyond the clearing, this is madness: forty animals convulsing to nothing, mouthing at the void, their sneakers squeaking on the dark floor.
But the specimen knows something the observer does not. It is not alone in its solitude. Every creature here is marooned on its own island of song, and has chosen, magnificently, to be marooned in company.
And when at last our subject lowers the band from its ears, and the room floods back with the small human sounds of breath and shuffling feet and someone, somewhere, laughing, it looks around at the others, still glowing, still dancing, still gone, and it smiles. For it has learned the oldest trick of the herd: that the surest way to survive the long cold quiet is to keep moving beside your own kind, even when no one else can hear your song.