The man was humming

The man was humming softly, like you would if absent-mindedly watching the flow of a melody or text you're familiar with to the point of melding together. The particular manner his hands folded in his lap showed the exact denomination of his order if you particularly cared about the identification of exact denominations of orders. In truth most people don't, and most of the people that do are really just using the excuse to avoid addressing some other matter. Freeing time, as it were, exactly the way a lazy employee in some blind bureaucracy would invent emergencies simply to regain a little time for himself.

His hood covered his head and most of his face, the dim light coming in through small cuts in the heavy, ornate, ancient blinds cut well defined paths in the dusty, still atmosphere. There was silence wafting over the worn granite floors, and in this silence the quiet struggle of tiny, indescript specks of dust from light to darkness and back again replayed for the thousand billionth time the story of the river that fell in love with a god and was turned into a goat which then nursed the two abandoned children and was planted as a seed to spend one quarter of the year in the depths of dark abyss and the rest in the light of the sun across the endless span of time and back again into another speck of dust. And another, and another, and another.

The other man approached slowly, along the wall, towards the recess where a soft hum could almost not be heard at all. His steps were silent, his long robe coming all the way to the floor and giving the general impression of floating, or maybe of a really flat and round millipede advancing by pulls and squeezes. He didn't say anything, or maybe said something to the effect of "it's time" that couldn't be heard at all. They left together.

The originator of this particular faith, you see, didn't happen to share the views on sexuality and human interaction of the originator of some other faith, one that you're perhaps more familiar with. Consequently to this day followers were expected to "know woman", whatever that expression could possibly mean. The practical way these particular fellows resolved that holy imposition was by visiting a cunny shack once every four weeks or so. They had an arrangement with one of the local strip clubs, on the general condition that the complicated calculations of lunar cycles and zodiacal interferences they employed to pick a date also made sure it never happened to fall on a Friday or, worse yet, Saturday. As it worked out it oscillated between Tuesdays and Wednesdays for decades, with the occasional Thursday thrown in maybe every eight-and-three-ninths year or something like that.

The monks had the run of the joint for themselves, which rarely came to very much activity. Still the girls enjoyed the chance to relax for once and even if the tips were sparse, they'd sit around with them in small groups and chat about nothing in particular until closing time, or maybe play chinese chess or go or something. The very original mix of mostly naked girls with guys in flowy robes quietly chuckling around table top games, broken at times by a victory dance or some other explosion of enthusiasm would have made a very cinematic backdrop if only anyone involved in selling sliced reality on a celluloid backing had any clue of the improbable comings and goings of everyday life.

The two men walked quietly down a corridor, and were soon joined by more and more of their brethren. As the group approached the main doorway it kept growing, and soon enough it reached its full mature size and was expelled with a screech of metal upon rock. The doors closed behind them, and in the still silent sanctuary the specks of dust were left undisturbed, masters of the entire domain, to continue their endless dance in the quickly fading sunlight.

It won't be long until the moon comes up anyway.