Vella Crean 
Her time with the Other had been glorious. He was a fine lover, a gift of music and flesh... But flesh was all he really was. His spirit called to her so long before, and she had answered. They had sung a long, beautiful song of life and belief and happiness. But now he was dust, and there had been no other to replace him.
She missed him. Sometimes she could remember his name, but more often than not she merely hummed a lonely song of loss. It was a loss of more than just her friend, her partner, her love. He had been her completion. He might have even created her in his mind, long before they actually met.
Echo breathed the sweet but old scent of the darkness. Her existence depended on having someone to percieve her, and she had been ignored for too long. Soon, perhaps, she would fade away forever. If Echo ever had a measure of self-pity, she might cry herself to death here in the empty silent darkness.
But she was a muse, given life and form itself. So she knew there would be a time, she KNEW there had to be another... Some day... But it had been so long, she almost forgot what it could be like, to be complete and have a true partner. She felt faded, her breath the comet-dust of the cosmos.
And then she heard another Ping.
It was so very far away! She went from her isolated darkness through a pillar of grey, hoping that one of these days she'd find her Other again. It was a harsh reality for her, to know that she was not something unless something else 'considered' her real! Sometimes it might have made her angry -- if she was in fact capable of anger in the slightest. The closest she came was a bit of grump now and again. "One of these days," she sighed again, her voice a mix of bubbles and thick oatmeal -- it had been unused for so long that she'd almost forgotten how to speak. She disliked her voice. She would have to exersize it a bit before she found her new Other!
She continued traveling along the lines of the spectrum, breaking through a pillow of winds. It was as cold as it was soft, a brittle air around her making her already-charged hair split and crackle with lightning. Then finally the winds smoothed out into what felt like a softly made eider-down pastels. She was so drowsy among the winds... But she could not stop now! She'd forgotten what it was like traveling along these old musical lines! Swept so completely into their theme, their verse, their very colors!
Echo felt a little guilty. These pieces were 'his'. Those which had called her to his side, after all. Behold the dream, the dream is gone. She sighed again, but verse came to her lips now and her voice had regained its old beauty. "Sleepy time, and I lie, with my love by my side..." With a smile on her lips, she added, "and I rise, like a bird in the haze, and the first rays, touch the sky... And the night wings die..."
Giggling now, she lept from the pillow of Winds into another strange song-scape. This was familiar territory -- very old territory which she had run many many times before in times past. She was fearless now! Some might call her a fool, but she knew the lay of these spectral-sonic lands, and she would climb whatever mountain, scale whatever needed to be traversed, to find her new Other!
"You say the hills too steep to climb... Try me! You say you'd like to see me try... Climbing... You pick the place and I'll choose the time... and I'll climb that hill in my own way.... Just wait a while, for the right day. And as I rise above the tree line and the clouds... I look down... Hear the sounds of the things you said today."
She bolstered herself into a mad rush into the rarified pale-blue of the sky of this place that was not a place. It was chilly! It was fresh! Somehow, it was new though it was decades old. She had not been here in so very long! But the inspiration was still among the words, in the feel to the song. Echo had forgotten that these were songs meant for others to hear after all, and she must remember to share them as soon as she could! "And you'll never walk alone!" She sang loudly, causing eddies in the pattern of light around her.
The next moment she found herself standing -- actually standing -- on what looked like a beach. It was a good place to be, she thought. It was a place He called "San Tropez" and he loved being there. Of course, he had enjoyed it with someone else, before she was there with him. The place brought a wistful smile to her lips. "Deep in my dreams I can still hear her callin' -- if you're alone, I'll come home home home..."
She laughed at the happy nature of the place. But she had to get to the end, she had to find where the Ping had come from, and it was not here. A sudden twinge hit her -- what would happen after she found it? What if -- no, she didn't want to think about it. What could happen if this Ping was an echo in itself, like she was? What if it was an old mirror of sound, something that had gone far and finally returned as if from the far side of a valley?
Shaking her head, brushing back her unruly and still-snapping hair, Echo took what she needed from the area, a simple garment of green and blue, a thong for her hair so it wouldn't bother her so much, and swept back into the air as a bolt of static.
She thought she heard a dog, but it was merely Seamus. She passed him, as he howled. She patted his head, but he contiuned because, well, that was what Seamus did. He sat right down and cried. But he was an old hound dog. They were like that. And he was a sweet heart. With his plaintive howling mixing with the strains of guitar and bass, piano and the occasional man's voice, Seamus bid Echo a farewell the only way he could.
The depth she'd left came back, but this time, it was alive. The Ping was there, repeating itself with an urgency. Now it would slow, then double again... The eerie whale-song of electricity in the background assured her that Echo was in the right place now. She used the sonic-visual wave form which she traveled on to focus her energy, and then looked at where she'd got to.
Echo found herself above a world, a whole world, surrounded by darkness and intermittent flashes of ... something. It was a planet she'd never seen, in the middle of nowhere. She started her descent. As the sounds of a sweet, soft guitar entered the scene, she swooped downwards on it. Like steps, the electric piano gave her a downward spiral to follow. She danced down it like rain.
"Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air, and deep beneath the rolling waves, of labyrinths of coral caves... The echo of a distant time , comes willowing across the sand, and everything is green or submarine... And no one shatters to the land, and no one knows the wheres or whys but something stirrs and something tries and starts to climb toward the light..."
The first lyric was mysterious. It was always coupled with a darkness. Of course, there was always the second verse which she always tried very hard to understand. But she was merely the echo, and not the creator of such words...
"Strangers passing in the street, by chance two seperate Clauses meet, and I am you and what I see is me. And do I take you by the hand, and lead you through the land, and help me understand the best I can... and no one calls us to the land, and no one forces down our eyes, no one speaks and no one cries, no one flies around the sun..."
The dark odd sounds which the sweet guitar led into always drew Echo into a chilly memory. Cliffs, hard and angry, those cliffs perhaps empty save for the black and white birds which circled overhead. The albatross, she thought. If she knew what one was, they scared her. But this was where the Echo and the Ping would meet, over this desolate landscape of grey slate waves, of black and charcoal cliffs, of static shaded sands...
There was perhaps a beauty in the rhythm of the waves, they came much too fast for real water, though Echo had never really seen water. Shattering the clear darkness was always that beautiful harder guitar, it pealed through the black, over the beat, soaring and keeping her awake. Its half-dissonance could never allow her to rest, even though the beat would otherwise hypnotize anyone.
The beat never relented... not until the echo-whales, the electric cetateans which howled their pain and their story over the slate seas, came. Even the heavy beat, the dirty rhythm -- of waves -- of lovemaking -- of heartbeats, had to succomb to the sad, terrifying tale that the electric whales sang. Echo floated as she always had, above this. She was cold, here.
The starry sky here seemed wrong. But that was just the new place she'd come to. Had she brought the song? Had she taken all this mess with her? Just to find the Ping again? Hmn. She was none too pleased with that. So while the whales groaned and thrummed, and spiked the air with their yellow-white staccato, Echo watched the sky. The Ping would show up there, it always -- the jolt of the whale song made her shudder.
Perhaps this was the call, she thought. The Ping never came without it. The whales sang, a complex tale, breaking up their words with an occasional -- pip -- a bit of bubble, a ping of their own. The albatross above returned, as the bubbling got blacker. Winds rose, and Echo felt like she should possibly have stayed in the Pillow of Winds, rather than listen to this horrifying scream.
It broke through the black, lighting the sky. One long, hard bark following a yip-blurp calling out. Echo looked toward the planet. The sky had grown lighter. Her skin shivvered.
The Ping came, right on time. Faint at first -- almost a hesitant keyboard-note. But then, with tears in her eyes, she answered it. There was nothing at all she could do otherwise. It was her summoning, her calling, someone needed her. So she must go to it. Fear, hope, memories and all. She must answer.
"PING!" Her voice called, not saying a word, but rather like a droplet of ice water falling onto a flat smooth lake, frozen until the moment she touched it.
She could not help but begin to swoop closer to the planet. Was it a planet? Or just a Place? It could be both, neither, she did not honestly care. Something -- some one -- down there wanted her. Needed her. The excitement and thrill of the guitars thrumming through her gave her the big smile which she bore on her face as she soared around the planet. The sun was there, a brilliant orb burning, a billion candles... The stars she left behind still burned, their sky perfect and dark now, not like the ill-formed grey sky she'd left. This was a confident world, a secure place.
She broke into the atmosphere, burning like a falling star but of course she had no substance to burn. She merely shone, bright and sparkling. The landscape below her rippled by, mountains and rivers, desert stones, forests... Rapidly, like the rip-rip beat behind her.
"Cloudlessly the day falls upon my waking eyes, inviting and inciting me to rise. And through the window in the wall, come streaming in on sunlight wings, a million bright ambassadors of morning. And no one sings me lullabies, and no one makes me close my eyes, so I throw the windows wide and call to you across the sky..."
She found Vella Crean below, a beautiful spread of vales and cliffs, of mountain and wood. Where dragons flew, and people sang. She flitted through the folk, but... She did not sense her Other. Where was he? What was happening?
Her expectations flew away like the echoes of her heartbeat. The rainbow sky overhead was merely white and blue now... Clouds, dotting the area with their presence. Still, there was something inside her telling her that this was the right place.
The cyberwhales beyond reminded her that she'd been called here, by sending another ping echo to her ears. Only she could hear this, of course... Only Echo. Her bare feet made a strange sound, like plinking of a tiny piano, when they struck the stone ground. Made entirely of music, of light and sound, Echo trod across the carved stone hallway until she reached a wide open cavern... A dragon inside it rested, and on sand below her lay beautiful eggs.
The Ping was within one of them. But... which one? There were already happy people standing about, and the eggs were shaking as if they were about to hatch! Echo held her breath. She was going to find out -- what was going to happen ... AFTER the ping?
Echo drifted around Vella Crean for a while, not quite understanding what the deal was. There were people, and there were dragons. Big ones and little ones -- the dragons anyway. And they sang.
So she went down to the sands and clung there, observed suddenly by someone who she believed was important, but she didn't quite catch the name.
There were eggs, pretty eggs, on the sands where the dragons gathered. Humans and not-humans were there too. Then, an egg broke! She watched as the soul inside the egg became attached to the person standing nearby. Two more, then three, then others. All in succession. All bonding to someone there.
The little female aquamarine dragonet who broke her shell with three others strode right up to Echo, like she was solid or something. Of course! The dragon was the source of her new Ping!
Echo watched the little pretty thing as she strayed up, and spoke. It was a beautiful humming that the hatchling gave off, musical score for the hatching.
You are waiting for your Ping, and I am your Ping, but not Your ping. I am your Bonded, I am your dragon, I am your. I am called Dowajeth.
Echo smiled, sensing that every word, contradictory though they were, was true. "So you are..." She breathed.
She realized that now, she had to deal with a very physical existance. At least, for the moment. Perhaps some day, Dowajeth would learn how to escape the bonds of the real, and become her own song...
***
Dowajeth crooned with her own sing-songy tune as Echo bathed. The muse smiled at her dragon, and smiled more as the fresh warm water sprayed onto her skin. It had been decades since she had been solid enough to do this, and she relished it.
I like to bathe too, does it hurt you to be solid longer? I want you to scratch me!
"I can always scratch you with solid fingers," Echo chimed from her bath. "It's easy for me to do that. I'm getting back into practice, now... But it's fun flitting about your mind too."
I like that, the dragon giggled, it tickles.
***
Echo reached out to touch Dowajeth, and felt the solid warmth of her dragon. What was best, was that Dowajeth leaned into the motion and bumped into her rider's form - and actually encountered physical shape instead of a misty vagueness.
Will you take me beyond the prism? Dowajeth asked.
"I would like that. Perhaps... Perhaps there is yet another out there somewhere, but now I can make my own music again. And I like you to sing. Would you sing while we fly, Dowajeth?
Of course I will!
Though instead of singing, Dowajeth let out a long, complex tune which sounded nothing like Echo had ever heard - she held on to the pale aqua dragoness and laughed.
"What was that?"
That was a tune I hear in my head! Oh, and there are people making music in that odd place there. A big black hole is behind them. We can get there through it, if you want to.
... A black hole? Hmn... That's dangerous, Dowajeth. But I think I want to meet these musicians. Let's go!
Song Lyrics (c)1971 Pink Floyd Music, all found on Meddle -- if you listen to it, while reading this page SLOWLY, you'll get the idea.