That was all, he held his peace. And since Seraphin was no longer speaking either, around the two men there slowly grew a strange thing, inhuman, and in the end unbearable — Silence. A silence of the high mountains, a silence of unpeopled spaces, where man comes but rarely, and where if by chance he falls silent himself, he may listen all he will, but all that he can hear is that there is nothing to hear.

It is as if nothing exists any more anywhere, from us to the other end of the world, from us to the furthest reach of the sky. Nothing, the abyss, the void; the annihilation of self; as if the world were not yet created, or had ceased to exist; as if it was before the beginning of the world, or after its end. And anguish dwells in your throat, and a hand is slowly contracting around your heart.

A lucky chance if just then the fire starts to crackle, or a drop of water falls, or perhaps a little wind brushes the roof. The slightest little sound is a great sound. The drop of water reverberates as it falls. The burning wood cracks like a pistol shot, and the brushing of the wind is enough all by itself to fill the immensity of space. All the tiny sounds that are really loud… they recur… they fill the cup of silence. Life begins again because of the living sounds.

~ CF Ramuz, When The Mountain Fell