Author: MsAmbreJade

Story submitted by subject m:

Part 2:

“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said, and the formality of the title startled him.

“I believe we understand each other now.” 

She began to outline her argument, her tone professional, her language precise. Yet something in the air remained altered—an invisible trace of the stillness that had filled the room only moments before The rest of the hearing passed without incident. On paper, nothing unusual had happened: a few procedural questions, a polite adjournment to allow the accused more time to work on their case.

However when Judge James Hale left the bench that afternoon, he found the world slightly out of step. The corridors outside the courtroom were empty, yet the faint sound of Catherine’s voice seemed to hang there in his mind. 

An echo saying “Let your thoughts settle…”

He told himself it was just fatigue. It had been a long week, a long career of listening to other people’s words. Still, there was something different about how quiet it felt now — as if the silence itself were waiting for him to fill it.

That night, at home, James tried to review his notes. He couldn’t focus. His handwriting looked strange, almost unfamiliar. He caught himself tapping his pen to a rhythm he didn’t remember hearing before: slow, deliberate, almost like the swing of that pendant.

He leaned back, closing his eyes. The courtroom light, the sound of her voice, the slow trace of motion — they played in his mind not as memory but as sensation. He hadn’t been controlled, he told himself. Just distracted.

The next morning, when he stepped into chambers, his clerk mentioned that the defendant had left a brief to be reviewed before the next session.
“She said you’d want to read it personally,” the clerk added, puzzled. “Did you tell her that?”

James hesitated. “No,” he said, too quickly. “But I’ll look it over.”

The folder was light. Inside, the first page bore no legal argument, only a single line written in careful ink:

‘Let your thoughts settle. Sometimes focus is not found. Sometimes your honor — it’s given.’

He read the line again. The words themselves weren’t remarkable, yet they held that same quiet gravity, the same calm weight as her voice. For a long moment, he sat perfectly still. The room was silent except for the faint ticking of the clock.
And then, without thinking, his gaze followed the pendulum of the second hand — back and forth, back and forth — until the edges of thought began to blur again…

This is a story submitted by subject m:

Part 1: The Hearing

The courtroom was nearly empty. Afternoon light filtered through the high windows, slicing pale gold lines across the wooden bench. Judge James Hale adjusted his glasses and glanced at the file before him. The case was routine, a cat burglar caught in possession of stolen goods – or should have been. 

The defendant, a woman named Catherine Ward, stood calmly at the table, her hands resting lightly on a stack of papers. She was self-represented, a fact that always put Jameson edge. There was confidence in the way she held herself, as though the trial’s outcome was already decided somewhere he couldn’t see.

“Pre-trial, opening argument….you may speak for yourself” he said, his tone even.

“Thank you. Your Honor,” she replied. Her voice was low but carried easily, unhurried, almost musical. “I only ask that you hear me clearly.”

Something in the way she said clearly caught his attention — the word drawn out, softer at the end. She reached into her pocket and produced a pendant on a thin chain. It turned between her fingers, catching the light.

“I find it easier to focus when my thoughts have something to follow,” she explained. “I hope you don’t mind.”

James frowned. “Proceed.”

She nodded, letting the pendant sway gently. “It’s strange, isn’t it? How motion can hold attention. How something small can quiet a room.”

The pendant moved slowly from left to right. His eyes followed almost by accident, the arc subtle, even graceful.

“You’ve been listening to people all day,” Catherine said. “Voices talking over one another. Papers shuffling. Clocks ticking. It all begins to blur, doesn’t it?” 

The pendant began to turn between her fingers, and the light from the high windows found it. First a flash, then another, so brief they might have been imagined. He tried to look away, but the reflection drifted across the varnished wood of the bench and caught his eye again.

Catherine’s voice followed, quiet enough that it didn’t echo.

“Most people think focus is a kind of force,” she said. “But force scatters things. It makes you aware of how hard you’re trying. Sometimes clarity is softer than that.”

James shifted in his chair. “This isn’t—”

Catherine lifted her eyes to his, steady and calm. “It’s only clarity, Your Honor. Nothing more. You decide every word that matters in this room. Surely you can decide to take a breath.”

He exhaled without realizing it. The air left his lungs in a measured sigh.

Her words came in a rhythm that didn’t quite match the clock on the wall but seemed to make more sense. James realized that his pen had stopped moving. The tip hovered above the page as though waiting for something to happen.

The pendant continued to swing—small movements, nothing dramatic. The chain gleamed at the edges and dulled in its shadow. It reminded him of the slow breathing of someone asleep. His own breath followed unconsciously: in, out, in, out.

Catherine paused long enough for the sound of the clock to return. Then she spoke again, just above a whisper.

“Notice how still everything becomes when there’s nothing to divide your attention. No voices, no papers, no verdicts waiting to be written. Only the quiet shape of a moment.”

The words slid into the room like threads of sound. James could feel them settle rather than hear them fade. The gallery benches behind her blurred at the edges of his vision; what remained was her hand, the slight motion of the chain, and the light that moved with it.

He tried to clear his throat, to ask her to proceed, but the question didn’t arrive. Instead, his mind began cataloguing tiny, irrelevant details: the faint scratch on the oak rail, the pattern of her sleeve, the rhythm of his pulse. Each observation made the next one sharper, as though the act of noticing built its own quiet momentum.

Catherine’s voice reached him again.

“You’ve listened to so many arguments today,” she said. “Each one asks something of you—attention, judgment, patience. For just a moment, let all of that rest. You don’t have to hold everything at once. Let your thoughts settle”

He felt the words more than understood them. They carried the weightless certainty of advice given long ago and remembered too late.

The pendant slowed until it barely moved. Its reflection trembled on the surface of the bench like a second hand that had forgotten its purpose. The room’s light dimmed slightly as a cloud passed across the windows; in the softened glow, Catherine’s figure seemed part of the architecture, as if she had always been there.

James blinked once, then again. The sound of the clock returned, louder now, real. Catherine’s hand stilled. She placed the pendant on the table beside her papers.

He straightened in his chair, clearing his throat. “Proceed,” he managed. His voice was calm but quieter than before.