The Symphony

At first you are overcome by the sheer silence that greets you as the door to the core opens, the sheer weight of it seems oppressive. Your lights sweep across the room as you look within, but only serve to portray alien shapes against the walls. You are not quite sure when exactly it happened, but you become aware of a soft musical note coming from... a flute? A piccolo? You aren't sure what the instrument is, but now that you are aware of it, you start becoming aware of other instruments, all low, all just on the edge of your hearing. With an unconscious effort, you strain your ears to hear it better. Although you can't quite place it, the music is familiar to you as if you heard it within a dream just barely remembered.
The music begins to swell and you realize that you don't know the instruments that are playing. They must be instruments that have yet to be invented...or instruments invented by an alien race before recorded human history...or instruments that you imagined to make the symphony that is now playing...it must be one of those, right? With start, you realize that music is at once coming from all around you, but has no source. Despite any effort, the music you hear grows louder and you realize that there is no escaping the melody.
Although clearer now, the music has a strange sense of familiarity while being completely unknown to your conscious mind. The feeling you had of welcome, of comfort upon first entering the ship is still there, but with the symphony new feelings envelope you, feelings you struggle to identify, feelings you never knew existed, feelings that have always been a part of you. You are able to keep a hold of your senses as your brain struggles to quantify concepts it never knew existed.
Moments stretch on and you are able to make sense of what you are seeing, hearing, and feeling. The symphony continues to play, the song soft, slow, somber. The feelings you can make sense of take shape; feelings of loss, of loneliness, of an almost overwhelming level of sadness. The sheer magnitude of these feelings surprises you; how could anybody feel this much, this deeply?
You feel a stirring within the very core of your being and begin to feel the gravity of the emotions as your conscious mind struggles to maintain control. This entire time it has felt as if you were divorced from what you were hearing and feeling, but now the barriers within have begun to crumble and the feelings begin to seep through. Unable to stop the floodgates, the emotions wash over you and you desperately look for something to cling to when all of a sudden, you are aware of a soft musical note.
Is it a flute? A piccolo? All at once you recognize another song, faintly heard just below the symphony. You strain to hear, as a small feeling of hope invades your mind and you realize that the new song is just the undertones to the one you have already been hearing. The symphony has been playing, the sadness threatening to overwhelm it, but a small glimmer of hope reaches through the music to remind that not all is lost.
Grasping at the original music you heard upon entering, you snap to your senses and focus on the room again. The music is still there, but is no longer overwhelming you as it softens, seemingly almost apologetically. Your lights settles on the back wall and there you see a figure that appears a part of the wall. Thinking it is a decoration, you step closer before realizing that there haven't been any decorations like this on the entire ship. More cautiously you take a moment and step even closer. With a sudden realization, the decoration is in fact a humanoid individual, seemingly embedded into the wall, but even more surprisingly...the individual is alive.
Looking at the figure, you are surprised by its appearance. The face, almost human although thinner and with sharper angles, has soft blueish-green skin, two eyes, a mouth, a nose, and long burgundy hair that seems to float in the low gravity of the ship. Two brown horns protrude from the top of the head and frame the aliens face and you also notice feathered wings coming from its back the feathers colored in multiple shades of red, pink, and purple. As you look upon it, you notice multiple tubes and other instruments injected into its body in what must be a painful manner. As you examine it closer, you note incredulously that it's breast rises and falls gently and evenly as if asleep. You double check your readings and note that there is no atmosphere, so what it is breathing?
The figure stirs, and it's eyes open slowly. The color of the its eyes matching its skin color, it blinks slowly, uncomprehendingly as it focuses on all the figures before them. With a small shudder and wincing, it smiles in what can only be recognition.
"I can't believe you've finally arrived," she says, her voice soft, melodic, and sweet if pained. Reaching out a hand slowly, tentatively towards you, she asks, "Will you join the symphony?"