This one-movement essay for string orchestra explores darker sonorities and textures alongside relentless percussive and rhythmic activity. Harmonic resonance is often devoid of warmth here; plucking and other such wandering percussive activity gives way to relentlessly rhythmic turbulence; other textures - whether dense or light, rich or muted - are sometimes guided by solos that ultimately meander through uncertainty. The briefest of respites near the end of the essay summons an almost pagan-like aura, as if gazing upon an ancestral past of sorts through an ethereal haze.