I want to be her. I want to be that girl on the stage, thin enough to wear white, but angry enough to wear red. I want to be the performer that no one agrees upon. I want to be the girl who sparks debate, who evokes emotion, who ekes and drains every drop of resistance out of her listeners. I want to be the girl who steals the heart of everyone who hears her play.

I want to become her. I want to hold the emotions of an entire room with nothing more than a nicely carved piece of wood. I want to transcend every rule of time and space I have ever been taught in that one magical, beautiful moment when everything clicks, when everything is perfect, by my freest, most calculating design. I want to be so good that I can find that moment every time, but I don't think I could ever get bored. I can't see how it would even be possible.

I want to tell her. I want to talk to her, and tell her how much she has inspired me, tell her of all the passions and desires she has ignited in me. I'm nothing like her, and never have been anything close to her, but she makes me want to change. I want to thank her, want to be able to return to her even a small part of what she has given to me.

I want to learn her. I want to find her faults, to discover her worries, to hear her doubts. I want to become as familiar with her as I am with myself, and I want to be able to accept her when the time comes, accept her as everything she is, because maybe then I will be able to accept myself.

I want to give her everything that I am, and everything that I ever will be, because I want to give her the world for her joys, but do not have the world to give. I would do anything for her, because she has done everything for me.

The first time I saw her, I was eleven and she was fourteen. I was wearing a sober gray dress, and I was sitting in the audience in that chamber-room, kicking my heels idly and wondering why my parents had dragged me here. I looked at the small orchestra as it tuned up, and I was bored. She was towards the back, short and slim and frowning as she worked over her instrument. It was a viola d'amore, and its fourteen strings required much labor to force into submission. I didn't pay her much mind, because I paid nothing much mind. I cared for nothing but my own amusement.

And then she began to play, and everything changed.

She was passion, she was fire, she was ice. She was beauty and cruelty and horror and awe. She was a flawed Goddess, a perfect human. I believe, to this day, that something Other touches her when she plays, because, by God, I cannot believe that that much pure magic can be the property of one single mortal, even one so amazing as she.

She was gorgeous on that night, and every other night I saw her, every time my parents brought me to watch the chamber orchestra. She was slight and exotic, with her pale, golden skin and her flashing blue eyes and the subtle flush to her cheeks, a mere hint of the emotion she held under her skin. I didn't care what she looked like, though, when she was playing, because it didn't matter.

I want to help her. I want to make her happy, make her laugh, give her something, anything, that she can use. I want to become more, simply so that she can take me and use me as she likes. I want to give back even a small part of what she has allowed me.

She has given me my voice. She has given me something to work for. She has given me a purpose. She is my all, my raison d'être. I am nothing, but for her, I would become anything.

I, Eliza Scorn, am wildly in love with her. China Sorrows.

A/N: I'm not really sure what I can say now. I think I said everything I had to say, really.

~Mademise Morte, December 2