Title: Comet Asylum (Drabble Collective)
Author: Lady Storm, Eshva, Raph
Author's Note: I write so many drabbles that I decided to just smoosh them into one story. Updated whenever inspiration strikes. Please review to let me know if I'm wasting my time posting these or not.
Music In His Ears (Itches In His Fingers)
He learned how to play the piano once. Of course, it's been years since then, but once in a while he still finds himself making his fingers dance clumsily across a flat surface. He tries in vain to retrieve that smooth flowing of digits he had once been able to at least feebly imitate, but now his fingers are a jumbled mess, his left hand completely useless and out of sync. He had never quite been able to control both hands at once, and he certainly cannot do so now. He strives to call back memories of tunes he used to know, cheap symphonies and cheaper keyboards, but his right hand is struggling and his left had long given up. If one would look, he would appear to be but a young man tapping angrily on wood, merely alternating which fingers he hits with. And maybe he is. But he listens to the music in his head, the music he wishes he could bring to life, the music he wishes others could hear.
But it's alright. He does not need to know piano to survive, he tells himself. What is music, but an entertainment, a leisure, a false breath of happiness? Yet he still burns and corrodes inside with rusted envy as he watches the player summon flawless notes and chords without effort, but certainly with emotion, as the music kisses his ears and bleeds through the room. He wishes it were his hands, his fingers, his being, gracing the air with that beautifully bleeding sound.
When it is time to leave and the notes shudder just once he silently weeps. There is only the mocking echo ringing in his head now, and he scrambles to hold on to the bars and measures before he can forget, but only scrambled fragments remain.
However the burns only last as long as the music lingering in his head, and then he sees midnight black and a porcelain face and the broken music is replaced by another - the melody of their vows and beating hearts. He weeps at this as well, for he knows, he knows this time the other can hear it too.