Hubby is on Baby Duty. I am most studiously not doing any of the things I ought to be doing, and am instead finishing yet another chapter. :)
Drawing Music
It was amazing. He had spent weeks, hours each night, exploring the limits of his instrument. It was difficult to find time when the voices overhead were faint and far away enough to not be overheard by any unintentional eavesdroppers...and even so, he'd made mistakes and overheard snatches of the employees' conversations, wondering about the mystery musician. Each had assumed it was some other employee and the debate was minor and easily forgotten; far too many people lived in the household and most had some sort of hobby or another. Unless it was disturbing their sleep or their work, it was only briefly brought to attention and then quickly ignored.
It had been necessary, then, to find a silent place to indulge himself, and the arched space under a heavy stone staircase seemed perfect. It was closed off except for a small squared opening, empty but for spiders. Isolated and small, if it had a larger opening he might well have found himself mouldering there rather than the somewhat-less-cramped and more-visible room he'd been relegated to. The sound echoed off some surfaces, was absorbed by the layers of mildew and dust on others, and muffled. The addition of a false door, pieced together from scraps of boards from the ever-useful pile of pallets and crates, was the final touch. The rusty nails securing it together held two layers of wood together; it was thick and surprisingly dense despite its decrepit appearance. Pulled across the opening, it served the dual purpose of blocking any view of himself and muffled a good portion of the sounds he drew from the viola.
And sounds he drew. Tucked under his chin in an approximation of how true violists had played, the bow held at various angles and in various grips, fingers pressing and sliding and even plucking along the neck, he drew an astonishing assortment of sounds from his prize. Soft wails and cries from the drag of the bow along wires gave voice to his misery; at other times, the whisper of a finger down the neck and quick cupping movements of a palm formed the deeply-missed whisper of wind among the pines of his long-lost mountain home. A rapid sawing of the bow at the highest of pitches created the voices of the wolf packs, calling and crying in the cold clear nights of Rumania. At other times, stacatto steps and swirling whirling descants called to mind the swirls of skirts and tapping feet of the ladies in great ballroom dances, the graceful and powerful swoops and bows of the men escorting the flowers of nobility across a gleaming floor.
And sounds he drew...although the bow slowdly and steadily frayed, and strings wore and snapped despite his careful light touches and care. The bow, reduced to a few remaining threads, was regretfully placed aside, and fingers and palms stroked sound from four, then three, then two strings...and finally to the last, remaining wire.
When it broke, it nearly took his heart with it...and he was alone again, the oppressive, empty, unchanging silence seeming all the greater now that the viola no longer sang out in challenge.
Abraham's nightly visits saw no change, noticed no difference, the vampire's unchanging face concealing both the joyful musings on new sounds and techniques as thoroughly as it now concealed the sorrow and loss.
But it was difficult to go back to blank nothingness now that his soul had been stirred, had found some form of release and expression that had been denied under the iron control and silvered fist of Hellsing. And so he railed internally, searching and hunting for a replacement, and found it.