Notions
By Christine Lennoire
I. Notions on his Sitar
Most musicians who choose to wield a stringed instrument these days – chose the guitar. Not Demyx. Because he wasn't a somebody to be included in that group of musicians anyway. Demyx was a nobody. And not just a nobody in the sense we use it in today. He was a 'nobody' who was created, not born. Created of the darkness in people's hearts when they become heartless, that is. As a nobody, he chose to be different and stand out – he played the sitar...
It made a beautiful sound, Demyx found out, and he liked it more than anything else. As the hours floated by, with nothing to do in The Castle That Never Was, he found that he could entertain himself with numerous compositions on his strange and beautiful instrument. And it could go to lengths that he himself could not. With it – he communicated phantom emotions that he himself could not feel, but could only dream of.
With his precious sitar, he could emulate a song that mirrored feelings that he once had and bring them to life once again. Music lamented for him, the loss of things oh so valuable to him... things that the heartless took for granted. So his sitar played on – going through all the emotions – going through the motions of a normal musician: writing music, performing, and yet, never feeling. He let his sitar do the feeling for him. Yet, it was never the same.
His thoughts ran wild. While it seemed that he never really thought too deeply on matters of the world, Demyx did. But he did it from behind his precious instrument, while plucking the strings and telling a story with the long and flowing, or sharp and painful notes of each individual piece. Hope was overrated, he told himself.
Everyone knew that they didn't have emotions. So how come this instrument – an inanimate object no less – how come his sitar could create such feelings and he himself could not? The world was never fair, but it had never seemed so unfair before as it did to him now, as he picked up the odd instrument and began a loud and angsty tune like he had never composed before.
Zexion listened from outside the boy's door, and listened to his mind's confused and angry thoughts, as he began to contemplate it himself... and form a few notions of his own...