The hour was late; the house was quiet. Too quiet, now, and made unfamiliar by the absence of muted conversation in the study, sudden laughter from the morning room, or running footsteps down the stairs. Daniel had never in the past found silence oppressive.
That, too, had recently changed.
Tapping out the same run of notes, time and time again, was surely not endearing Daniel to the few remaining members of his household at this time of night . But sleep was elusive, as it had been for months. Staring up into the shadows above his bed only reminded him of the darkness looming elsewhere. Reading was no better option, not when the four candles he had already lit did little better than none at all to improve the bright blur of the page. If he wanted to compose—and he did, he had convinced himself that he still did—he could only rely on repetition and trust his memory to keep the notes in order.
Pity that his memory wasn't the part of him coming up short, at the moment. He'd never thought of inspiration as a fickle thing, like some musicians did. It was something he'd always found by pursuing it in unexpected places, and the practice had become a kind of self-fulfilling magic in itself. Now the practice seemed as dull and colorless as everything else.
Leaving off the stumbling melody, he ran his fingertips along the keys, smooth on their surfaces and worn at their edges. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the wood of the music rack.
All that did was upset the sheet music and send the pages scattering all over the floor, ruining a perfectly good artistic sulk. With an inarticulate grumble, he got to his knees and gathered the sheets into an untidy pile, mostly by touch alone. He cast around for the pencil—he'd heard it fall, it was here somewhere—and stretched a hand as far as he could reach below the pedals with no success.
“Goddamnit,” he muttered, rearranging his shoulders to push a finger-length or two farther toward the back of the instrument.
That, too, had recently changed.
Tapping out the same run of notes, time and time again, was surely not endearing Daniel to the few remaining members of his household at this time of night . But sleep was elusive, as it had been for months. Staring up into the shadows above his bed only reminded him of the darkness looming elsewhere. Reading was no better option, not when the four candles he had already lit did little better than none at all to improve the bright blur of the page. If he wanted to compose—and he did, he had convinced himself that he still did—he could only rely on repetition and trust his memory to keep the notes in order.
Pity that his memory wasn't the part of him coming up short, at the moment. He'd never thought of inspiration as a fickle thing, like some musicians did. It was something he'd always found by pursuing it in unexpected places, and the practice had become a kind of self-fulfilling magic in itself. Now the practice seemed as dull and colorless as everything else.
Leaving off the stumbling melody, he ran his fingertips along the keys, smooth on their surfaces and worn at their edges. He closed his eyes and rested his cheek against the wood of the music rack.
All that did was upset the sheet music and send the pages scattering all over the floor, ruining a perfectly good artistic sulk. With an inarticulate grumble, he got to his knees and gathered the sheets into an untidy pile, mostly by touch alone. He cast around for the pencil—he'd heard it fall, it was here somewhere—and stretched a hand as far as he could reach below the pedals with no success.
“Goddamnit,” he muttered, rearranging his shoulders to push a finger-length or two farther toward the back of the instrument.
word count: 363
Daniel Wheeling-Hare
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