"you never knew me at all but i see you"--mika

****i heard this song today and it reminded me of a character i have (and have been trying to work on forever)...so figured i'd semi-introduce her here. you may never see her again, unless, of course, i hear something else that reminds me of her. anyway...it's short and not much...****

The baby grand piano was seldom silent. It often sung loudly as the tiny fingers danced up and down its slender keys. Sometimes it sang in fragments, and at others it sang whole songs, in key and out of key, trying to find the sound it liked best. If the piano was other than an inanimate object, it would have been rather tired by the end of the long day, but because it felt neither weary nor broken down, it was often up until the late hours of the night, singing loudly whenever the tiny fingers felt the need to dance upon it.

The piano’s song made up for the lack of song that came out of the girl who sat by it. She let her fingers do the talking and the piano do the translating because she loved to hear what they had to say. Sometimes she cried if they told a story that moved her, but mostly she listened with the same soft, far away expression that she would listen to either you or I.

If the piano were other than a piano, it would not have been surprised to hear the phone ring early one morning. As usual the girl who seemed to survive without sleep, walked over to the phone as if she were expecting this early morning wake-up call.

“Hello?” she asked quietly.

“Zo,” replied the voice with a slight hint of obviously hidden panic.

“What’s wrong?” for those people who had ever seen the usual peaceful looking face, they would have been surprised at how stable her eyes were in comparison to the rest of her face that betrayed her calmness. She felt the panic in her brother’s voice and the memories made her shudder.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

“No…no. I need to come over. You up?”

“Of course. You could’ve just come by,” she said in her usual quiet voice.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be over in a bit.”

“But what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Listen, don’t worry about it and I’m coming over, okay?”

“Yea.”

“Just make sure you’re there, okay?”

“Okay, yea…but…”

“All right, just…wait.”

With confusion on her face, Zo hung up the phone. She sat at her piano, and thought over her brother’s words. It was easy to tell herself that everything was going to be fine, but to believe it seemed impossible. And so she waited for the inevitable, and time never went more slowly.