Music

Uh... This is my first... I don't know what'd you call it...But I hope you like it and give me any feed back, good or bad, I don't care. It always helps my writing. Thanks.

Her fingers flitted across the keys, the melody quick and simple, but still touched one’s heart. As the last note died, giving way to silence, she stood and did a curtsy. The applause she received was thunderous, as it always was after she finished playing. She swept into another curtsy then left the stage.

She was nineteen. She had been playing since she was five, after she got her hands on a self-teach piano book her mother had for some years. Her mother had signed her up afterwards. At the age of eight she was considered a prodigy, at ten a musical genius. She had played in music halls around the world as a teenager: Carnegie hall in New York, the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, the Sydney Opera House in Australia. After a while, they all started to look the same to her.

This hall, though, she took time to notice. The curtains were of a deep red, edged in black tassels, the floor a deep mahogany, reflecting the fluorescent lights above her head, the grooves from the piano bench etched in the floor. The piano its self was a grand piano, the wood smooth and painted black, a dull shine to it, giving it more character than taking it away. The keys were worn smooth from years of use and the multitude of players before her. She looked around and breathed in the smell of old sheet music.

The hall was owned by her family. Her grandfather had bought it in the depression, a buy thought stupid at the time but worth the money in the end. Her father had played there before her, or at least she was told. She didn’t really know her father. He had died before she was born. Her father, it was said, was a brilliant musician, and it was only expected that she be the same. But over the years and through the multitude of concerts and lessons, she convinced herself that she wasn’t doing this because her father but because she wanted to. That she loved playing the piano. And she did.

She sighed, mentally shaking herself. She needed to get over this weird thing with her father and her music. Her piano playing was for her and only her. Fatigue finally overtaking her limbs, she left the stage. She slipped her heels off and carried them in her hand as she descended the steps, making her way to her dressing room at the back of the concert hall. When she pushed open the door, her ire grew as she saw dozens of flower bouquets spread out across the room. The one on the dressing table caught her eye and, going over to it, she snatched up the card.

Sorry I couldn’t be there, Sariyah. Hope you did great. Love, Lisa.

She threw the card down, anger overtaking her earlier fatigue. Lisa was her mother. She had missed tonight’s concert like she had all the others since Sariyah was thirteen. In the five years Sariyah had been living in New York, Lisa had stopped by once. And that wasn’t a meeting Sariyah wanted to remember. She gathered her things and left the room, not caring that in an hour all the flowers would be thrown out.