Title: Fled Muse
Rating: G, I suppose.
Contains: despair, angst. Work does this to me.

This simply wasn't right.

Daniel picked up his pencil and messily erased the three measures he had just written. The sudden climb up the staff stood out too starkly against the solemn staccato that preceeded it. Shaking his head, he tapped the melody out again on the unhelpfully blank keys, wincing as he tried a particularly awkward transition. Sometimes the keys spoke to him, suggesting themselves as the next logical note in a phrase, but not tonight. Perhaps he was simply too shaken up to really get his head around the music, which was painful; melody was supposed to be his means of escape from his conscious thoughts, and he really needed it right now.

He glanced back over his shoulder at his companion, lying on the couch in reproachful silence. After tonight, there would be no more of her delicate soprano accompaniments as she read a half-finished score over his shoulder, and no more enthusiastic discussions on Schubert's under-appreciated genius. He had been a fool, and had let that all slip away, and for what? A few fleeting moments of ecstasy? A brief quenching of an insatiable hunger?

The fingers of his left hand danced a chromatic jig on the bass octaves, echoing the dark pulse of his emotions. He had forgotten himself and gone too far, too fast, even though he had sworn to himself to avoid precisely that. And no matter how severe his self-recrimination, her silence was more painful still.

Another backwards glance; she was staring at him accusingly. Shuddering, he stood and walked over to her, sitting on the edge of the couch and gently closing her eyes. No breath warmed his hand; there was no mark of violence on her, not even a pair of telltale punctures on the soft skin of her neck. It seemed as if she had just... stopped, like a watch that needed winding. But unlike a watch, there was nothing on earth that would make her heart start ticking again...

He rose hastily, unable to look at her for long without feeling the hurt. Was that what the lashings of the Furies felt like to Orestes? He hadn't killed his mother, but he had done this to someone who trusted him... that was, perhaps, just as unforgivable. As the black self-loathing began to creep in again, he found his way, blindly, back to the piano bench. Arrangements would have to be made, of course, and he might lose face for making such a childish blunder. But, he mused bitterly as he plucked out the frantic whirl of his thoughts on the keys, they weren't concerned about her, as a person... just as a mistake to be scrupulously corrected.

Well... people were never "mistakes" to Daniel.. and it frightened him to the bone to realize that some day, he'd probably think the same way as his elders did. As he transcribed the grief-inspired arpeggios, did those tears of blood fall for her, or for himself?

11/22/2004: I wrote most of this for no apparent reason other than that I was frustrated and bored. Short drabble about Daniel, my more-or-less newest RP character. Apologies for excessive angstiness, it seems to go with the subject matter.