Capítulo 4: Anatia

The day was cool and the breeze streamed in with the sun through the windows which had been left slightly ajar. The diaphanous thin white curtains drifted with the gale, the bits of dust catching in the light. She pressed her finger on one of the points on the second string in the way that made the sound vibrant and whole. The note that sounded was perfect and she just took a second to marvel at it. At first it sounded sweet, like the rest of the notes on that string always seemed but when she plucked it again and let it ring out, and this time she heard something beneath, not beside the sweet trill. Not the shadow on the floor but the shadow on the object itself, the darker side of the half moon. And it wasn't bitter, but salty and sour, like a tang was threaded through it, a vibrant orange shadowing an impression of pastel pink. Her favorite note. She didn't know what it was called. She'd forgotten everything she had learned back when she had started to be taught, back when she was little. And she was glad of it, if she gave this sound a name then it would no longer be the sound, but the name, it would become just another note, not an emotion, not a feeling or a day or a moment. If she gave it a name it would turn into one of many instead of being this singular perfect thing. Well not perfect, it wasn't perfect, no when she plucked the note a third time it came out dull, she hadn't pressed her finger down on the board hard enough. But no, that note didn't come out dull at all, it came out like a drum beat, like the tropical tunes from the Southern Islands, the drums there held rhythm in every singular beat. She plucked the note like that again, like the drum, then moved to the first string and placed her finger similarly, the drum beat sound now altered to the different pitch of the note. She liked those notes, not just the actual notes but the way they could change from bells ringing out to a thumping drum, a beating heart. So she plucked that note again, then the first then the second twice more, falling into one of her flitting rhythms. She couldn't read or write music, didn't want to, even if Ben often told her she should write these little jingles down so she wouldn't forget them. But she didn't want to write them down, she wanted to play them, play with them. She wanted to forget them, because then the next one came, and she didn't know if she would play it again or if she'd played it before, just that she was playing it now because it thrummed in time with her pulsing life. Not her heartbeat. No, not the physical pumping of blood, though the moments when that fell into synchronicity with her rhythms always felt magnificent. No this was a different kind of heartbeat. Like a heartbeat for her soul, her spirit, her core. The beat of whatever felt these emotions that were weaving these rhythms and tunes. One one two, one one two, the rhythm shifted and evolved with that ever-changing soul beat, that pulse of life. One one two, one one two, one one three. She added an extra note, that same drum sound and pressure but a little higher in pitch, lower on the neck. It was like a singer she had heard at a tavern a few weeks ago, she'd been watching a target, watching his movements discreetly, and while she was sitting at the bar the women singing on the little platform near the back had caught her attention. Not the song or melody or words. But the way the voice sang them. She had heard the song before, an old lover's tale put to song, but the way the lady sang it, like she was telling a story, with the intonation and rhythm of speech but in a flowing lengthy river of singing. The rhythm of her voice and the rhythm of the song were aligned but there was a sense that it was coincidental, that she wasn't so much singing along to the song so much as it was flowing through the notes for her. It had distracted her so much that her target had left the tavern and Cinis hadn't even noticed almost 3 songs later. Despite the drum beat sound this rhythm reminded her of that lady, or at least that last spontaneous note did, it turned a three note beat into a story, with what if's and unlesses and musts. She played that a few more times before pausing and lightly running her fingers over the first to strings.