From The Ashes She Will Rise

He told her to slow down. Be careful, he warned, you'll flame out. I know, I remember what it's like to begin. Best intentions easily go astray. You'll run out of ideas, get trite, repetitive. Trust me, this will all get very boring very quickly. She closes the browser. Elizabeth knows that the only way to quiet the demons is to eradicate them, physically. Walk away from technology, turn off her phone, shut down his lifeline to her brain and by consequence her heart. They're just words, she says aloud, to no one in particular. Huh. She sips her tepid four dollar coffee attempting to appear lost in thought while the fey beanpole of a barista tidies up the detritus around her. Every day, every single day she writes. Then she rewrites, then scores it, records it and posts. Every. Single. Day. Two hundred and six so far. A body of work that documents in detail life after the fire. Total immolation. Complete loss. A rather charred and warped tabula rasa burned into her body. One story becomes a prologue becomes an aria becomes a choral round. It pours forth from some foreign source awakened by the collapse of life as she knew it. At first she is tentative, doubtful. Chris champions this new version of her. After the second week of pieces he begins patronizing her. His experiential knowledge, you see. Elizabeth writes longer, more complex compositions; arrangements for french horns, oboes and strings she never knew lived within her. Magisterial in scope. The work shifts with the seasons, reflecting the tenor of this new world. Her hair grows back, the bandages come off and she rises from the ashes a writer, a musical creator of limitless capacity. Elizabeth has no fear of failure. Losing her voice frees her hands. Blisters callous over and her fingers fly. She keeps the chat window closed, her phone on silent,  and drains the last mouthful from her mug. A series of triplets syncopated to the rhythm in her chest floods her fingers and the score comes streaming out. She closes her eyes. Chris's voice, his backhanded words of encouragement, become a foreign tongue, drowned out by ideas and phrases intent on making a life of their own.

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