Another fragment.

[kiya]

Also: Have More Bach now. Ahhhh.

(Need more Bach.)

I met her at a party, one of those pointless social dances intended primarily for the display of plumage. The host was a tiresome old troll of a woman with a craggy face that suggested one sunbeam too many. She was tedious; her associates were tedious; her conversation was tedious. I cannot for the life of me remember why I thought it a good idea to attend in the first place; it was a long time ago, and I was much younger then.

I had been introduced to yet another entrepraneur who was interested in seeking my sponsorship for some scheme or other -- I no longer recall the scheme nor whether the aid he was looking for was financial, personal, or confidential. A beam of light glided past him: a woman draped in white, trailing loose sleeves almost to the floor, her toes occasionally emerging from the sheath of her skirts as she walked. She approached a chair set against one of the columns, a bird gliding in to a perch, drew a small harp from its case, and began to play.

I was entranced; I made some poor excuse to escape the conversation and approached the musician. The host grabbed at my arm, protesting that she could dismiss the entertainer if I was distressed, then trying to dissuade me from my approach on the basis of social status. I did pause at that, and look at her; I think I smiled, amused at her lack of knowledge, and for a moment it seemed she had been turned to stone by my gaze. She murmured some sort of distracted apology and departed, leaving me to my pursuit.

At a pause in the playing, I said, "Lovely."

She smiled; she had half a dimple, one that almost appeared at that moment and faded immediately after. Her head bowed, then, and she resumed playing, some intricate piece where her fingers played across the strings like sunlight on water.

Eventually I confided to her, "Your music far surpasses mine." This earned me a slightly truer smile, and a whispered, "Ah, you play."

I leaned against the pillar and watched her, listened to her; I asked her if I might play with her sometime, and she arched one eyebrow, as if enquiring if I was making some salacious suggestion. "Flute," I added. "I improvise well to accompany, at least."

"Perhaps," she said, and when she packed her harp up and departed under the withering gaze of the host I feared that I would never see her again.

I haunted parties for several months, wondering where she might be found, creating for myself such a fine meshwork of gossip about my infatuation that I began to be irritated by it. The occupations of my amusement, schemes and plans, I discarded readily, unless they seemed likely to distract me from her.

Just as I gave up to despair, I found her in a garden, playing beside one of the statues and next to a stream of running water from the fountain. She studied me quietly as she played, and then said, never raising her voice above a whisper, "Do you have your flute?"

My dearest memory of her will always be this one: she sat with the harp tucked up against her side, her leg supporting it and trailing white fabric across the floor. I could see her in the mirror as if she were posing for a painter, head bowed, crown of black curls tight around her head, the thin, dreamy smile.

She glowed; I always thought of her as a phoenix, luminous in the night, some delicate bird, more heron than hawk like they describe the southern phoenix, rising to greet the sun in a golden silhouette against my window.

She leaned back against my legs as she played, resting her cheek against my thigh; the bright red I was wearing left her seeming pale and ghostly, as if the fire within her was finally reducing her to ash. We played duets, me with my flute, her on the harp, and the guests danced around us, and ate fancy little things on sticks, and chattered merrily about nothing much.

She kindled such flame, lived in the vibrant glow of it; I sat by her bedside waiting for her to rise from the dust. I waited for a very long time, holding her hand until all hint of warmth was gone from it.