A Daemon's Babble

Harmony

It had all started with a smile.

No. Actually, it had begun with a piano.

The old piano in the school’s music room that desperately needed tuning, that no one ever used. It was decrepit and aged and the black on the keys was fading into a dull gray color. He loved that piano. There was something timeless about it, something strange, something abnormal. He would cast a glance through the door at it every day. There was something ethereal about it.

Or that could’ve been the girl who played it after school hours.

He never interrupted her, but rather leaned against the door and listened to the harsh notes of the piano that wasn’t tuned, the jagged melody that whispered in his ear. She was always dressed all in white, like a snowflake, down to the tips of her white boots. Her skin was ghostly pale as well, with long fingers and of course, white nail polish. The only thing that wasn’t white was her hair, which was jet-black and gave her a rather strange appearance.

He never knew when exactly he had begun to fall in love with her, the girl that never talked but played the piano. He knew it was illogical, and stupid, but he would sit at that door for hours after school and listen to her play.

He never thought anything would change until the day that she opened the door. And he knew then that it was the girl that made everything so magical because she wasn’t quite what he knew. He didn’t know what she was, with her jagged teeth like the melody she played, or the four knuckles on each finger. But still, he loved the girl, despite the illogicality of it all, and with a grin like the cat who had swallowed the canary, she told him, “If you want it, find it.”

For a while, he didn’t know what he wanted, and the girl didn’t return to the piano. What was it he wanted from her, he wondered. What could he want from the demonesque creature that lurked in the music room after hours? And then he realized, he loved this girl, and all he wanted was her heart.

There was an almost funny absurdity to it all; he had fallen in love with a demon that had spoken one sentence to him and now he had to find her heart. He didn’t quite know if she meant that figuratively or literally, but he tried both ways. He tried writing her letters, to appeal to her better nature, but she didn’t return. He even tried playing the rotten piano by himself, but the cacophonous sounds that erupted from the instrument didn’t even resemble her jagged melody. And so he looked literally, in the biology room for a real sort of heart, as morbid as the idea was, and around the school. In the trees, maybe, for some bauble that she may have considered her heart.

The demon returned to the music room two weeks after she had left, and merely sat on the windowsill. “If you want it, find it,” she had repeated, with an almost amused glance in her opaque eyes. “No one ever has.” That made him think about who had his heart, how many other souls had yearned for her, listened to her play, only to fall away after failing her test. He thought about that, about her morals and his. About that, if it ever came true, what he would mean to the girl in white, if she would love him back or if he would become just a toy for her. She watched him from the windowsill, with raised eyebrows and that perpetually amused expression. And every day, “Did you find it?” And every day he would say that no, he hadn’t, and she would fall silent once more.

And then he found it one day, and he felt so stupid not to have found it before. He threw open the lid to the piano and there nestled in the strings, was a ruby. He had given it to her with a smile on his lips and her eyes had grown wide as she had taken it. And then she had smiled. “Thank you.”

He stole the opportunity to kiss her, and she kissed back as she pressed the ruby to her chest.

He felt her heart beating in time with his.

And they sat down where it had all began, and he had nervously put his hands on the piano, and she had given him an admittedly wicked grin as she began to play. They created something marvelous. Their laughter echoed through the hallways and they whispered after all the teachers and students had left. And occasionally he would spot a splash of red color of her cheeks, a sign that she was coming back.

The piano had never sounded better.