It was then I realized as her hoof stretched softly over the strings, that I was the accompaniment. My own hoofs responding and slowly the wiry vines of my harp joining in. Her melody carries me along and it walks us across our history, pointing out our memories. I chime in with happiness and sadness and love and friendship… and together we play in time. Fights, dreams, tears, joy. Weekends with empty pages and stoppers filled with ink. Concerts filled with wind and the echoing of our music over every seat.
She sniffles. The music doesn’t halt for her, but my harp skips for just a note. She doesn’t speed up and curse the moment, this final moment that we play in. She doesn’t slow down either. Try to keep our time hostage. Suck each moment dry and hang onto our wishes. She lets the music have it all, evenly and truthfully. But each time she breathes it shallowly and her eyes are rimmed red.
Agitating water. I feel it myself and it is bitter. It blurs my eyes but not my hoofs so the song carries over more memories and rehearsals of our lives. I tremble over each wavered note that represents a day I had forgotten and the tune alters slightly as the memory sinks in.
Not her. Her hoof glides steady through the mess that is our past and she doesn’t pick at each word like I do, like I must, she listens to it. Ears twitching, constantly tense and alert. Yet…
My hoofs move faster and the harp picks up speed as I try to explain the memories we had just reached. Our last play together. It had been two years. I change the tempo and convince her that it's life that had kept me away. Then I slow back down a moment and remember one of her favorite thoughts: never blame the music blame the player. So instead of speeding up I try to match her once again.
But the music shockingly and suddenly picks up speed faster than my hooves can move. Her shoulders heave and her legs kick out against the fear of falling down beneath the noted burden. She looks at me, pain etched in every crease and wrinkle. Where did you go? The music wails softly. Where are we now?
I am the accompaniment! I shout it and her lip trembles but she plays on. I open my mouth and try to convince her once again but no words come. The notes are jarring to my heart and I am shaking my head no, no, No, NO!”
She picks it up. Finally, she picks it up or winds it down. I can’t tell anymore. But she is crying and the tears are flowing out across the strings and echoing in every ear that stands around to hear us play and all that I can think of as I add onto her life is damn! Where had I gone?
Then she drops the pace back down again and the tune grows sweet as she sniffs away the previous notes. Head bowed against the wooden scent of her first love. My hooves can hardly play so I halt and let her speak alone. She smiles and her mane sticks wet against her cheeks. She speaks of me. I close my eyes for the first time since we met again, since we started up today. It is too much; I am not worth your thought. It is too much! I hear my hoof play out soft onto the strings.
She tells me that she knows I left because at heart I am… no. I cup my ears against her voice and shout, NO! My hooves frantically wave to quench the tune, destroy the wicked memory of our parting and my life back at home alone. I am done! Done with hearing of the life that I had chosen! I said it, shouted it in waves at her. Yet it never came. I had forgotten that I let my harp strings go. So I wept, dropping tears that shredded through my lifeless hands and tinted the music’s glow.
She played on with a smile and she sighed. She clucked her tongue and motioned to the harp with her bow. Motioned, that it was not done but simply had somewhere else to go. That it was not worth tears. The tempo lightened and she played the joys we learned alone. Of my life back at the cottage lively tunes and new friends dancing with the old. Her own life inside of glass halls and moaning notes at crystal balls... Each one incomplete and waiting for the other, yet it only makes the notes sound better, though the music has gone bitter. The hearts of both players no longer carrying the love that they once owned! Even still…
I gently pick the harp up and I ask her is it over? My teeth bite into my lower lip and the vibration is clear within the tempo. Are we truly at an end with the music that we strove for together?
She whispers softly no. Her tune goes back to normal and the cello offers a sweetness and relief that is calm once more.
I am so overcome that once again my fingers slip. I chuckle and wipe at my eyes, letting loose a few small quips between my fingers. Ones that she doesn't hesitate to respond too. Dipping for the first time in forever, her voice is back within my path. I hug her with the notes that I can remember and I kiss her with the gratitude I had forgotten that we’d shared. No, not ones I had forgotten but had lost on my own. On our journey.
The sun bites through the clouds. It violently rends against the rains that threatened us moments before. It brightens every seat and each breath is held as it hits the laughter in her cello. She grins and lets the bow slide once last time across the strings. Then she gently lets me go.
“Thank you.” It is all that I can say and even said it is not heard but understood.
There is cheering. Each seat is off the ground and their silent claps are all we need to know; the crowd asks for an encore, but our life is not yet full.
