He followed her, watching her; occasionally he spoke to her and she spoke back. We couldn’t hear their words, but it was tender to witness. I figured Nyte must be searching her thoughts at times, trying to find what could have been severed for a life full of love and experiences to have drowned within her own mind.
“This is the most she’s spoken to anyone in months,” Gweneth said to me, quiet so as not to disturb them.
“Nyte has his ways,” I said tenderly. Even without his ability, when Nyte wanted to give it, his devoted attention had a compelling property.
After a few minutes, Nyte joined in on her search. The clamor of instruments and occasional ping of breaking strings amplified.
He found a case buried deep. Flicking open the latches revealed a violin, untouched by the wreckage he plucked it from. I thought he’d found the working instrument to give to the elder woman, perhaps discovering it was what she’d been looking for all this time.
To my surprise, Nyte lifted the instrument until his chin rested in position and his other hand angled the bow against the strings. He tested a few notes at first, adjusting the pegs until the notes started to sound like beautiful potential. I wanted him to play so badly my soul ached for it. I hadn’t known, even in my past life, that Nyte could play the violin, but it was obvious from how he handled the instrument.
“Oh yes!” Gweneth’s mother exclaimed, clapping her hands together while she watched Nyte with the violin. The pure joy on her face lit up my own.
“This is what she has been wanting from this place?” Gweneth asked.
Nyte played a few notes, not a song yet, keeping her mother entranced while his gaze slipped to us across the side of the stage.
“There are those who say music is magick itself. That it invokes feelings that touch the soul deeper than anything else can. Your mother, Gweneth, used to play a long time ago. I think her subconscious is searching for a certain feeling, which may spark her memory.”
Nyte spoke on a personal level and my heart could hardly contain itself at the breathtaking sight of him with the violin in his hands.
How he slowly lost himself in the notes that started to weave together.
Then Nyte played, boldly and brilliantly.
I didn’t think I could feel any closer to him, but this… how Nyte could sing me his soul forged a new tie around mine.
Gweneth had floated closer to her mother until her hand reached around her hunched shoulders. As Nyte’s short melody finished, the elderly woman stared, as starstruck as I was.
The final note carried even in the silence. Then Gweneth’s mother spoke, her words rhyming into a poem.
“Beneath the sky where starlight glows,
Through silver mists, the cold wind blows.
A dawn awaits where beauty shows,
The tender light of the Goddess Eos.”
Nyte’s shock slammed into mine; our eyes clashed into each other at the same time.
“Eos,”I repeated through our bond.
Had we just learned the true name of the Goddess of Dawn?
“Gweneth?” the elderly woman croaked.
“Mother?”
Watching the recognition light up on her mother’s face, and in turn the relief and joy on Gweneth’s, touched my heart.
“I don’t know how permanent it will be. The mind is a very complicated and intricate system. I can keep trying to fuse together threads that have frayed, but I have to warn there’s a risk that it carries that could cause her to lose far more of her mind.”
“This is enough,” Gweneth said, cupping her mother’s cheek.
“You’ve grown,” her mother said, scanning her head to toe. Her aged face pinched in guilt as if she’d missed her daughter growing up. “You’re so beautiful, my Gwen.”
The resemblance between them still showed in the shape of their noses and color of their eyes. It made me think they once shared the same vibrant red hair too.
