It surges through her soul. Each thunderous thread of base and delicate string of harmonizing melody. Her heart pulses in time to its rises and lulls as her fingers drift over the keys of the computer. Music flows through her fingertips to paint itself across the screen. Rises and valleys in her work mirror the songs which drift through her mind. Slow jams outline the saddest dips of stories untold as R&B bleeds into the depths of power and romance. Steady the beat flows under each piece even with the shifting of the songs. Her fingers might not be able to bring to life the beauty of music in the same way as a musician, she knows she can’t paint the world with sounds from any instrument. Try as she might her fingertips just cannot connect with those little pearlescent buttons. Cannot control those levers and slides, the reed or the delicately carved ivory of keys, but she can drench her words in it.

Every word floats free of her mind with music as its breath, giving it wings which would be impossible otherwise. Her heart keeps the tempo even when the songs fade away for a moment before picking up into something new. Each song breathes new life into the piece. She could almost shiver from the excitement of working with those delicate notes. Everything in the world drifts out of reach as the only things remaining are that page as words flow across it and the sounds which seem to reverberate within her mind.

Characters sing with the vocals of those song-writers, pick up shreds of their personality from the people behind the music. A hint of sass from her, a touch of longing from him in that oh-so-slow song. Eighties rock lends an edge to an otherwise soft to the touch character. Life breathes into every dark line with the rush of every present song. Even just the hoo of a mourning dove floats in the background of the pages. There is no escaping the thread stringing through the center of her work, despite the fact the words from the music are not laid bare to the reader.

Smooth and heavy, music. Crescendoing to a bitter climax, music. A dusting of hope behind the ever-reaching trees, music. Anxiety riddled with the arching strands of ‘oh please no, please no’, music. Dread dripping through the woodwork to stain even the most stable of hearts, music. The sweet little grasp of love as it twines itself unbidden around a person’s heart, the staccato rhythm which pierces through to the very core of our beings when something complete and unbreakable shatters the rest of life to pieces. Music.

Silence rings. Her heart slows. The world filters back into being around her bubble of a lost world. Headphones dangle. The faintest strands of some forgotten song dances from their drifting speakers. Her eyes refocus and the story fades away. Inspiration lost within the grasp of the real world. Her escape lost to the accidental tug of a tiny chord against an arm-rest.

The computer shuts down with a chime.

Music.