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 ^{(it's beta!)}

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A young man sits at the corner of a tavern. In his dimly lit booth, his hands move and dance across keys only he can hear. An ailing candle flickers with every movement of his hand over the grand piano in his head. He hesitates, his fingers move towards d minor, somewhere over a coffee-stained mug. His hand strains, as though he is searching for a single note. With uninterrupted serenity, his hands flow onwards, a silent tune that only he can understand. Caring not for the hair that falls past his brow, his eyes, with every blink, move to search over the ivory keys that glisten with the candlelight. He is lost in the moment, stretching out into eternity.

A girl with a paintbrush sits across the room from the young man in the both. Se sees his fingers move across the piano that she too can envision. She strains to be able to hear what he is playing. She strains to listen so that she can bring life to the empty canvas that sits on her table. She decided, many coffee-stained mugs ago, that she would paint the young man at his piano, music flowing from his fingertips. She closes her eyes and imagines that she is in the booth with the young man, her head on his shoulder, so close that she may hear the music that flows from his heart to his fingers and then through the air that is still and scented with smoke and coffee. Then, she hears a note, hanging in the air. Two. Three. Seven. A song begins, slowly and surely it rises and surrounds the girl’s booth. Her eyes brighten, caring not for the wisps of hair that fall across her face, and they see, wavering in the air the song that he plays. She begins painting, furiously, vehemently, so that the fleeting image she sees flees onto her paper and onto her heart forever. She is lost in a world of her own, of colors and music that pierce through he dark and the smoke and the coffee.

Across the room, in the small and darkened booth in the corner of the tavern, the young man stops playing. Instead, he begins to glance at a girl across the room, painting. He smiles to himself as he watches the girl stroke the brush elegantly across the canvas. He wonders what she could possibly be painting so soulfully in such a dark and dank place. He also closes his eyes. He tries to envision himself sitting across the table from the girl with the paintbrush, as the acrylic pain wafts in the air above the booth. A tall candle at her table casts a dark shadow across the page. He cannot see what she is painting. His pale blue eyes, from under his dark hair on his face, stare intensely at her, but she does not look up. She would never look up to see him. With a sigh, he opens his eyes again. Squinting though the dark and the smoke and the coffee, he begins again, and with a passion he resumes composing from the sound the heartache and loneliness that pours freely from his heart into the dark confines of the booth in the corner of the tavern.

The girl looks up and across the room again, to the corner booth with the young man and his piano. She can still hear the music that flows from the young man’s heart. A waltz, or a minuet perhaps, that dances across the air and throughout the room. She closes her eyes, and immerses herself in his music, his emotion. It was filled with energy of hope, of life that was enclosed within this darkness. Her brushstrokes begin again, mimicking and flowing with the music emanating from the young man.

His hands fall to the table below. The piano had vanished. Playing it over in his head, he settles for half-finished. He leans back, shakes his head, and strokes at his nonexistent chin stubble. It was a somber tone that he played. It ached with the sadness and pain that he felt as he sat in the corner booth, enveloped in nothing but a fading light. He tilts his head slightly, peering back over at the girl with the paintbrush. She seems to glow with her own light, of virtuousness and hope and energy and everything that he cannot be. He stands up to leave.

Seeing the young man stand up, the girl sighs a little. The painting would have to remain unfinished. The music had died down in her heart. She brushes back an invisible strand of hair across her eyes as he watches him at the counter. She looks down at her painting of him, and takes a deep breath. She too, stands to leave, taking her painting with her and hurrying towards the counter where the young man is standing.

The young man sees the girl next to him at the counter. He falters, holding his breath as she pays for the meal. On the counter he sees her painting. It is unfinished, of a young man with dark hair and pained blue eyes over a piano, and out of it and onto the canvas flows a song that hovers in the picture with soul and emotion and energy. The young man in the painting is on an unfinished stage with lights and windows and colors so opposite of where they were now. He looks up at the girl. She looks into his eyes before she turns away and towards the door. The young man looks onward as the girl closes the door behind her before he, painting in hand, runs after her.

The young man falls out onto the street. Turning to his right, he sees the girl at the crosswalk, looking back at him. He hesitates only a moment before he rushes towards her and their embrace in the cold autumn night.

Somewhere in the distance, they could hear a song that flowed through the air with pain and joy and emotion and all the things that they felt that night were a part of each other.