Orchestrated Portrait

 

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Introduction

She speaks in melodies pulled from strings across strands and he speaks in acrylic drying upon a canvas.  There is no need for anything more. [Flash Fiction]

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Chapter 1

    They did not speak in words.

    They did not whisper sweet nothings into the ears of one another or promise forevers that would never come.

    They did not make giggled jokes or sultry seductions in the darkest nights.

    Instead she played for him the melodies of an angelic choir with the taunting undernotes of purely mortal desires.  If love was strung across strings in ballads on sunflower meadows beneath crystal skies then her songs were epics that danced on the sun's streaming spirals of flame.  Hers was a song that shattered hearts and built them back to be something more brilliant... more amazing.  Hers was a song that made men into masterpieces and women into idols.

    They did not speak in the same language or in ways that made sense to any other. 

    And yet they understood one another just the same.

    He drew sketches of a life more vivid than reality and with more fluidity than nature's most serene streams.  If love was red roses and pastel pinks then his paintings were fields of endless crimson bouquets with thorns as sharp as petals were soft and sighs could ripple them like ocean's waves.  His was an illustration of cherubs amongst broken statuary that elicited deep sorrow and hope.  His was a painting that made women into angels and men into demons.

    In the scheme of things there was no need for words between them.  A look at his drawings or a line from her symphonies gave enough of an image for what they were.  What they had.  In times of great joy her playing reached to a soprano lilt with bouncing notes that played in the air and along his ears and curly hair with giggled inflections.  In times of great sorrow his paintings became so laden with layers that dripped and melted amongst one another that they stained her dark fingertips when she followed his strokes with her own and tears made the colors blur. 

    Theirs was a love that could not be understood by most.  Others questioned them in mere words that echoed and shattered against them like raindrops over stone.  They spoke in ways that the pair could not truly understand.  The others could not hear the glory or see the brilliance.  They could not see what the world became when talking ceased.

    Never would a word ever part from the pair to one another.  Never would either hear anything from the other's mute tongue and yet they were satisfied.  They were content.  They were in love.  Those in love needed no other language to know one another.

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