This story was inspired by the enchanting music from the upcoming film industry release, “Piano and Strings Edition“, a collaborative album created by brilliant composers Michael Maas, Martin Hasseldam, David Christiansen, Sandro Schmidt and Stefano Fasce.

For details on how to contribute your own music-driven tale to the Illumination collaborative flash-fiction challenge, click HERE!

Listen to the featured track, Ages by Michael Maasin the sidebar music player.

________________________________

The world is slowly slipping into a silence that is deafening in its finality.

Life has cast its final show, the last of its players scattered, their voices fragmented and forgotten. The once vibrant landscape has vanished into the hungry mouth of devastation.

Even I grow weary of the emptiness.

I find my melancholy alarming, an affliction that gains ground with every lost sound. Every life collected pulls this land deeper into desolation. When humanity began its descent into oblivion, the music followed. The remnants of strings and keys lay discarded, their melodies abandoned.

I would surrender a thousand souls if it would bring the music back…

Yet another light dims before me. A young boy, his body battered and broken in the sugary sand, his hand still holding fast the handle of a long weathered case. I can hear the erratic rhythm of his heart as its futile beats are stolen by the greedy wind. What is it he holds so dear, that in his final moments, the last of his strength is spent on this stubborn grip.

Curious, I snap open the locks that anchor his soul.

I have not seen this particular treasure in ages.

It is an instrument of hope.

I can still hear the echoes of its past–the stale breath of its notes hovering in the oppressive air. When the boy’s shell severs its spirit, the magic in this case will cease to exist. It will become yet another trinket of a dying breed.

That is reason enough to change the boy’s fate.

I refuse to take another spirit that promises an end to the stillness. And so I surrender my claim on his life.

He will live and he will play and he will fill the void with melodies long buried…he will become an instrument of change.

It has been ages, but Death has not forgotten the power of music.

________________________________

© 2013 Samantha Redstreake Geary