fantaisie
The right hand drops a single pebble onto a high key. Then another, meticulously aimed. Three lower down, and then a careless handful tossed up an octave.
A gleam as both hands stretch a swath of clingwrap over the keyboard. A brief, trembling moment before it puckers in slow motion and comes to rest stickily across the keys.
The hands turn. An opulent pause, then the left hand draws up the willowy coils of a pale green snake, looping them into a heap that spills over the lowest register. The snake flicks its bright ribbon of a tongue once, twice. And a half. Scales shift on scales as the coils unravel with pristine effort. Left to right, the clingwrap surrenders itself in crinkles under the solemn, slender body.
Both hands trail behind the snake until the last of its tail disappears in a gracious curl. Keyboard unobstructed, the hands begin to streak paint playfully from black to white keys and back again. A rainbow emerges, churning. Each finger eagerly awaits its turn to waltz with the paintbrush.
The color is drying stealthily into matte when one hand realizes and sloshes water across the keyboard, swirling and thinning the rainbow into shadow.The hands trickle more pebbles onto the keyboard, tiny ripples emanating at even intervals. Gentle fingers shape mud around each pebble, then flick them away, their imprints preserved softly against the white keys.
Sneaking in from below, the left hand slaps a fat fistful of mud directly onto the center of the keyboard. Weighed down by the mud, the keys are slow to rise. In the interim, the hands take turns sprinkling seeds deftly into the cracks between them.
Soon the hands run out of seeds. The right hand grips a pair of dice, rattles and releases them with a flourish over a high interval. The dice are still racing each other down the keyboard when the hands begin to stir the ocean above the lowest register, coaxing a tidal wave out of deep slumber. Frothing at its peak, wave teeters for a thick moment before the left hand sweeps it devastatingly across the keyboard.
Thunder upon the highest keys.
Without pause, the hands reach up and bring a vase of crystal crashing down onto the center of the keyboard. Shards ricochet across the keys in a meticulous frenzy. One hand lightly, desperately flicks the shards away even as the other aims a second vase one octave higher. The hands now join forces. In ruthless unison, they smash glass after thin-stemmed glass all the way down the keyboard. A deadly powder begins to build up in the valleys between black keys.
One hand opens a window.
Sunlight, pale yet benevolent, drags its feet across the keys. The glass shards twinkle numbly.
Into the stillness, the softest curl of green emerges from between two high keys. A single leaf bares itself stoically to the fingers above. The sunlight now doubles down. Several tiny leaves follow, hesitantly at first, then greedily as the light draws them upward. Graceful young roots begin to grasp each other underneath the keyboard. Crumbles of soil slipping between the keys are saved from the fall into nothingness.
The hands return slowly, inviting mist from the corners of the room and draping it darkly over the keyboard. Each finger parts and layers, parts and layers again. The mist broods in soft pulses, never quite allowed to realize stillness. Only when it is so saturated the mist begins to spill over the edge of the keys do the hands move away, revealing at the very center of the keyboard, a single bright bloom.