She was playing her violin in the center of an unused classroom, making use of a ray of brilliant sunlight that streamed down around her and made the wood of her Stradivarius gleam. Every stroke of the bow over the strings plunged her deeper into her own world, setting her mind afire, filling her chest with an aching rapture that only awoke when she was enveloped in song. She was no longer an earthly being when he played; she became a part of the planets and the moon and the sun, part of the roiling ocean waves and the wind and the lightening, part of everything. Her well practiced coldness left her, and she did not care. No one could possibly hurt her when she was in this divine state of mind, so close to the universe that she could see it rushing at her in a gorgeous vision of color and light.

She increased the tempo of her playing, the sweetly wistful pianissimo building into something greater. She could feel the crescendo coming from a long way off, clenching deep in her gut, and closed her eyes against the dreary image of linoleum and stacked folding chairs and dusty textbooks.

She was playing her violin, yet it was playing her, every note an outburst of her long suppressed soul. It was not a song she’d played before. It came to her moment by moment, growing and growing, trembling with melancholic beauty. She gave himself up to it and swayed where she stood, opening her eyes to blink fondly at the ebony fingerboard before closing them again and sliding into perfect darkness.

She was nearing the climax of the crescendo. Something almost joyful crept into the music and try as she might, she could not stifle it. It turned her song into a wild thing, leaping and dancing and whirling. If the notes had a physical form, they would be spinning vertiginously through the air, wrapping around her swaying form only to rocket up to the sky and laugh at the sound barrier. She clung to her Stradivarius; eyes squeezed shut, feeling as though she and it were one and could burst up into the Earth's atmosphere, pass through it, and join the scintillating stars. The song was eternal, and for a brief, beautiful moment, so was she...

But it would end, as all good things inevitably did.

She scraped her bow over the strings in earnest, guiding the melody to a close. Her song grew soft and tremulous and then went out altogether, its last note a low, shivering moan in D minor.

Silence fell, erasing all evidence that moments earlier, a tempestuous musician had unleashed her every emotion within the plaster confines of the room.

It was better that way, she thought, and stooped to retrieve her polishing cloth.