Elle

“The greenhouse was made entirely of glass. Its ceiling reached five stories high, tall enough to fit a variety of fruit-bearing trees and vines. Butterflies flitted between sparkling flowers. Honeybees collected pollen for their hive, which conveniently drip honey right into glass jars. And watermelons, root beer melons, and orangeade melons grew along trellises.”
― Suzanne Selfors, Once Upon A Pet : A Collection of Little Pet Stories

“And then she caught the song. She fell upon it and music poured from the fiddle’s hollow, bright and liquid like fire out of the heart of the earth. Pierre-Jean drew back and stood mesmerized. The room around Fin stirred as every ear bent to the ring of heartsong. It rushed through Fin and spread to the outermost and tiniest capillary reaches of her body. Her flesh sang. The hairs of her arms and neck roused and stood. She sped the bow across the strings. Her fingers danced on the fingerboard quick as fat raindrops. Every man in the room that night would later swear that there was a wind within it. They would tell their children and lovers that a hurricane had filled the room, toppled chairs, driven papers and sheets before it and blew not merely around them but through them, taking fears, grudges, malice, and contempt with it, sending them spiraling out into the night where they vanished among the stars like embers rising from a bonfire.

And though the spirited cry of the fiddle’s song blew through others and around the room and everything in it, Fin sat at the heart of it. It poured into her. It found room in the closets and hollow places of her soul to settle and root. It planted seeds: courage, resolve, steadfastness. Fin gulped it in, seized it, held it fast. She needed it, had thirsted for it all her days. She saw the road ahead of her, and though she didn’t understand it or comprehend her part in it, she knew that she needed the ancient and reckless power of a holy song to endure it. She didn’t let the music loose. It buckled and swept and still she clung to it, defined it in notes and rhythm, channeled it like a river bound between mountain steeps. And a thing happened then so precious and strange that Fin would ever after remember it only in the formless manner of dreams. The song turned and spoke her name—her true name, intoned in a language of mysteries. Not her earthly name, but a secret word, defining her alone among all created things. The writhing song spoke it, and for the first time, she knew herself. She knew what it was to be separated out, held apart from every other breathing creature, and known. Though she’d never heard it before and wouldn’t recall it after, every stitch of her soul shook in the passage of the word, shuddered in the wake of it, and mourned as the sound sped away. In an instant, it was over. The song ended with the dissonant pluck of a broken string.”
― A.S. Peterson, Fiddler's Green

“Then she took up the bow and began to play. The tone was warm and deep, storied with layers of age.”
― A.S. Peterson, Fiddler's Green

“Maybe that’s the way of love. It doesn’t wait to be invited in, and it won’t be coerced. It gently creeps under your skin, a mild itch at first, not giving itself away in case you scratch it and cause an infection. But then it sinks in deeper, getting into your bloodstream. It travels. By the time it reaches your brain and you’re aware of the infection, it’s already taken over your heart. In Natalie’s experience, love is anything but innocent. It’s a captor, a guard, imprisoning you in the clutches of another, knitting the fabric of your own life to somebody else’s, whether you like it or not.”
― Nigel Jay Cooper