"A storm," Elara whispered, the raspy sound barely audible even to herself.
Lily swung her muddy boots against the side of the cottage. "Yeah! A really loud, scary one with lightning. That's what happens when heroes get stuck."
Elara looked at the keys. A storm in a song meant dissonance, tension, a clash of notes that demanded resolution. She thought about the anger she had felt yesterday—the burning, suffocating frustration of having music trapped inside a broken throat. She hadn't allowed herself to be truly angry since the accident; she had only been sad.
She raised her hands and let them fall onto the keyboard. She didn't aim for a chord. She aimed for chaos.
Crash.
The low, heavy bass notes groaned in protest, vibrating through the floorboards. It was an ugly, aggressive sound. Elara winced, but she didn't lift her hands. Instead, her right hand moved up the register, striking a sharp, minor chord that clashed violently with the rumbling bass.
"Whoa," Lily breathed from the window, her eyes going round. "That sounds like a monster waking up."
Elara felt a strange, terrifying thrill. She played the progression again, harder this time. She let her grief morph into fury. She poured the screeching tires, the shattering glass, and the agonizing silence of the hospital waiting room into the keys. The newly tuned piano handled the violent playing perfectly, projecting her pain into the quiet room.
She played until her fingers ached and her breathing grew ragged. And then, right at the peak of the deafening, discordant crescendo, she stopped.
The silence that rushed back in was jarring. Elara sat trembling, staring at the piano. She had found the storm.
Frantically, she grabbed the pencil and the blank manuscript paper. She didn't know the exact names of the complex jazz chords she had just smashed together, but she sketched out the rough notation, the rhythm, the heavy bassline. She scribbled furiously, terrified she would forget the feeling before she could trap it on the page.
When she finally set the pencil down, she had a full page of messy, angry notes. It was the bridge of the song.
She turned to look at the window. Lily was clapping her small hands silently, a massive grin on her face.
"The dragon is definitely awake now," the little girl whispered, as if afraid to break the spell.
Elara smiled. It wasn't a sad, fragile smile this time. It was a real one, reaching her tired eyes. She had written something. It wasn't pretty, but it was hers.