Since Esmera was abandoned on a stranger's doorstep as a baby, the only person who has looked out for her is herself.
Until a lark starts visiting her, leaving behind exotic flowers and iridescent pebbles that the internet doesn't recognise.
Esmera...
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Esmera finally knew what it was like to be deaf. Or at least as deaf as the sorcerers who didn't possess the auditory magic she had taken for granted before she realised what it was. Either way, she didn't like the feeling.
She was a parrot whose wings had been clipped, a peacock whose glorious iridescent feathers had been plucked by the Milatanurans who considered them sacred.
She ran her fingers over the piano keys, not watching their movements but only listening to the sounds they made. She could hear the drastic difference between the notes emanating from opposite ends of the keyboard but not the subtleties between them.
The keys had sounded like a gradient once, deep and low and loud, transforming into something high and light and shrill. Now, only the extremes could be heard, even if Esmera closed her eyes and focused on the sound with all her might.
Still with her eyes closed, she tried to tap her way through a song she wrote many years ago after her first heartbreak, but the notes all sounded wrong. Esmera had been able to use her ears to guide her once, but now all she had was her eyes.
She felt almost as though she had lost an arm or a leg. She didn't understand how anyone else could go through life with such minimal hearing, but then again, everyone in Milatanur had their own ability, and they probably felt as lost as Esmera did when they had practised their powers to the point of exhaustion for the first time.
She opened her eyes, resigning herself to them being all she had. Touch could do nothing for her when she hadn't yet memorised how this piano felt. Every key was smooth and cool and the same. Smell and taste were both of no help.
Her eyes directed her to the correct keys, and the tune playing in her head suddenly rang through the air around her. she smiled at how right it sounded, how familiar it was even though it took her to one of the many parts of her past she'd rather not revisit.
She murmured the words of the song to the tune, not trusting her ears to tell her if she was being too loud. She couldn't risk it, not in a home she shared with others. Not when one of them was a prince she had been betrothed to, who had the annoying habit of asking questions with painful answers.
