Music was playing. Through the canopy of trees sun glinted here and there, beams touching the forest floor in bright patches like a magical quilt spread upon a bed of colourful, fragrant leaves.

The dress that Stefanie wore swelled in languid billows as a sail would in a light breeze. She was lost. A wrong step here, a turn in this direction instead of that, and she found herself here, in a clearing, on a Saturday morning in early July, warmed by the breath of the Adriatic. Nothing was familiar and the only sound she could hear was music somewhere, far it seemed, beautiful music played by a sensitive hand.

To be lost in such a way held no fear for Stefanie. She’d breakfasted scarcely an hour ago and the day was warming though it would rise barely above twenty-five degrees. Warm and comfortable and happy to wander, however lost, in such a delightful place with distant music joining the light breathing of the trees all around her, she could think of no better place to be at this moment.

The music stopped. Sounds of the forest rose to fill the void left by the violin’s notes with notes of their own. Something scuttled through the leaves, unseen, something small. A bird cried out somewhere within the canopy. Another bird returned its call.

As if to answer nature’s call the violin, once more, began to speak to the day in its gentle way of joy and pain and beauty and feelings that words could not express enough to still the longing of the heart.

Stefanie turned in a slow circle until she could sense the direction from which the music came. She was drawn and so she went, toward the sweetness of that beautiful sound.

~ ^-^ ~

This is one of those snippets, a piece of something that seems to come from a greater whole. In fact, I sat and felt the sun on my arm through the window, and the rest just came out of my fingertips. Can I explain it? No, it just comes. This tiny piece has the feeling of a sort of romance novel, not something I am especially drawn to, to read or to write.

But here it is, at the core of my philosophy, simply – go with it and see where it may lead.

I must admit to being a little curious as to who may be playing that violin. But we know, don’t we, that not everything that seems beautiful is beautiful and not everything that seems ugly, is ugly.