Songs of a Fire

A/N: This story is inspired by a piano music sheet that was brought to class for show and tell.

Firetrucks, that was the sound that awoke her on that dreadful morning. She can remember so many firetruck sirens screaming as they raced past her house. She sat up out of her bed and wrapped her robe around her frail body, slipping on her house slippers to go grab a glass of water. As she flipped the TV on, the remote fell to ground with a sinking feeling. On the TV was a house in flames, her daughter’s house. She reached for her car keys not taking the time to change her clothes as she rushed to her car. She drove a block over to see her grandchildren standing in the neighbor’s driveway, her daughter nowhere in sight. She screamed at the closest fireman "My daughter is in there you have to go back in, you can't leave her in there" But what she got back felt like an automated response "I'm sorry ma'am we are doing the best we can, but your daughter is blocked by a beam, we will keep trying until we no longer can." Then he turned away to continue on with what he was doing before. She felt helpless, unable to do anything as she watched the flames get bigger and bigger engulfing her precious daughter.
The next day she woke up with a feeling of emptiness. Unsure about how to go on with her life, knowing that her daughter was never coming back, she drove to her daughters house. A house that was filled with love, and happiness, the only thing to show for it now is a pile of black charred remains. As she walked around the property she noticed something caught on a tree branch. It was blackened around the edges but you could still read most of the notes, on the page. It was one of her daughters piano sheets. She thought back to when she would sit at the piano with her daughter and teach her how to play, remembering the sounds of wrong keys being hit. How she’d laugh everytime her daughter would fall off the bench trying to reach the foot pedal but her legs were just not long enough. Then thinking back to once she got older, how she’d spend hours at the piano learning new material, but would always remember to play the first song that her mother taughter her.

She took the piano sheet back to her house and sat down at her piano, her fingers sliding across the keys as she remembers her daughter throughout her life. Playing line by line, this was her favorite, she remembered. She thought back to her first break up when she played this song on loop, when she had her first kiss and she played the song with a more lively tempo. When her and her mother would get in a fight and she’d hit the keys a little bit harder than necessary to prove a point. Then Suddenly she hit a blackened edge to the notes and just like her daughter’s life the song came to an abrupt end.