Angela

The wind cooled her heated soul.  The sun shone softly on the air around her.  She sang as though each moment was her last.  Angela had been gifted with music.  It was not a wish, not a once in awhile want, it was a need that moved through her days and nights.  Music made her feel alive.  During the darkest parts of her difficult life it brought comfort, and courage.

Henry detested music.  He called it a waster of effort and time.  He forbid Angela to sing...at all.  Angela had learned the hard way not to sing around Henry.  She had gone ever so hungry time, after time, after time, before she finally succumbed to his selfish wish for silence.

The moment that Henry was gone Angela filled the air with the sweetest of notes.  Her voice was untrained.  Yet in her case her adoration for the gift of music made up for her lack of trained polish.

She sang with the birds in the trees.  She sang about the ripple of the water when she skipped a stone across.  She sang about life, about love, about pain, about sorrow.  She sang, and sang, and sang.  She had only ever been taught a few songs in her young life.  In church at the orphanage they were taught many classical hymns out of the small book.  Hungry for music, she would learn each every entire song in 2 hours of church.

Angela took the hymns home with her in her clever mind and changed them.  Copying the work of others initially, she would then expand on it, change notes to suit her desires, adding words that she preferred to the original text.  Throwing her head back she would perform for a field of daisies nodding with the breeze.  Song birds in the trees answered her musical entreaties.  There was always a stage in Angela's mind, and she performed on it as often as she possibly could.

Her favorite performances found her gowned in gold and silver taffeta and lace.  Ribbons of gems of be clasped about her alabaster neck.  She would stand very still and lift her head slightly.  In her imagination she was waiting for the audience to calm and become still.  Then she would lift her head proudly and song would pour forth from her soul.  She adored the power of that time.

When Henry came home, he would find her kneeling in front of the fire stirring some sort of food for a meal.  He never thanked her for preparing food.  He never commented on its taste or texture.  Angela learned that his thanks was communicated in a series of caveman like grunts.  Once relaxed and sated Henry would become slightly less repulsive.  Sometimes he would even request that Angela sing for him.  Angela loved those times the best.