Melodies Vignette

A Story by writeinfinity

Short exploration of my character Miyabi Shibata.

Soft melodies whisper through the evening air. Fingers and strings run together in a veritable symphony of motion. A young girl sits cross-legged on a backless park bench strumming the guitar with the years of experience she had worn into the tips of her fingers. The song “Goodbye days” fades into the wind as the final note sounded and Miyabi Shibata raises her delicate face away from her guitar to see reds and blues playing harmoniously in the sky as the sun set across the bay. Times like this made her wish she were someplace else. The screams she had run from still rang loudly in her head. Her parents were fighting again.

Her dark auburn hair tickles her neck in the fluttering breeze. She fidgets on the bench, leaning forward to grab a notebook and pen stashed in the worn guitar case that sat at her feet. She laid the guitar as one would a newborn baby to rest in the case and began to write. Words flowed across the page in a torrent of motion; her eyebrows were furrowed in recollection. Her left hand clenched as she wrote. Music was her rest. Her face relaxed as she wrote. She reveled in the ability to put to paper all the anger and sadness she felt because of the apparent hatred her parents felt for one another. After the flood of words subsided, she set the notebook beside her on the bench and picked up her guitar again from its case. The guitar snipped her knee as she brought it to her lap and her face crinkled in a grimace. She reached down and gently rubbed the knee through the hole worn in her jeans. A black brace peeked out from behind the worn denim and many scars ran in x shapes on her knee cap. The grimace faded and her hands returned to the guitar. The headstock gleamed in the dying sun; white letters spelling Fender crossed the deep brown of the wood behind them. A few scratches ran along the body of the guitar. The smell of lemons wafted up to her nose and the polished wood caught the sun creating a dazzling splash of orange across the bulky guitar body.

Miyabi looked up towards the purpling sky and saw people looking expectantly at her instrument. She smiled lightly and began to strum again. A rebellious note sounded out and Miyabi adjusted the silver tuning peg before looking out at the people once more.

“Hello everyone, my name is Miiya and the song I want to play for you is called ‘Stay with me’.”