Most Beautiful

1. Chapter 1

            Her hands were hypnotic. The very way they moved was reminiscent of breathing, every flex an inhalation, every extension an exhalation, every motion stalled a bated breath on the edge of being released with a flurry of sound. They were given to life in a way that no other solitary part of her was. They moved of their own accord, souls in palm, creating life through all mediums that passed before their mortal god. As souls needed a God to live, a God needed souls and no purer souls than these existed. Living only to create. Creating only to live.

            The way they danced across the strings of her mother’s violin was controlled and passionate at the same time. They were precise and intuitive and thus spun the richest yarn of music the hall ever did hear. The music itself was nigh a lullaby, velvety like sleep, warm like a father’s arms, tender like a mother’s voice, but mournful notes struck the listener at intervals as though sensing the right time to pluck the weakest heartstring. Her eyes were closed as she played, yet she would open them and tears would slip down her flushed cheeks to the aged willow body of the violin. This was she at her inner most level, a mourning mother playing a final lullaby to her child. She could play until her arms fell uselessly to her sides and still not have conveyed the entirety of her sorrow to her audience.

            Her hands were the instrument. She stripped the silken gloves from her hands at every event and drove the callouses deeper until at every moment of the day she felt the oiled strings beneath her fingers. When she played her hands were warm. Only then were her hands ever warm and it was the moment she set the violin down that I would take hers in mine and revel in that rare treat, her hands upon my face radiating that gentle feminine warmth that I was constantly craving. At those moments she seemed like a child herself, her eyes wide and innocent, her face taking on the childish roundness we both had known not too long ago, her wisdom like a child who was born too old, and mostly her hands seeming way to small in mine to be possible. I almost did not close my fingers around hers for fear of breaking them.

            Her beauty was that to start a war over. Her eyes were the color of ultramarine, her hair like a long swatch of moonless night, her figure womanish but very slight, her mind like a sharp clean blade. All things were worthy to die for, but her hands were worthy of the Gods, they were so perfect. The palm was plain and sturdy, the fingers slender and rounded at the tips, the skin like flawless marble. I did not feel worthy of their gentle caress.

            Of her, I loved her hands the most.