Amiya reached for her pajamas, then pulled back, remembering there was one last thing to do before bed. She sat back at her desk, gave her pen a shake—it hadn't been writing too well lately—and pulled out a blank piece of card. Damaged Article No.: 037 Damaged Article Name: Violin So she wrote. She was meant to describe it further, but it was just too ordinary. Its wood was bottletree timber, the kind you'd see everywhere in Rim Billiton. It was her sixth birthday present. Her mom used to take her hand in hand and teach her how to play, along with all the funniest rhymes for how to keep her position straight, not that she could really remember them now. The only words of advice she could still recall were: playing the violin isn't about bowing whatever way the sheet tells you to. It's about painting your own feelings onto the strings. And Amiya had tried, but the violin wouldn't sing with clear melodic tones, just shrieks and wails. One string violently twisted and flinched, like it was cowering in a customs inspection line, hiding with apprehension as deep as possible in the crowd. As if doing that would somehow escape the contrast-scanning gate at the queue's head and the shrill alarms it would inevitably set off. Another string began to shrink away as fast as it could, like it'd been shoved headfirst into a team of miners, left to shiver and curl up into a ball. Anything to conserve what little heat was left, to get just that tiny bit further from the bloodstained whips. The third string shook like it was going mad as active Originium dust glittered in the air, compounding the abandoned warehouse's smell of blood and rot to form a stench that no human could possibly bear. The final string sat amidst sharp animalistic cries and screamed why? why? why? And no string could answer that question. Coming back to her senses, each of the violin's strings had snapped under tension, and its body had been scorched a cerulean-black. Amiya tied the filled-out card around the violin's neck, and laid the broken instrument into the box with the greatest care. Many other things were in there too—the Doctor had caught an Originium Slug while out on a trip and fashioned its shell into this whistle, and Miss Theresa had knitted this hat that made such a funny sound when you pulled on it, and Dr. Kal'tsit had personally engraved this monitor band with animal motifs for her... They all carried those cerulean-black scorch marks, and now they laid in this box, waiting until they saw the light of day again. When? <i>When the flames of wrath across the land have quelled,</i> Amiya thought subconsciously, <i>when the nameless wrath roiling in her chest is no longer there to burn them.</i> But when would that be? Would she be there to see it? She had no idea. Just before she closed the lid, she caught sight of a tiny little dent made in the violin's side. Not a scorch mark, it was—she remembered—it was made just after she'd got it. She had thrown the bow at the violin, because she could never play it in tune. She left that mark out of anger. Amiya laughed. The wrath roiling in her chest might be nameless and senseless, but this little spark of almost petulant rage was one she was all too familiar with. It was one she could understand, one she could keep in check. She saw her little self, puffing her chest out and telling her mom, I know what anger is now. It's when you can't figure out why things never go the way you picture them. I can hear all the music notes in my head, but all I can do is make a silly mess out of it. So she would try and try again, until she'd never play a bum note again, until she'd never get angry about her own clumsiness again. Little Amiya promised her mom, she'd never smack her bow on anything again, because it wouldn't solve a thing. And so, Amiya took the ravaged violin out of the box. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after, she'd mend it up, and then try to play it once more.