Fantasia

IX

Eddy played through the entire first movement. His intention to play pianissimo throughout the whole piece had been thrown out the window after the first five bars or so. It was replaced by a yearning, a fiery passion. When his bow finished the last note, Eddy just stood there, his ears and brain trying to process what he just witnessed.

Which was Eddy Chen's violin playing after a decade of silence.

Eddy opened his eyes, took the violin off his shoulder and stared at it for solid two minutes, the fingertips of his left hand were burning due to the lack of calluses while his eyes got moist and a lump formed itself in his throat.

"Why?", he cried into the quietness of his apartment. "Why?"

Why had he abandoned what he'd loved and held so dear back then? Why had he given up on his dream? On his passion he had worked so hard for?
Suddenly, it all came flooded back and Eddy knew, of course, why.

He had fought. Hard and fierce. And he'd lost, and in the face of losing even more, he had given up everything.

Even that one really important person in his life.

Eddy dropped his head, gave up on holding back the waterfall behind his eyelids and just let the dam break. It must have been years, probably more than a decade since he'd last cried like this. The tears streaming down his face were accompanied by a set of sobs which shook Eddy's body and heart to the core. His violin and bow were held in fists. Fists that never wanted to let go again.

"This is so stupid!", Eddy mumbled after the first, most urgent tears had been spent and brushed over his wet face with the back of his hand. He felt so silly for letting himself go like this. "Useless", his mother would say.
Yeah, a pretty accurate description of how Eddy saw himself right now.

He drew in a stuttering breath, squared his shoulders and put his violin and bow back in its case. What had he been thinking? How would an impromptu playing session after a ten year abandonment help him in any way? All it did was bring back mostly hurtful memories he'd been trying to push out of his life since his late teens.

Not because of his former passion itself or anything directly related to it, no. But because of how he hadn't followed his heart back then, even if he hadn't really had a choice.

With a loud clasp, Eddy closed the case. But instead of putting it back into the corner, he let it rest on the coffee table. For now.
He quickly tossed the ingredients for a simple fried rice dish in a wok and after he'd filled his belly, Eddy actually felt better by a margin. With a lighter mind, he got ready for bed, wondering what kind of things he'd encounter in his next dream, which he may or may not enter tonight.

The scorching hot sun was especially brutal this time, as Eddy stood there, the high grass around him tickling his calfs through the fabric of his black pants. He looked around. At the palm trees surrounding the area. At the green hill in front of him. The tall mirror on top of it.

Eddy stilled. There was music again. Much, much louder than the times before and when he hadn't been able to detect it as violin playing the first time around, it was impossible to mistake it as something else this time. He closed his eyes as his feet automatically carried him closer towards the piece of glass and listened to the sweet melody. Was it something he knew? Eddy felt like he'd heard this piece before. Multiple times in fact! And the way it was played, it sounded so familiar it made his heartbeat accelarate. His non-trained ears were not able to put a name on the piece though. Eddy's eyes fluttered open and he found himself a few meters away from the mirror, when he noticed something profoundly different.

The surface of the mirror. There was no grey and white anymore. Eddy's eyes widened, half out of surprise, half out of shock.
What? Was that really the moment he had been waiting for? Would he now finally discover the core of all this? After months of wondering and pondering, would he find an answer to what those dreams were all about?

The last meters were taken in long, fast strides and then, Eddy stood in front of the full-length mirror. Instead of the white grey fizzle it showed black, but there was also a red shimmer in the middle.
And surrounded by the red light, there was a lone figure further away, standing there, holding something in his hands.

Eddy held his breath and came closer. Who was this? The person didn't look tall and except its silhouette, there wasn't much visible. And yet, Eddy felt like he'd seen this person before. In fact, he kinda knew the stance, the frame. Eddy gulped. What should he do? Would something weird or bad happen, if he tried to reach out? Be it vocally or physically? But then again, this was a dream, right? If anything would go south, he'd wake up anyway? Worst thing that could happen would be another hurling session in his bathroom. Nothing new there.

"Hello?", he croaked, his voice sounding like he'd smoked since early childhood. Nothing. The music continued, the shape didn't move.
"Uhm, hello?", Eddy tried again, louder this time. And indeed, the violin playing stopped. He put all his focus on the silhouette and didn't believe what he saw! Surely, the outline getting bigger and bigger, indicating the person coming closer from the other side of that fucking mirror must have been the product of Eddy's wishful thinking, right?

But the shape did come closer, the red shine got covered up more and more by its shadow, until the whole picture looked like a solar eclipse with a very human like sun god or something.

Eddy was freaking out. Beads of sweat ran down Eddy's face and back and his hands were shaking almost uncontrollably when he decided to bring them towards the glass against his own instincts.
But if this was it, if this could lead him further, he simply had to take a leap of faith.
So he forced himself to stretch out both arms towards the now almost completely black mirror until his fingers touched its surface.

Suddenly, a white, blazing light emerged from the point of contact, blinding Eddy so he had no choice but to scrunch his eyes shut and turn his head away from the massive pull he felt, dragging him into the mirror...