354 HoME Note and Heartstrings

In this season there's a reason home's where the hearth is. To leave it is to enter the cold:

Like gravity, home-warmth decays inversely with the square of the distance. And its song fades even faster.

But the road to atonality seems adventurous.

We're warm-blooded beasts, and we embrace hunkering down. Distancing myself from home—going hearthless—I grow heartless. Linguistic irony: only one letter's difference—a spell.

Extramural sounds outshout the harmonies of home's protection. The lush tones of family and home, once circling my brain like playful earworms, now circle a drain. As I walk farther, my half-cup-full drains half-empty.

I listen for saving refrains, but hearthless is tone-deaf.

Far away from home, my withdrawal discharges tonality, in lieu of alighting on a discordant score: a foreign strain, unlike my song. Unlike the warmth of my original melody which had flickered so warmly to illuminate my soul.

I defy the accruing dissonance as cymbals crash in warning!

I journey the Staff, horizontal lines and spaces that chitter musical pitches as I step on the cracks that break my mother's back and, in doing so, sound each crippling note.

Yet, in doing so, I garner the sounds of worldliness.

I am composing my own symphony, away from the home note of my former home and my original anthem. I abandon all melodic sense.

It's cold! The music's tinny, monotonous.

What was I thinking! I must return to seek home's note—my home note—if I'm to avoid my cruel finale. The curtains.

I turn and return. Home at last; but its doors are locked. I reach for the right key.

The tumblers align like rich harmonies, gaining me entrance. I again feel the warming embers that play on for me. Hearth renders heart; heart warms hearth.

Mine, I now realize, was a giving song, forgiving me for seeking the shrill cacophony I had played—plucked with slings and arrows. And with stupid, clumsy fingers.

My prodigal melody disarms the tension, my percussing hammer uncocks, disarming tension, bathing me in respite, resolving all worldly tensions:

The home note.

The hearth's lush euphony is warmth and heartbeats. And home. As warmly as I bask in the hearth, my heart sings again.

Beautiful music!

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ABOUT THIS STORY:

This is a reworking of my entry into the Tales of Hearth Vocal challenge, Home Note, @ https://shopping-feedback.today/families/home-note-aaaa507w0. Garnering so few reads, I thought I'd slip it into the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge to rack up a few more reads (because I love this piece!).

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AUTHOR'S NOTES:

For Thursday, December 19, Day 354 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge.

366 WORDS (without A/N)

A DOZEN DAYS TO GO! THE STORIES KEEP COMING LIKE THE NEVER-ENDING CLOSE TO "HEY, JUDE," ON IN THIS 2024 STORY-A-DAY VOCAL CHALLENGE.

There are currently 3 holly-jolly Vocal writers in this 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. (Beat) Schäfer

• Rachel (Backbeat) Deeming

• Gerard (Beatnick) DiLeo

AMONG THEM,THIS YEAR VOCAL HAS ADDED OVER A THOUSAND(Count 'em—a frickin' thousand!) UNIQUE, NEW STORIES.

NOT TOO SHABBY!