lonely_instrument ovenbird The piano wasn’t there when the sun set, but in the morning it occupies the garden, like something sprung from the frost heaved earth. When she steps into the yard, there it is, wrapped in cardboard and packing tape, an inadequate coat against the pelting rain. The soil is pocked with puddles, the leaves make a moldering mulch. The keys are fractured beneath their corrugated carapace. No music will be coaxed from simulated ivory. At least not until spring. Inside it’s too hot. The thermostat says sixty degrees. Is that Celsius? she wonders. That can’t be right. But she’s sweating and the air feels aggressive. She thinks to open the door, draws back heavy brocade curtains, and feels an arctic draft. Snow has claimed the garden. The piano is gone. Not buried, but gone, curled back into the starchy rhizome from which its polished feet rose. The snow is piled against the house, so heavy that cracks propagate in the foundation, so white that the world goes blind to even the possibility of sound. 251212 what's it to you? who go blather from