Instrumental Praise - Xxxx - Love -

The fourth movement: Praise . Elara had struggled with this title for years. Praise for what? For the disease? For the silence after his last breath? But Kael had been right. Her god was love, and love does not promise to stay. It promises to have been real.

Because Elara hadn’t played a concert in seven years that wasn’t, in her own heart, an act of instrumental praise. Not to a god of doctrine or dogma. To something far more fragile and vast: the memory of a love she’d lost. Instrumental Praise - XXXX - Love

The hall goes dark. Elara walks out in a deep blue gown that Kael once said matched the color of the sky just before a storm. She doesn’t bow. She just raises the violin. The fourth movement: Praise

Ezra smiled. “Not who. What. Love itself.” For the disease

“Praising who?”

He died on a Tuesday in October, just as the leaves were turning the color of old brass. His last words to her were not “I love you.” They were: “Play something beautiful for me. Not sad. Beautiful.”