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What Replaces Talent?

November 1st Prompt: A Musician's Talent is Stolen from Them

Every note she placed on the page reminded Jenny of the day she'd lost her talent. Each black dot reminded her of the shouts that ripped her down and told her she broke the rules. Each stem recalled the slurred arrows raining down after posting her first song. And each time, she paused, staring at the page with a shaking hand, before running through every single rule she knew before penning the next one.

"Keeping in time. Atonality - no. Not too much...or too little...the rules...the rules..."

Crooked fingers curled to claws around the pen, and her hand shook to the point of forcing her to grab it with her other hand. The hummingbird's fragile fingers hurt from the pressure they exerted, but she couldn't let go. If she let go, she'd stop, and if she stopped, she wasn't sure that she could pick up the pen again.

She knew the picture others saw: an iridescent green bird with a soft crimson head, a long beak, and feathery sleeves that came to a stop at her wrists to expose fingers so delicate that they might snap from too heavy a plate. It was the picture of an artist, and - so exquisitely appropriate - a tortured artist at that.

"The rules. The rules."

Yes, the same rules that had governed music, the same rules that the critics wielded like hunters' rifles, cutting down anything that was -

Jenny wanted to call herself different. She wanted to say that her work was new, that it was rough, that she didn't know everything yet, but it still hurt. Oh, it hurt.

And yet, it hurt so much more to stare at the page full of dots and lines and think, 'This isn't me.' She could read the music with ease, see the spaces, the technically-perfect pauses, just the right amount of harmony for the songbird season, sufficiently shrill in places to add conflict without ever taking it past the point of acceptability. She knew every rule, backward and forward, that the critics had used to rip apart her first song. She'd even written this one from the bottom up, three times, hoping to find some acceptable magic.

It was perfect.

It was joyous.

It was spring.

But it was not her.

The little hummingbird leaned against her desk, so close to crushing the tip of her beak against the blunt wooden surface. She'd deserve it, wouldn't she? Deserve it for fooling herself?

Because she couldn't follow the rules. They made it clear. Every note off by half a beat, every pause that was a hint too long or a smidge too short, every little error that the flock of critics had seized on and sung of had been one more dart into her neck, stripping her voice little by little until it felt like the only thing she knew anymore was the list of rules.

The List of Rules, as she came to think of it, from which nobody could deviate from. Her voice, her talent, had been pecked away one blow at a time, replaced by that hurtful list, and she'd come to hate it even as much as she'd come to wield it to keep herself from stopping.

Jenny was one second from slamming her face against the desk when her hand started shaking again. Too close to the page, it slashed across her last line, metal nub digging into the sheet before she could stop it -

"No!"

But it was too late. The perfect line, in line with the List of Rules and completely harmless to her, was marred. She stared at it, seeing the scattered breaks, the breaking of measures as quarter-notes became eighth-notes, broken by sudden breaks for breath and silence. Steadiness was replaced with abruptness, a darting flute breaking through the steady song, and, and, and -

The List of Rules threatened to peck her throat shut forever with its hundred-plus entries. Jenny stared at the lines, feeling them rising like a kettle of raptors to shred it apart. She shook her head again and again, fingers tightening around her pen as she knew what they'd say. Another list of pain, another litany of failures, another -

"No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!"

Her tiny little voice barely rose above a murmur even as she tried to scream. Hummingbirds never did, after all, but as her wings buzzed, as she felt the memory of pain returning, her hand moved despite her. It ripped, it tore, it darted across the page, and she took her pain out on the lines of ink and paper.

"No!"

'No' to letting the List of Rules ruin what was an accident.

"No!"

'No' to doing what she was told only to be thrown down again.

"NO!"

And 'no' to perfection, because if perfection hurt, then why do it? Why be perfect when the List hurt even then?

Even as she raged, even as she cried, she scratched out line after line after line of her work. She screamed as only a hummingbird could scream, silently and with great venom for the greater things in life, darting from piece to treasured piece, an iridescent ball of utter fury at the unfairness that kept her working so hard just to fall so far.

When she was done, there were only scattered pieces of her song left. It hurt to look at them, and it was agony to think of what she'd lost. Everything had been technically perfect. Everything would have been praised, before the marring.

But it was not her.

The List of Rules had replaced talent with technique, voice with tradition, and imagination with restriction. She could not take it back, not simply as that, but Jenny could not, would not sing something that came from their voice. She would not sing the List; she would sing Jenny.

She just had to find her again.