The guitar

Jason ran his fingers over the softly curving edges of the guitar which had been handed to him. He had often watched his father playing it, seemingly lost in the music he pulled from its strings, his fingers dancing along them more gracefully than any person could dance with their feet. As he held it, not knowing what to do with it or how to play it, he could feel a warmth coming from within it that called to him, as if begging to be let free. Jason wondered if his father could hear that warmth when he played, and if it was that voice that he listened to within the music. That thought filled him with a burning desire which he had never felt before.

His father looked down at him and smiled. "I see that spark in your eye, son," he said, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I had a feeling that someday you would want to learn to play. But seeing that look on your face... You want to play even more than I expected you to." Jason looked up at him, confused, but determined to learn.

"Teach me," he asked. His father simply smiled and nodded.

Over the next year, Jason spent nearly all of his free time of every day sitting with that guitar, plucking at its strings, trying to learn how to pull the music out of it like his father did. Day by day he learned, and day by day he felt the warmth from within the guitar growing. It began to fill his body, starting at his fingers and crawling up through his arms to reach into his heart, from which it spread to the rest of him. He learned to play quickly, much more quickly than anyone expected him to. That guitar called to him, and he could not ignore its calls.

As he learned to play, he found that though he loved the music his father could teach him, Jason needed more. He began to branch out, looking for more ways to play, and how he could incorporate them into what he wanted to play. He learned bits and pieces of the styles of every genre he could find, and soon he surpassed his father in skill. By that time, the warmth inside him had grown into a raging inferno, and he found that only the guitar could let him control the fire.

He pulled back from the people around him. Though he continued to love his family, and they knew he did, he sunk down into his music more and more, and the few friends he had had faded away from him. His fingers grew faster and faster, and in school, though he could not bring his guitar with him, he became known to spend more time playing an air guitar than pay any attention to what was happening in class. The few times he was allowed to bring his instrument, it was quickly sent away, as he couldn't pull himself away from it.

Eventually, even his parents knew that something had to be done. So they found a school, one where he would not be alone, and though it pained them to do so, they sent him off. And there, Jason would grow into the man he would become.