The storm knocked out the power at seven in the evening.
Maya's family found candles. Her parents played cards at the kitchen table. Her brother fell asleep on the sofa.
Maya sat at the piano in the dark.
She couldn't see the keys. She found them by feel — the worn dip of middle C, the slight roughness of the F an octave above.
She started to play.
Not a piece she had learned. Not scales or arpeggios. Just what came.
It started low and slow, like the thunder. Then faster — the rain on the roof. Then wide and rolling — the wind in the garden. Then something else underneath, something that wasn't the storm at all, something that was just how she felt right now, in the dark, alone with an instrument and no one watching.
Her mum appeared in the doorway with a candle.
Maya stopped.
"Don't," said her mum. "Please."
Maya played on.
When the lights came back, the spell broke. She lifted her hands from the keys and sat very still.
She had never played like that before.
She wondered if she'd be able to do it again, or if it had needed the dark.