Cityscapes

She held her guitar, hunched over it—to practice, she told herself—but it had been a while, and there had been far too many distractions.

Finally, she played a chord.
There was no sound.

She looked around the room. It didn’t make sense—the bird outside the window was singing clearly.

She played another chord, then another. Still nothing.

Stubbornly, she played an entire song, imagining every note in her head, all the way to the last one.

When she tried to stand, the guitar felt heavy.

She set it on the table beside her and looked inside.

The size of her body began to change, shrinking until she was small enough to slip through the sound hole.

Inside, she saw the song—and where all the music had been going.

There was a city inside the guitar.

It was all hers. And from the ground below, she could still reach the strings—playing them, reshaping the city, changing it at will.