I came into this fiction with an image: Marie sits in the cavernous music room in the mansion, playing a piano, just as her mother did in one of the opening scenes of X-Men. Wouldn't Marie have had piano lessons, too? The damn bunny affixed itself to my bum and then began chewing (demanding that I create a story to go around it). The time Marie spends with the piano is her time with her mother, who she cannot be close to except by telephone and letter; there is no comfort for her in her mother's touch, only death. But when she plays, the piano comes alive under her hands and rejoices that someone can finally appreciate her. For so long she'd been surrounded by children who hadn't the faintest idea how to treat such a great lady as a Bösendorfer Imperial. Speaking of the Boze Imps, you ever seen one of those? They're huge. We're talking 9 feet, 6 inches, accomodates the slinkiest chanteuse. A man sits down to one of those things and you just know he's over-compensating, but a woman who plays an Imp has some serious chutzpah. They're the empresses of all pianos, handcrafted over a seven-year period from wood that has to be taken at just the right time in January, when the sap is especially low. It gives me a thrill to imagine even touching one. Please visit Bardstown Audio, a Kentucky-based recording studio, that features a "sampled piano" program and has mp3s of the Imperial reproduced in a digital format. Delicious! Another mon pauvre Marie (MPM) fic, this one was inspired by Jennifer Garner, my mother, and the aforementioned Bösendorfer Imperial, this was the first song by Evanescence that I paid attention to. Oh, I heard "Bring Me to Life", but "My Immortal" was something that reached out beyond the "Gee, that's cool" reaction to touch something deep inside. I spent quite a bit of time in front of the computer battling some serious eye leakage over this. My own recollections of my mother are numerous, many of them not the happiest because as we all know, childhood is rough no matter what the circumstances. But the earliest memories that I have of my mother are all tinged with a sense of warmth, safety, and touch. And that's what I wanted to bring to this story. Marie can play and be transported to that idyllic time when her mother first introduced her to the piano. There is warmth and tenderness once again. Evanescence's Ben Moody wrote "My Immortal" when he was fifteen years old. Lead singer Amy Lee gave its simple lyrics an emotional complexity and depth which underscored Jennifer Garner's mood in the funeral scene in Daredevil. It is, without a doubt, a haunting and beautiful piece of music.

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