Free Destiny's Kingdom: Legend of the Chosen by Daniel Huber, Jennifer Selzer

Muse…you're…"  
    "Shh…" he hushed her, placing a finger against her lips which almost caused her to swoon. The woman laid a second hand on his belt, pulling herself into him as he stood cupping her face in his large, strong hands. He tipped her chin up so she would open her eyes again, and he stared, his kind eyes focused on her. "We'll not have it be that Twilight Bloom goes by without your talents being heard by all. Now," he said, moving close, and brushing a tender finger over her jaw. "Take your gift and use it well."
    With those words, he bent down to retrieve her guitar from the ground, and he placed it in her hands as she stood, still mesmerized from the affect he had on her. Every pore on her skin zinged with life and sensation, and her fingers felt electric with energy that she'd never before experienced. When she grasped the neck of the guitar in her hand, a new feeling of enlightenment came over her, and suddenly she knew again what it meant to feel the music flowing through her. She sat down, focused and determined, and the melodies came without hesitation, without thought. Midway through writing down the notes of her first song, she puzzled for a moment and looked up and around her, trying to remember what it was that she'd seen or done to recapture the ability to play her instrument in this manner after so long a spell of hopelessness. In her mind's eye was a vague memory of a most striking man, but there was no evidence of him now, and her song was running so rampant through her soul that she didn't care to pause on what caused it to come to her so freely, but merely to enjoy the sheer elation that she felt from it.

    It had been a profitable day for Trina; thirty-five chid had jingled in her pocket, and twenty five of that she'd given away, to merchants or to those who seemed to need it, either by secret deposits to their gaping pockets as she walked by, or from generous tipping for routine services.
    As they left the dwindling hum of the marketplace, Trina saw, off away from the carts and the merchants, a shape that she'd seen before, that she'd helped before. Clea glanced over to Trina's face, following her intense stare as she looked over behind a barrel of fresh cut flowers, to see a very old man sitting alone, whittling at a piece of smooth bark, though not watching his hands as he did. Wordlessly, Trina made her way toward the old man and Clea followed. As she approached, she was sure to make plenty of noise with her feet, because she knew that the old man was blind and would not see her coming.
    "Hello," Trina said warmly, leaning down toward the old man who appeared to be trying to carve the wood into something. "How goes your afternoon my friend?"
    The old man looked up toward the voice that addressed him, and there was acknowledgment on his face but no focus in his stare. "Ah! The young artist and her fair faced friend!" he said. "The afternoon goes well. Another beautiful day."
    Trina's eyes knit together in hopeless sympathy. The man was all alone, and she ached to see him sitting on the dirt. She glanced to Clea, who knelt beside her, a bit more detached than her less traveled friend.
    "What's that you're carving?" Clea asked, trying to distract Trina's bleeding heart.
    "Oh, this," the man said with a dismissive wave. "Once, many years ago in my youth I carved kava flutes. Carved them and played them. I sometimes revisit the hope that one day my sense of touch will be so polished that I can do it without visual aid." He turned the whittled wood over in his hand and laughed. "I don't think today is that day, though!" He threw the wood over his shoulder and shrugged.
    "Well at least today you keep all ten fingers," Clea chided. "It's a brave man who wields a knife like that with no eyes to guide it." Trina shoved her lightly with surprise at the bold comment, but the old man laughed along with Clea.
    "Bravery or foolishness? Hard to tell the difference these days," he said. A breeze blew