Member-only story
The Liar’s Enigma
Chapter 1
Truth was a game Astrid played by herself.
As far as hobbies went, it was also the least expected. If life had gone as planned, she would be practicing her fifth violin concerto by now, nurturing dreams of a world stage. It had been her childhood aspiration since she first picked up the instrument as a little girl. At one point, Astrid thought nothing could derail her meticulously planned goal of being accepted into Juilliard.
But that was before she lost her hearing. So now she spent her time biking the usual route to Central Park, debating her two favourite questions.
The first was picking apart her life before and after the moment known as “the freak incident”, where a budding musical talent seemingly found herself deaf one day. She would never forget the horror on her parents’ faces when she came home crying, sixteen then and claiming she would never hear a violin again.
Nor could she overlook the months of attempted recovery, being shuffled from one specialist to the next and plied with every form of analysis and treatment. Yet, as they could never find anything that would logically explain her situation, they were also unable to conjure a solution. Everything from hearing aids to a cochlear implant failed to return sound.
