He lost track of time. After a while the pain in his thumb wasn't so bad, unless he attempted vibrato. The sound became a little less like an owl, he discovered, if he adjusted the distance of his bow from the bridge and didn't press as hard into the string with it as he usually would. Since his father's ban, he had often read his mother's old copy of Ballet Shoes, so no longer enviously dreaming of ballet classes but simply reading ballet as a tidy metaphor for any life of art and discipline. He watched old films like Intermezzo and Red Shoes in the same spirit with a thrilled recognition. He decided this pain in his thumb was like the necessary agony of young ballerinas learning to dance on points, aspiring to grace even as their shoe tips filled with blood.