Musical Interlude [Petra]

[Finn]

67 Searing 121
The Academy of Kalzasi

In the northeastern corner of the Common, the Academy of Kalzasi was peaceful—at least on the surface. Deadlines and projects and securing funding added stressors to the larger harmony of the place. Finn couldn't help but think of the world in terms of music; when he had chosen it, he had chosen it, and it had become his life. He was grateful that his mother had supported him rather than demanding he apprentice to her in her forge. He was grateful to his father, the homemaker, who only wanted his wife and children to be happy. He was grateful to his grandmother, whose mysterious connections had led him to a magical rune, which had led him to his employer, which had sent him down the annals of history in search of the Leh'anafel, the Singers.

Now he had a goal. He wanted to be a bard, perhaps even the court bard, but he might even travel someday and see the world, hear the songs of every people. He was keenly aware of the little nudges and help he had gotten whether the open adoration of a child listening to him busk or the honored Shinsei advising him to seek patronage from House Zatrian, which led to him being at the Academy at all.

But while purpose kept him going, he was burning the candle at both ends. Between his studies and his music and the playing for his supper, he was often tired and frequently overwhelmed. And so it was today. Hitting a snag in his research, he had come outside to sit on a stone bench in the sun and pluck at his lute. Physical activity helped untrammel his mind, but he couldn't walk far—he had work to do. Instead, he let his fingers move deftly over the strings, finding their way to a song he was working on.

He teased the melody, ambled around with it to figure out where it wanted to go. Knowing he was near a window, he didn't play loud, nor was his voice raucous as he tried out some lyrics he had written, which he thought might end up as the second verse.

Honest is easy
Fiction's where genius lies
'Cause it's easier sometimes
Not to be involved
Somehow I make you believe
Believe.

He frowned, not liking that he had to make a contraction of fiction is and truncate because to make it fit the music, but that was why music took time to hone and polish.

[Petra]

“Do you hear it?”

Yesod’s hearing was always better than hers. Petra still finds it galling. How can the monster hear, without ears?

“Music… on the breeze.”

That strained voice snaps Petra from her studies. Yesod rarely takes notice of the outside world, seeming to prefer drifting as a shade through the multitudinous environments of a young scholar’s life. Petra is surprised to hear that a song catches his attention, of all things.

But as soon as she has perked up from her universe of ink-on-vellum, she finds herself sliding down the same path. Dulcet and smooth, the words tickle her ear. Like a lark twirling around the staves, the tune leads her between the notes and shows her the wonder in their relations. It surprises her, and disarms her. It has her slip her bookmark into her most recent project before she even thinks about it, and has her moving towards the lead-and-warped-glass window before she has time to hesitate.

How often did she hear music in her childhood, after all? Far, far too rarely. It is still a treat to her, somehow, even after all these years.

She spots the young man almost directly below the window, in the shade of the great weeping willow whose boughs droop to the carefully-manicured grass. Good enough for her. Book left where it is (for who would disturb something as utterly prosaic as Ben Yechaim’s Prologemena to Future Conjuration?), she slides on her bolero jacket and dances down the stairs.

Two at a time, even at her height - it’s a mark of her enthusiasm for the music that slowly, like creeper up a wall, crawls through the shelves and corrals of this meager, but charming, library.

The fresh air smells odd, after so long suffused with rotting paper and old leather. It is strange to feel a breeze after hours in the carefully-controlled library air. Her shock of brown hair rustles, and the long, thin braid down her neck flicks, like an affectionate tail, behind her.

A pillar shades her, and provides her a vantage to look, with appraising and appreciative eyes, at the player. Silent and watchful, she is an ideal audience.

Her applause, at the song’s terminus, raps out like a military tattoo, staccato and sharp. A sure mark of her appreciation, and a welcome one, given the utter impassivity of her mask of a face.

[Finn]

When I speak I cross my fingers
Will you know you've been deceived?
I find a need to be the demon
A demon cannot be hurt.

He thought perhaps he might sing that chorus thrice at the end, assuming his audience was receptive. As he played out the theme, he tapped out bits of percussion on the body of his lute. The music needed more of that, more than what he could manage while still strumming, more than his bootheel thumping softly in time on the flagstone. His music was always reaching for something more, something greater. For all that he was a poet as well as a musician, he couldn't articulate most of his experience; the closest he got was melody and rhythm, dissonance and harmony.

When Finn was finished, he was startled by the sharp applause from the pillar.

"Sorry," he said, a snap reaction. "I was trying to play softly so as not to disturb anyone. I just needed to not be staring at words for a little while."

He paused, then, "I mean, thank you."

The academic minstrel couldn't tell from her face or her body language whether the applause was sincere or sarcastic. Will you know you've been deceived? But as a performer, he tried to take such things at face value rather than beat himself up over it or, as he had seen others do, beat someone else up over it.

"Ah, any requests?"

He offered a smile and a major chord that shifted into something that felt unresolved, like a musical question mark.

"Or I can shut up and go back to my books," he offered with a sheepish grin. She had a gaze that reminded him somewhat of Lyra's: inscrutable. It didn't make him nervous exactly, but certainly alert.

[Petra]

"I am glad you played as you did. I was in need of disturbance."

Petra's voice is high, but 'girlish' does not quite do it justice. There's something fey about it, that steady, knife-sharp and monotone expression. She is no bird fluttering around a great oak, or lying in its shadow. She is the ax, whistling through the air. The sublime music of something unnatural put to a worthy task.

"I thought I needed a break from words. Seems they just needed music. If only I had someone to sing my research to me."

She glances over her shoulder, and the monster appears. The great, looming, metallic, unnatural mass of her demon. It looms over her, shadows her, puts her in perspective. Heavy, and hard, and dangerous. From the pillar she leans on it inches out, interdicting a fragment of that brilliant afternoon sun and losing Petra's face in an ink-black shadow.

Petra's stare is inscrutable, and the monster is too inhuman for recognizable response. It is a strange exchange, between the impassive and the unnatural. It ends, and though subtle, Petra's face shows the tiniest uptick of amusement, the air around her warming with a subtle, relieved humor.

"Your books don't deserve you. They have neither appreciation nor applause."

Her monotone, laconic voice gets louder as she walks over, leaving her demon behind. She enters the shady abode of the weeping willow, and admires the great canopy of drooping boughs. The privacy it affords has a certain appeal - she finds herself feeling... safe, perhaps, within its embrace. Rare enough for her to have comparison for something matronly, after all.

"Something... I'm not sure." Petra pauses, searching for the word, as she lingers on the edge of the great tree. "I never had a mind for music. Something... uplifting. Something to charm a beautiful stranger, and make them want to be charmed."

Her smile grows infinitesimally, but Finn notices. Even the smallest show of feeling is loud on that hawkish, silent mask, and now the show is distinctly of amused, pleasant curiosity.

It is the face of the rapt audience, quintessentially.

[Finn]

Finn laughed softly, still trying not to make a ruckus when he knew people were attempting to focus. The fact that music helped him focus didn't mean it was the same for others. He was about to make a quip when the strange creature made itself known and words died before they were uttered. As he witnessed the exchange, he didn't know quite what to make of it. The thing looked nothing like any creature he had heard described before, but if it was present here in a courtyard of the Academy, he ought to be safe enough. These weren't the Warrens where one took one's chances.

When she started to speak again as if nothing had happened, he thought it prudent to follow suit. She was a small woman with an unusual voice, though, and there was a mystique about her that made him curious. Of course, he was well aware of what killed the proverbial cat. Then, again, people forgot the second half of the proverb.

"The books to teach me some things that life can't, though," he admitted. "And while there's nothing quite like a receptive audience, it isn't everything." But at her request, his fingers found a major chord as he tried to think of what song to sing.

But he also thought it wise to open up his senses through his Rune of Mesmer, the better to hear alarums of danger should dangerous things come looking for him here. He sensed amusement, curiosity, and attention, but they felt shallow and he wasn't sure yet what lay beneath, but he paid close attention to her particular symphony, trying to ignore the strange discordance that he couldn't name. Perhaps he would ask his old red-robed tutor what that meant; the old man hadn't seen him in a while and had always said he should come with questions.

He found himself playing a charming tune in waltz time, something he remembered from festival days when the populations of several small villages nearby would gather to share food and drink, dance and song. It was uplifting enough that the elders would get up and move, recalling younger days. It was lively enough that the adolescents would risk asking someone to dance. The song itself was simple, but worked through his own aesthetic, he layered on a bit of sophistication so citizens of Kalzasi wouldn't call it prosaic.

[Petra]

"I never said they didn't have value. The stars and fires know they've taught me plenty. From the reigns of kings to the baking of banana bread to..." Petra glance at Yesod, always waiting in her shadow. It seems to prefer being in her blind spot, just out of sight. Never out of mind. The twisted figure of unnatural metal seems to enjoy casting a shadow over his summoner, though within the confines of the shady willow the shadows already fall like summer rain. "...other, more esoteric pursuits."

That is the last attention she pays to Yesod. She is content to let him linger on the edge of acknowledgement, always teetering on the edge of being forgotten entirely. Silent and still - perhaps it is watching the conversation, or perhaps it simply doesn't care. There is no face to discern the emotion, and Petra's is little more help.

Her mask is almost as blank as her demon's.

Petra leans on the tree - she's happy to be near the other man, if only to be momentarily taller than his sitting form. Her boots perch on one of the roots, tapping gently in perfect time with the music.

"I said they don't deserve you. And if you keep playing that sweetly, neither will I." She is a receptive audience, without doubt, though she is more than willing to speak over the music. She never stops listening, that is clear. Able to speak and listen at the same time, well enough to not miss out in either end. A useful talent, one Petra is very thankful for. She trusts that her new friend can listen and play - one far rarer, and even more useful still.

"Where is the song from? It's beautiful. I wouldn't know where to guess - no ear for music. The acoustics are terrible in the Middens." A joke, or at least a sardonic comment; if it was meant for humor, Petra's tone is as dry as the deepest desert. Though, just perhaps, that is part of her charm.

She likes to think so, in her more vain moments.

[Finn]

She was glib, he noticed, but for all her clarity, the way she spoke sounded like riddles. Her face was impassively sphinx-like, and as he was new to her symphony, he couldn't tell yet whether she meant to deceive or merely to make conversation. He could sense that she was aware of her strange companion but unperturbed. And she wasn't faking her interest and enjoyment of the music, it seemed. That was somewhat soothing, at least. Kalzasi collected strange things and strange people, but he was just an ordinary man, a village boy with only a veneer of city sophistication after all these years. Since he wasn't singing now, only playing, it was easy to converse over the accompaniment.

"I first heard it in my village, about a day's cart ride west along the Lake. But it comes from farther south. Pash Shemask, I should think. One of the things I am studying at the Academy is the history of music and how it spreads... But 'tis an art as much as a science." It bore some similarities to Zaichaeri court dances, but he didn't dive down the rabbit hole with her, not knowing how interested she was in the topic. It was something he spent a fair amount of time researching, so he had plenty to share, but it was a niche interest, to be sure. If he was going to be a bard, he wanted a profound understanding of music, though all his audience had to do was enjoy the fruits of his labors.

"I haven't ventured into the Middens," he admitted. "I lodge in the Low-City, but I was warned that a village boy would be as vulnerable in the Middens as in the Warrens." There was no malice or judgment in his heart, though the words might rankle a native of the Middens. To him, it was more of a judgment of his ability to protect himself when he was naïve of danger than anything else.

The song was meant to be danced to, though all he could do was add little bits of percussion again against the body of his instrument and with his heel. For a moment, he wondered what it might look like if this woman and her strange shadow were to dance.

[Petra]

"It's not quite so bad, if you know where to stay. I'd be as vulnerable as you are. I left years ago, I haven't been back."

Her accent is strange, with marks of something mixed into her laconic monotone. Perhaps they are marks of the Middens - the long As, and the occasional dropping of an H, and the emphasis-by-speed. It's not music, far from it, but there is a rhythm to her voice that is entirely her own.

"I admire your determination. I imagine tracing musical spread is a nightmare." Short, sharp sentences. Like little flashes of conversational lightning, or the lighting of fireflies in the dark. Bright, small, and fleeting. Her foot continues to tap the rhythm appreciatively.

"I expect there's much to learn through the study. Beyond the subject of music. How ideas spread, how culture mingles, how great events are followed by folk-music trends, written down by no-one, found only by you in their echoes."

Petra's eyes flick up, catching movement in the willow. The wind blows the branches, and the leaves dance in an impossibly-complex pattern. The shadow of the wind is written on the wall of weeping boughs, and for a moment it is as visible as Petra's monster - the imprint of something usually-visible and latently-fearsome on the world.

She lets the dance end - she feels the compulsion to dance, certainly - she feels it in her bones, and her spine, and her legs. Her partners are decidedly limited, but she still feels it. A testament to this man's skill, his talent in his craft. Petra admires it. She admires attainment in any field, and this is certainly an achievement worth her admiration.

"My study has the benefit of scholars as its practitioners. To try and understand, intimately, the farmhand, the shepherd, the cavaneer... you're a braver man than I am, stranger." Her applause is brief, but earnest, and then dies slowly. There are a few other passing scholars taking notice of the music, though for now none stop to gawk. Only Petra, and her demon.

Petra remembers a line from a work of ancient theater, and it makes her quarter-smile bloom that little bit more.

We've played to bigger, but quality counts for something.

"Any anecdotes to share, to tantalize a fellow scholar?"

[Finn]

Finn was more curious than frustrated when his Mesmer didn't give him much to work with. Some people were more reserved, more self-contained. He knew ways to dig deeper, to hear the music that was closer to her than her jugular, but it was intrusive and that wasn't his way. More often than not, he listened for surface things and when he projected his own melodies into people, it was to invite them to enjoy what he offered, to ease a troubled mind and the like.

"Mostly I'm reading the work of others, not doing it myself," he admitted. "It requires laborious travel and an academic training I don't have. There are periods of time where a lot of the work is done, when the world is safer and more connected. Fragments from before the Sundering are rare, but the things they knew... quite impressive. I suppose all that self-awareness wasn't enough to prevent what happened, though." It was curious sometimes, how so much of what happened in the world remained in the hands of very few, powerful people. He didn't want to hide behind their divine Shinsei's robes, but sometimes it seemed there was little other choice.

Even this woman had scraped herself out of the Middens, though he didn't know whether that was for the greater safety or access to knowledge to protect herself. Her symphony was sharp, and her admiration rang with sincerity that was at odds with her tone.

"An anecdote?" he mused after he finished the song and she applauded once more. It was like when someone asked him to play something, anything. That was when his mind blanked. If they gave him a hint of direction, his mind took it. So he paused.

"When dance halls became more prominent as the cities of Karnor became safer, more stable, and their populations could support such things, that music I played, its style, became quicker and more elegant, and the people shed the hobnail boots which they wore to dance it. Along with a number of other folk dances from the north, it is thought to have contributed to the evolution of the waltz—which the lords and ladies fancy even now." He didn't know if that would sate her curiosity, but he didn't know what her particular interests were other than her curiosity about music.

He smiled.

[Petra]

"In my experience, self-awareness only makes people more cognizant of what they want. Try as we might to understand ourselves, it doesn't ever seem to get the cause of peace very far. Fear, pride, and self-interest - they don't go away with one's knowledge of oneself."

Petra sits down, ninety degrees around the tree from Finn. She is small enough to fit in a hollow of the roots. Nestled there, she looks almost childish. A petite woman, snug in her little burrow, of no consequence to the world. The demon over her casts a shadow across her full-moon face, and brings the proper perspective back to the view.

"You've done more for the cause of preventing a second Sundering with that lute than I have in all my research. For all we paw at the scraps left to us by our ancestors, we've hardly gotten far. But you..."

Petra curls around the tree, looking at Finn in the corner of his eye. She is warm, palpably so. Close enough for her fragrance to catch in the air. Lilacs and olives, mixing sweetly together in an aura of welcoming civilization which suffuses her completely.

"You sing the songs of foreign lands, and I learn from them. You tell me about their choices of shoes, and how they helped lords and ladies swirl around each other in the halls of power... well, that's certainly something of note. Who knows - maybe it'll be the musicians that save us from ourselves after all."

Petra laughs - it's closer to an emphasized exhalation than anything else, but the mirth is there. Friendly, and amicable, and meant to be shared. She's even smiling - or, almost smiling. It's close enough, either way.

"Stranger things have happened."