The 41st of Frost
120th Year of the Age of Steel
120th Year of the Age of Steel
"Ten to places!" The stage manager called into the dressing room, where Arvalyn was applying the finishing touches to the gold glitter that highlighted his pectorals and abdomen.
"Can you get my back, Meleena?"
It might have been just another Eikaeus evening at the Velvet Cabaret for Arvalyn, but the past two weeks had been riddled with revelations and self-discoveries. He'd started rehearsing his solo piece, and gotten feedback from several strangers on his vocal acumen. Still, he hadn't been afforded the opportunity to ply his talents on a solo during performance hours. After a long year as a chorus and comfort boy, he hadn't really advanced. Certainly not to the level he'd have expected by this point.
He could still recall that first, fateful meeting with Lunaria, when Aurin had introduced him to the cabaret's proprietor. She seemed to see possibilities in Arry, and found merit in the notion of his reinvention into something grander than a mutt from Antiris with a penchant for picking pockets. When they spoke that first day, she'd instilled such confidence in his future potential. He'd entered her employ straight away and, at her encouragement, he didn't shirk the coin nor the opportunities presented by additional work off the stage.
First it was serving and cleaning up after the guests, but ere long he was requested to engage in the only sorts of solo shows he'd ever performed at the Velvet Cabaret to-date: Those of an intimate nature. In those settings where a rickety bed served as his stage, he was forced to improvise with a level of audience participation that initially made the young half-Elf very uncomfortable.
"Five to places!"
A year on, and he no longer had stage-fright upon the boards nor beneath the sheets, but neither had either venue presented the sorts of advancement opportunities Arvalyn had expected. Stage-fright, notwithstanding, there were instances when things were prone to go awry. Over-intoxicated patrons, occasioned to grow irate over one thing or another and cups might fly stage-ward. Over-stimulated patrons occasioned to presume upon the time and bodies of their bedmates, or grow resistant when the time came to pay up. There was staff to deal with rowdy patrons in any setting, and so even when Arvalyn felt less safe, he felt supported.
He may not have been the friendliest fellow to be employed at the Velvet Cabaret, but Arvalyn had a few friends and idols under its roof. Even if her intimations had not panned out in the way he'd hoped, Lunaria was a living icon in the young half-Hytori's golden eyes. She was a force of nature- Feared and beloved- a model of what one such as he might someday achieve with hard work and uncompromising ambition. She was, in her way, the star Arvalyn hoped to become. A queen in her own, small kingdom.
And there was, of course, Aurin. Sweet, self-destructive Aurin who'd plucked Arvine Venasyr out from abjection and obscurity and reinvented a soot-smudged, mixed-blood urchin as a pristine, graceful Hytori pureblood. Whatever ill he might project or promise, Aurin was utterly adored by Arry. Even at his worst, Arry saw the version of Aurin he'd met three years earlier during a botched attempt at making him a mark at the market in Antiris. To do other than love Aurin would have made Arry feel like little more than an ingrate, when the red-haired human's faults were a pittance beside any other's who'd deigned to serve as a caretaker to Arry over the years. And oh, how Aurin had changed his life for the better. Arvalyn's debt bore the weight of his life itself, and he'd told Aurin as much in many ways, before learning that the human preferred to shirk such lofty debentures. It had taken the young half-Elf months to realise and truly comprehend that the best way to express his gratitude to Aurin was just to be there for him. Not obsequiously, not reverently- Just a friend and confidante, rather than an indentured servant. Aurin was an odd man.
Indeed, Arry was quite comfortable at the Velvet Cabaret. He wasn't sure he'd ever been comfortable anywhere prior. Comfort was tempting, he found. Feeling safe where he laid his head, eating regular meals and earning coin enough to acquire creature comforts the likes of which he'd never known in the eighteen years prior to his arrival in Kalzasi. Comfort had made him very happy for the months he'd enjoyed it, but since meeting Finn he'd begun to feel that comfort could also be a trap.
Arry had come to Kalzasi with little more than the clothes on his back and his lofty ambitions. Suddenly, he was realising that it had been months since the needle had moved on any of them. At a certain point, he wondered whether stasis was worse than regression.
"This is your places call, folks! Have a good show."
Arvalyn centred the fringe skirt that hung from his slender hips, and swept his fingers over the feathers of his neck cowl, in vain hopes of shifting them into a position that wouldn't tickle his neck or make it itch. No sooner had he stepped out onto the stage than the feathers were back to their usual, uncomfortable place. As the lights hit his face, a bright grin flashed across his features and remained plastered there as he promenaded from upstage left to downstage right, where he mirrored the movements of one of the female dancers who was dressed in the feminine answer to his own skimpy costume.
The headliners played centre stage, with minimalistic, simple gestures that were complemented by the more complex choreography executed by the dancers on the fringes of the stage, such as Arvalyn. As the leads worked their way through a loose, bawdy story about a virgin princess who needed to copulate with a frog to undo a witch's curse, the dancers rolled their bodies through sensual motions that often ended in scenic tableaus.
At the final moment, when the Frog puppet underwent its surprise transformation, theatre magic concealed Arvalyn until the final moment when the other chorus-folk peeled away to reveal Arvalyn laying atop the lead actress in a suggestive pose between her knees, wearing a crown and epaulets pasted to bare shoulders, as he delivered his only line of the show-
"Princess Dandelion, you've rescued me! However did you know when you slipped an amphibian into your panties, that I was actually a handsome prince?!"
The lead actress mugged a cartoonish gasp out to the audience, who erupted in peels of laughter, all feeling in on the joke that the princess didn't know it wasn't a normal frog at all. The lights went out, and Arvalyn returned to the outskirts of the stage and left the centre to the leads. Even if his role was featured and ended the show, he knew he wasn't a star. He'd played multiple roles throughout the show, ranging from a shopkeeper to a tree and only the prince had a spoken line. His singing voice was only lent to the upper harmonies in ensemble numbers.
Arvalyn returned to the backstage and winced as he pulled an epaulet off of the now-reddened skin of his shoulder.
"Don't bother getting out of costume, Arry." The stage manager interrupted. "You've been requested in Suite Three, and they asked for 'The golden prince'. May as well keep the fantasy alive, eh?"
"You got it, boss."
Arvalyn sighed, and reaffixed the epaulet to the sore patch on his shoulder. There had to be something better out there, he thought, as he padded out of the dressing room and made for the stairs up to the comfort suites.
