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Allene walked through the streets of the Sicilian landmass with barely anything in hand, save for a raggedy pack and a large, leather portfolio. All she wanted at the moment was inspiration.

Something.

Someone.

Her hunger for any musical inspiration was all that drove her to walk day and night through the stone-laden pathways. Sometimes she would stop by the occasional inn or hotel for a night's rest. Other times she would spend the night in any crevice she could find on the streets, keeping to herself.

But tonight was different. It was abnormally cold for the Mediterranean area, and it was the middle of spring, nonetheless. But she kept walking. She would keep walking until her masterpiece was completed.

Five years.

For five years she had been a traveller, an ascetic for music. Wandering the Italian peninsula all the way to Germany, Austria, and France to study music from her home in Barcelona, it was no doubt that she was heavily influenced by her studies and passion of the art. Her last stop that lasted more than three days was in Pesaro, where her favourite artist, Gioachino Rossini, was born.

The night wind howled as the streets slowly emptied of its nightly adventurers, with only a few people standing, sitting, here or there. It didn't matter. The soft light from an oil-lamp hung above the entrance of a small, old bar caught the wanderer's attention.

Laughter and warmth practically radiated all around her as she opened its creaky, wooden door.

"Buona sera, signorina!"

Allene looked up from wiping her muddy shoes on the door-rug to see a friendly-looking old man behind the bar.

"Ah, uh, buona sera, señor—" she covered her mouth almost immediately as the word rolled off her tongue. The bartender laughed, and motioned for her to sit.

"Not a native speaker of Italiano, sí?" he asked, pouring her a glass of warm milk.

"Sí..." she replied, taking the warm drink with gratitude.

"So then, signorina, may I ask as to where you are from and why you are so far from your homeland, Spagna? "

"Barcelona, señor. I'm, ah, a travelling music student," she replied softly.

"Barcelona, hah? Es quite far from Naples. But es for your studies, so I guess es okay!" the old man laughed jollily.

Allene nodded as she sat on the stool, sipping at the glass slowly, enjoying the warmth it sent down her spine. The bartender nodded curtly before attending to a string of customers that were slowly filing in.

"Signori Buona sera, la tavola é pronto."

"Grazie, signor, please, do take your time."

The new customers talked in hushed tones as they seated themselves at a table behind the young woman, and Allene could not help but overhear what they were saying. Of course everything was in fluent Italian, but they were all in a southern part of the country, and the Spanish language was quite influential on the country's tongue.

Deciding that whatever they spoke of was not worth hearing, she scrimmaged what she could muster in her pack and laid it onto the counter to pay for the drink. The old man smiled gently and pushed back the Euros towards the woman with a wink. Allene flushed red as she nodded her head in gratuity before shoving any belongings she had out back into her pack. She stumbled a bit as she slid off the barstool.

But it would be just her luck to have her portfolio slip, and have everything splayed across the wooden floor.

"Mierda, idiota," she mumbled to herself as she tried to pick up the dingy papers. Some ruined from the weather, others just in horrible shape. As she picked up the last of her crumpled papers, she accidentally knocked into the bartender (when had he gotten there?), who then, stumbled and spilt the multiple bottles of beer and some very expensive-looking wine onto the gentlemen at the table behind her.

She was too ashamed to look up at the victims of her clumsiness, and she was more than sure that she could feel a glare or two from the group boring into the back of her skull.

"¡ Lo siento! ¡Lo siento, señores! ¡Estoy tonta y torpe!" Allene kept her head down as she apologized profusely.

"¡C-Che cazzo! ¡Come ti permitti! E parla italiano!"

The shrill (she couldn't call it shrill, but he was definitely a male soprano) voice echoed throughout the entire bar as she tried to collect herself.

"Uh, m-m-mi dispiace, señores!"

The exchange between Italian, Spanish, and more Italian continued before another man spoke up.

"Signorina, are you alright?"

This voice was much nicer. Also a male soprano. His Italian was horrible though. But he was also speaking en inglés.

"S-Sí, I mean, ah, yes. Gracias, sir... I did not mean to—" the girl's apology was cut off as she looked up into brown eyes.

Beautiful. A masterpiece all its own. Not what she was looking for, but there was a story, a composition, an opera, waiting to be written behind those eyes.

"Cheh, boss. How can you let her go so easily?" the shrill one spoke up once more.

Allene straightened up and set her papers neatly on the barstool behind her. She took time to observe her surroundings, adjusting her dirty glasses to see ... one.. two.. four handsome young men that looked to be around her age. All of them were dressed in what looked to be couture suits—which were now stained with wine and beer.

Her eyes widened in horror as the nice one spoke to the other in another language as she realized the damage. What was that language anyway? Chinese? Korean? They looked to be of Asian descent, but that's not the problem here.

Before she knew it, Allene was rambling in her native tongue, apologizing and gesturing at the ruined articles of clothing.

The group seemed to recognize a few Spanish words before one of them burst out laughing.

"Ahahah! No need to worry, uhhh... Signorina!" the tallest one spoke up, running a hand though spiky black hair.

"Oh shut up, baseball freak! Of course she needs to worry! The stupid woman's got to replace what she's damaged!"

Okay, now her head was starting to hurt. Either his voice was that horrible, or there was something in the paella she found on the street last week. It didn't take long for the voices to be drowned out by a massive pounding in her head, and for her to figure out it was probably the paella before she hit the floor.