[A/N] I realized belatedly that Piper's adult appearance greatly resembles that of Nyota Uhura, as portrayed by Zoe Saldana in the Star Trek reboot franchise.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Song Is You
With a cup of steeping tea in hand, Piper's bare feet softly padded down from the kitchen to the adjacent sitting room, and she curled up into the inviting nest of pillows and blankets she made earlier on one of the couches. Wrapped up in the blanket of nostalgia and memories, and set alight with the feeling of hope, Piper waited for her husband to return.
The evenings became a quiet affair. Without another body roaming about the large house, Piper took to pampering herself. Ace hadn't arrived at the door and she was still counting down the days on the calendar with a black marker. Piper was undoubtedly, lonely, so she filled the hours with things that could.
There was additional laboratory research on the coffee table in front of her, proposals of future experiments and inventory sheets to be taken. Always one for organization, she had a folder of provision documents at the ready when she planned to check the laboratory's supplies.
There was also the wealth of Ace's library to consume, but Piper had already taken a volume with her into the hot tub earlier tonight and successfully avoided a literary disaster. It would not do to have the gilt-edged tome dropped into bubbling, hot water. Blasphemy for a bibliophile.
The second night she returned from her Storm Hawks mission, her fingers itched heavily with the need to occupy her body and mind, and subsequently found her way into the kitchen and baked. Cheesecakes, cupcakes, and of course, sand cakes – enough to last a month. She gave away half of the sweets to the other scientists the following morning.
Feeling a bit weary from the effort of distracting herself, Piper changed the radio station absently until the hard twangs of rock guitar gave way to soothing melodies. She was just in that kind of mood. The minutes trickled by as one song gave way to the next, and Piper felt her lids closing in heaviness as the beginning notes echoed a memory within her.
"I hear music when I look at you-" she mumbled absently, her lips and tongue responding with muscle memory.
The song was an old one, older than her and most of the people she knew. An oldie, they said. The radio only played such a tune during those nights when nostalgia hit hard and a person found themselves longing for an alcoholic drink and an open fire. What Piper had was some black tea and a mess of blankets. Gently pushing work papers aside, she placed the cooling cup on the table and nestled her head into the pillows.
Piper found sweetness in the music of a time past, it made one saccharine and sentimental, much like the feeling one gets when inhaling the scent of old perfume misted upon hand-written letters. Slender, brown fingers stroked the ring she wore on the fourth finger of her left hand, and Piper smiled fondly. A surge of devotion swelled within her, richer than any coffee or tea, and left her gut feeling thicker and hotter as the mumbled words gave way to singing.
"-A beautiful theme of every dream I ever knew. Down deep in my heart, I hear it play. I hear it start then melt away-"
While Piper's voice may not be professional or radio-worthy she did know how to hold a tune. In her youth before joining the Storm Hawks, her pursuit of knowledge led her both to music and math. They weren't all that dissimilar, two new languages that required skills of concentration and interpretation. New possibilities. Eventually, a fascination for mathematics developed into a passion for science and adventure, then Aerrow happened, and then there were only so many hours in a day.
What she didn't know before was when she sang, people listened. Her teammates stumbled upon this revelation by accident and despite the deep blush of mortification, encouraged her to continue. That incident occurred on The Condor many, many years ago. Recollection insisted Finn snuck into the kitchen to poach some freshly baked sand cakes when he heard her. Sneaking right back out with cookie in hand, he tracked down the other guys with flailing arms and excited whispers of a goddamn emergency. This was too good not to share.
"Dude. Dude!" He grabbed their arms and dragged them along hurriedly, leaving crumbs along the floor of the ship, "You gotta come with me now! Piper's singing!"
Because what the young woman didn't know was her singing made people think of colours, however strange it was. Just faint wisps of it, like a shimmer of dust in your peripheral vision, shadowy motes touched by the light and momentarily bathed in golden yellow. The visual accompaniment wasn't so distracting as to interrupt her songs for most individuals thought it was just the product of their imaginations, but it was curious enough to have a few strangers slow down in their tracks to take a look at her.
Then, one day that voice of hers caught someone in particular. Someone with black hair and a perpetual frown and a very frustrated look on his angular face. Because he knew this song – and he liked it too – and it concerned him mildly for when he stepped out of his way to discover the source of the music, it belonged to someone he'd rather be acquainted with.
It frustrated him even more that the songstress was performing in open air, out where other people like him could hear her intrusion and have their day interrupted. Had she no sense of privacy? Music was a personal matter, and here she was bothering him with her rendition of a decent tune. Someone should shut her up before her raspy voice annoyed him further.
The Dark Ace scowled, and directed his scowl at the nearest pedestrian that had the misfortune to look his way. Bloody market day. Bloody stupid plebians. And so it was that the Champion of Master Cyclonis came to be wandering on the same terra that the Storm Hawk was, and wandering the same open market too.
To summarize his unrestrained appearance, the war between the Republic of Atmos and the Empire of Cyclonia had ended and the traitor, through fortune and meticulous planning that only an underhanded traitor would know, saved himself from prison with wealthy land titles, bank notes, and precious war information. But that is not the focus of the story now.
Here on market day, the Dark Ace needed some foreign spice that ironically, was native to the rare plains of Terra Cyclonia and very precious to own since the spice was processed from the stamen of a flower that bloomed so rarely. Rumour had it that a fellow native sold the culinary ingredient only on such business days in the form of an auction. The prospect of outbidding a crowd appealed to the man, who still retained shades of villainy and arrogance.
That arrogance surfaced now. The other market-goers surrounding him slowed down and blocked his way in the most inconvenient manner. He had been in the midst of perfecting his insolent smirk (thinking of his eventual victory at the auction house) when he bumped into the short, rotund man in front of him. The man actually stopped walking and despite his vertical handicap, attempted to rise above the crowd and find the mysterious musician.
Muttering, Dark Ace glared in the same direction and being much taller, found the source. He recognized the shock of blue hair bobbing happily down the nearest side street, singing her stupid heart out. Disgusted with such vocal disturbance, he shoved the short man out of the way and turned into the side land where she was before he caught himself.
What the hell did he think he was doing? Cyclonians don't go around knocking on people's shoulders and told them to shut up. Well, maybe Cyclonians, but not the Dark Ace. He had better things to do at the moment, there were treasures to purchase and gloat about later. He just needed to block out her voice, that high-pitched squeal, and keep walking.
Yes, feet. Walk.
"-I hear music when I touch your hand. A beautiful melody from some forgotten land-"
The man frowned. No, no. That was all wrong. The words were 'from some enchanted land.' The girl was butchering the song with her inattention.
"Deep in my heart, I hear it say. 'Is this the day?'"
Oh god, that was wrong too.
Dark Ace snapped to attention, his red eyes uncharacteristically unfocused as he listened to Piper's voice. Unrefined, unpolished. Nothing great. Was no one else bothered by her song? Was he the only person here capable to discerning good taste?
Unknowingly, his body turned into the direction his boots were already headed – towards her. A feeling of great stupidity burned down his arms and across his chest as he followed the woman with lovely, brown skin and long, blue hair. He preferred how she wore it these days, cascading down her back in a high ponytail. Much better than the boyish look many woman wore in the name of fashion. It was unique, and singled her out amongst others.
The Cyclonian stopped momentarily to gag at his thoughts. When he caught Piper turning around to speak to some merchant about purchasing fresh asparagus, he too ducked into a stall and pretended to be interested in fresh produce. The owner of the stand approached him before he was scared away with an unpleasant growl. Thankfully, she hadn't seen him.
Resigned to his foolish impulse, the man pondered the best way to grab Piper's attention as the damned woman went about her way twittering through the market while he, scary man that he was, trailed her oblivious backside like a perverted stalker.
Embarrassingly enough, he mentally sang alongside her, occasionally correcting her mistakes. Finally, she turned a corner and into a street that was wider than the one he followed her in, and stopped to gather a deeper breath for the next line of the song.
"Why can't I let you know the song my heart would sing? That beautiful rhapsody of love and youth an-"
A foreign hand landed on her shoulder.
"Ahem. Miss Piper-"
Her bright smile fled when she realized who her admiring audience was. Amber eyes widened in horror as a deep flush started from her neck and ended somewhere three feet above the top of her head. She screamed.
"Oh my god!"
Strangers turned to stare at them, nosey busybodies. Well, this was awkward. Dark Ace's tongue seemed to be in knots as his mind raced to find words that could extract him from the situation with as much dignity as possible. This was a bad idea.
A woman with a basket full of knobbly carrots passed them in the street with one questing eyebrow raised so high it would have flown right off her obnoxious face were it not for the shawl around her head. A pair of twins clutching their guardian's skirts wore matching facial expressions of disgust at what obviously a romantic rendezvous. Well, shit. Dark Ace gritted his teeth and tried to smile. At Piper. It failed horribly.
"If you would kindly-"
"OH MY GOD!" she wailed. She was going to die, she was sure of it.
Well, not all romances started so smoothly.
[NOTES] Today's music is The Song Is You by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. The version I had in mind is sung by Maria de Medeiros for Guy Maddin's film, The Saddest Music in the World. Funny, bizarre, and poignant, it's cinema of the ridiculous indeed.
