Ahh. Long wait times again. BUT NO MORE! Exams are now over, ALL of them, even bloody terrifying vocal exams that I surely failed.
Here's a quickie chapter to tide you over.
Disclaimer: I own neither the concept, the setting, the title, nor most of the characters. I may as well bear no responsability for this fic, which luckily means that I can blame other people for how bad it is!
The Way We Live Now
-Tales of NDCSH-
9
Phoebus checked his fingers for what seemed like the twentieth time, took a deep breath, and strummed the chord.
Not quite right, but very close.
Sitting cross-legged on the thick cream-coloured rug in his otherwise unfinished basement, he could hear every note with absolute clarity. His father's old guitar sat in his lap, the scuffed, honey-coloured wood surprisingly warm under his hands. Within the past two weeks, he'd gotten through all the basic chords, and managed to get the transitions relatively clean. Now he was working on a more complex chord, mimicking the fingering marked out in a battered old guitar book which sat on the floor in front of him. His hands ached.
Learning guitar seemed harder than anything he had ever done. Realistically, it hadn't really been that difficult. But it seemed as if suddenly all his life was guitar, guitar chords and buying picks and strings and sore fingers and late nights learning how to read tabs. And that was the reason for the other thing lying in front of him- a single colour photo, printed off of Facebook, one of his favourite pictures of Esmeralda. It was from the Halloween party, the four of them all together in their costumes. Quasimodo, dressed as a French Revolutionary, looked a little wide-eyed, almost frightened (Phoebus had realized shortly after taking the picture that Quasi really wasn't used to photos). Clopin looked mad and sugar-high, which he had been at the time, in a comic-book-era superhero costume complete with a dramatic cape. Phoebus himself looked like an utter goof, dressed, against his wishes, as a lion. But Essie looked really amazing. She'd gone as Bob Dylan, complete with cigarette, (which was in fact a hollow tube of rolled-up loose leaf) pinstripe hat, insane hair and guitar. And in that shot she looked so stunning, so feisty and beautiful and unlike anyone he had ever met before, that when he looked at it he was willing to learn anything for her.
Heh. Poor, hen-pecked Phoebus. Well, not really, but still. I'm half-finished drawing that facebook halloween picture, so look for it soonish on
-Mostly Harmless