Anticipation: A note related to a chord that is played just before the chord itself.
I… I can't believe it. I wrote a non-humorous piece for Ravess and Snipe AND I ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT! I think I like this chapter the best so far, other than chapter four where Lark is all like "red is the color of his eyes".
To be honest, I think Moa should have a lot more wrong up in her noggin but I'm feeling generous so I'll keep the mind-warps to a minimum. I probably couldn't manage an extremely bizarre piece like that anyway.
OoOoOo
The violin wailed, screaming its sinister tune as Ravess played on the balcony to her quarters. She always liked to have an audience, but since right now she didn't crave any human contact she played for the stars in the sky and the clouds that sometimes brushed across the face of the moon, plunging the clear night into shadows. The stars, she found, were often a better audience than humans. They never got tired before her, and when she turned her eyes upon them she felt like the music and she could be one.
She loved music.
The automatic sliding doors to her quarter screeched open just as she was hitting the crescendo. She turned her head to see who it was, and when she saw Master Cyclonis looming in the doorway the music screeched to a halt and Ravess turned fully around to bow low from the waist, her violin over her heart.
"Master?" she greeted with a question, yellow eyes casually searching the background for Moa. The princess often followed her mother like a baby chick, especially if it was a trip to see Instructor Ravess, the only person beside her parents who's rules she followed.
The Master didn't bother with formalities today, instead shoving a huge ream of paper under Ravess's nose. "Read this," she ordered, rather than said. The violinist took the papers, curiosity mingling with trepidation. Anything out of the norm or out of her control were instant fear-creators for her, the perfectionist.
As Ravess shuffled through the papers, recognizing Moa's handwriting at once, she lost her fear in a warm, smug sensation: pride. She had often quarreled with the princess (when her mother was out of earshot) of the importance of learning how to read and write music notes, and here was all her hard work paying off. "This is..." she said, unaware of the grin spreading across her face.
"A symphony for a full orchestra, yes, I gathered as much from the Dark Ace."
Ravess remembered that the Dark Ace was a musician as well... though he played that ungodly contraption called the electric guitar, yes, he was a musician. Of sorts. "This is quite a feat," Ravess said, still shuffling papers from the first movement, to the second movement... "When did she do all this?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
Ravess paused from her reading to stare at the Master. Perhaps she hadn't heard her right, or misunderstood her somehow. "But this is more than an afternoon's work, surely?"
"No." The Master pulled her hood up to hide her eyes, so that only her long, thin lips were showing. "She locked herself up in her room and worked, apparently, to the point of making herself sick and collapsing on the floor."
Ravess's hands clenched the papers tightly, her heart beating in alarm. "Is she all right?"
"She's fine. However, I've come to you to ask your opinion on whether or not we should continue the lessons. If she's going to take it this far..."
Alarm bells rang in Ravess's head. This contribution to music, and this girl's obvious calling for the violin, should not be suppressed in any way. But to outright tell the Master "NO!" was a breach in every form of protocol she inflicted upon herself when dealing with the moody Cyclonis. "Well, it might seem there's nothing left to teach her in the way of music, but..."
Cyclonis tilted her head to the side, shadowed face unreadable. "But?"
"But I think etiquette classes may be in order."
"She already takes etiquette classes."
"Yes, yes," Ravess said, with the slightest touch of impatience in her voice as she waved the thought away. "How to dance, how to hold a fork, how to be a princess. But what I have in mind is a little more... rigid. More about self-discipline. How to know her body and what it is capable of."
A new voice entered the discussion, drawling and sarcastic. "There's a word for that. It's called Sex Ed."
Ravess glared coolly at her superior officer as he walked in. The Dark Ace was smiling, but he looked far from amused. "That's not the type of capability I was referring to."
"Ah. And here I was thinking you women were capable of nothing else."
After giving the Dark Ace a warning look not to open his mouth again, Cylonis turned back to Ravess. "What do you have in mind?"
"I don't know yet. I need to monitor her first, to see what it is that's causing her to harm herself." Ravess took a deep breath before suggesting: "I want one week with her. All other classes are to be canceled so I can see her every day."
Not even her parents could see Moa every day, as the princess grew older. There simply wasn't enough time, with the Dark Ace constantly being called out to handle border skirmishes or crystal projects for the good of the country that required total isolation, keeping Cyclonis locked up in her room for days at a time. Ravess, however, had no such responsibilities.
Cyclonis didn't even bat an eyelid. "Done."
OoOoOo
The First Day.
"So, you wrote a symphony, did you?"
Moa sat on a stool in Ravess's room, not trying to hide how curious she was to see everything it had to offer. She'd only been inside the woman's private quarters once before- the classes generally took place in a vacant room or one of the towers, Ravess teaching Moa how to play for the stars. What especially grabbed Moa's interest about the room, however, was the collection of bows- for the violin and arrow both. She pointed at the weapon, ignoring Ravess's last comment to say, "Hey, could you teach me how to do that, too?"
"Maybe, if the Dark Ace and Master Cyclonis want you learning how to use weapons."
"Dad says he's like to see me with his sword one day, but I don't think he really means it. Mother thinks I'd be good with a bow and knife." She looked again, pointedly, at Ravess's weapons.
Ravess wanted to get right to the point of the symphony once more, so she pulled out a piece of paper and writing materials. "Show me a little of what you did the other day. Consider it a test- make me something new and…" she pondered. "…pretty."
Moa paused with the quill just above the paper, looking up at Ravess. "New and pretty?" she asked uncertainly. "I don't know if I can do that."
"Well, you certainly did it yesterday," Ravess pointed out. "Why don't you just give it a shot- do exactly what you did yesterday."
Eager to show off now that there wasn't the word "test" involved, Moa dipped her quill into the ink once more and started, talking as she worked. "I start with a single note," she told Ravess, delicately penning in the symbols one by one. "The note has other chords that work well with it- certain scales that go together, meld together. I write the chords that comes afterwards, and sometimes I have a certain thing I wanna work towards- like a goal, at the end of the race- only I don't know how to get there, exactly, so I just start…" she stopped for a moment, quill tip hesitating over a new mark, red eyes focused on the paper as though shocked at what she saw. "…Walking. But walking down a hill." Ravess felt like she understood what Moa was trying to get at, and what the princess said next only confirmed it. "And when you start walking down a hill sometimes you can't stop because you're going too fast and you'll fall."
Even as she spoke, the paper grew crowded with notes, and Moa was already reaching for a new page, but Ravess grabbed her wrist and stopped her. Moa looked up at her instructor with curious red eyes, fingers still grasping for a new page. "Let me go," Moa ordered.
Ravess held neither pity nor fear for the princess. "Not if you're going to be a fool and hurt yourself," she said, not skipping a beat.
Red eyes blazed. "My mother will-"
The violinist took a gamble. "Your mother gave me total freedom to do whatever I feel necessary with you. If that means breaking a stick over your head, I'll do it, and she won't say a word," Ravess lied. She shoved Moa's hand back, letting her go. But ultimately, it was not Ravess's actions or her lie that made Moa sit up and pay attention, but a new voice from the doorway.
It was Snipe, a sneer evident on his face. He swaggered into the room, mace-holding hand swinging loosely at his side as he spoke down at the princess with disdain. "Grow a spine or shut up. You can't expect to hide behind Cyclonis's skirts every time someone says something you don't like, Your Most Royal Heinieness."
Moa held her bruising wrist up to her chest with her other hand, carefully studying Ravess and the woman's brother with the same blank, calculating mind that made her mother the youngest Cyclonis in history. Coming to a decision at last, Moa set the pen down and place both her hands on her lap, waiting for Ravess to continue the lesson.
He might have called Princess Moa "heinieness", but for once, Ravess was glad her brother had such a brutish philosophy.
OoOoOo
The Second Day.
"You're running," Ravess said, warning in her voice. "Stop running." Moa ignored her, hunched over the paper. The violinist's perfectly groomed eyebrow twitched in annoyance- after all, this was the perfectionist soldier. The one who had scores of Talons under her service, scores of Talons that leaped five feet in the air when she said "jump," who would bend down and lick her stylish stiletto heels if she said "grovel", who pissed their fucking pants if she so much as hinted that she would say, "I am very upset."
"I said stop running!" Ravess snapped, her fragile patience worn thin with the belligerent princess. She took her violin bow and rapped the girl's hand once, but sharply enough for her to drop the quill. Moa sulked, giving the woman her best impression of the Dark Ace's Evil Eye. It didn't work half as well as when he did it, so Ravess coolly met the girl's glare with an unassuming face of her own, quickly reverting back to the role of patient mentor.
"You were running," she said, simple as that. "Learn some self control."
"And get me a sandwich!" Snipe yelled from his side of the room, where he was glued to the TV.
Ravess tossed her bow at him. "Go get one yourself, you odoriferous excuse for a human being!"
OoOoOo
The Third Day.
"How is she progressing?"
The mother and the teacher stood outside the room, talking.
Ravess allowed herself a small, thin, humorless smile. The grim smile of a woman victorious in a bloody battle. What she wanted to say was that she now saw Moa as one more soldier that needed to be disciplined, one more girl who would become a young woman who would become either a disgrace or an example to the gender- a sniveling, whiny, selfish little brat or a she-wolf ready to pounce.
"She's progressing," was all she could actually say.
OoOoOo
The Fourth Day.
Ravess felt something odd inside herself when she pulled the bow from behind her back and handed it to her pupil. Moa handled the bow with care; it was an entirely different bow than the one she was used to. Where her first bow had the possibility of endless creation, this one was undeniably grim in it's capability to take everything away with one choice arrow. The ends of the staff were ornate, carved to look like snarling wolf heads. Moa ran her fingers over their teeth in admiration.
"What do you say we take a break from music?" Ravess managed to suggest, even though the feeling grew stronger as she saw the girl take the empty bow and point it out the window, already assuming the proper stance- feet spread with her left foot pointing forward and her back foot sideways, almost making a T shape with them. Her back was straight, angular face emotionless.
And when that emotionless façade broke and her lips peeled back in a vicious, eager grin, Ravess knew what she was feeling was great pride, and greater anticipation.
OoOoOo
The Fifth Day.
Moa bent over her work, scrambling like mad to drop the notes onto the paper as quick as they appeared in her mind, fearful that she would lose the magic, the rush, the high of creation, the overflow of spontaneous emotion. Ravess nodded to Snipe and he ripped the paper from her hands when it became apparent the girl was reaching a frenzy and would not stop of her own free will; Moa let out a wordless cry, feeling the notes continue to drop only to fall in midair and scatter along the winds, out the tower window, into the Wastelands.
She let the feelings explode from where they were kept bottled up, slamming both of her fists against Snipe's chest and not even wincing when they hit the solid metal of his chest plate. "Why did you do that?" she almost sobbed, handling her unexpected and inexplicable anguish the way her parents did- by channeling it into fury, anger, rage, and subsequent violence. "I was doing well! I don't see what's wrong about it, so what if I faint afterwards? That's just the price I have to pay- for the music… for the music!"
Snipe and Ravess shared an identical, alarmed glance as the princess slid to the floor after her outburst.
"Christ, this kid is-" Snipe began, his grip around the Princess's wrist the only thing keeping her upright. The rest of her was sort of slumped over, already half way through a fainting spell.
"Snipe. Whatever you're about to say is most likely vulgar, so just stop now."
Snipe clenched his jaw shut, glaring at his sister. "She's messed up, is all I was gonna say."
Ravess clucked her tongue, shaking her head though inwardly she had to agree. Moa was beginning to quicken now, pulling herself upright and shaking her head as if to clear it. As the princess was slumped over, Ravess couldn't see her face and couldn't see if the girl even remembered her little outburst. The violinist sighed, one hand on her hip as she studied the girl from head to toe- her angular, bony elbows and knees, ragged black hair, strong, square face and soft, round eyes.
"Well," Ravess said at last, "She is their daughter, after all."
OoOoOo
The Sixth Day.
Taking the music sheet in one hand, she waved it in front of Moa's face. "Your work is sloppy, everything about it is sloppy when you work that fast." She wasn't sure if Moa was listening, but she continued anyway. "You can write an entire symphony in one day, but if it's a shoddy symphony, who cares?"
Moa's blood red eyes glowed from under a thick veil of black hair, somber in her attention to her teacher yet still quivering with the effort of suppressing her need to fight being bossed around. It appeared she was listening now, if she wasn't before, and she didn't like what she was hearing.
"Now," Ravess said, voice audibly going softer, "If you write but a little every day, you can analyze it, dissect it, put it back together so it fits better, and then polish it. Your spontaneous music-making is nice enough, but to take the time to create a real gem is infinitely more lucrative than to punch through the earth and hope to emerge with a diamond in your fist…"
OoOoOo
The Seventh Day.
This was the final test.
Ravess took an hourglass, one set for fifteen minutes. She very purposefully let it clack when she flipped it over, starting the time limit. Moa anxiously stared at her page for a moment before beginning, keeping a steady pace the entire time rather than gaining speed as she went ahead. Glancing up every so often at the remaining time, Moa stopped when there was still only one minute left to drain down the hourglass. She said nothing, her blankly expectant eyes trained on Ravess.
"You still have time left," Ravess reminded her. "Are you done already?"
"I'm done for today," Moa said decisively, daring Ravess to contradict her. "I won't write another note until tomorrow." She took the hourglass and purposefully put it on its side, so that sand neither went up nor down, and waited for Ravess to speak.
The archer's yellow eyes studied the girl carefully, thinking. Then a smile cracked her face, and she pulled Moa closer to her. Brushing aside the girl's wild black hair, she kissed the princess on her right cheek and then her forehead. "Bleh!" Moa said, wiping away at the lipstick with her sleeve. "What was that for?" she demanded.
"To show you I care."
"That's ridiculous. You're my servant; I am your master."
"Not yet you're not," Ravess reminded her, pinching her nose between the first knuckles of her index and middle finger.
"Dah!" Moa whined, wriggling yet unwilling to actually shove aside the woman. "Det go ub be!"
"I'm just knocking any grand ideas out of your head before they get dangerous," Ravess said, shaking the girl's head. "Let's go to the practice field. Once our head is nice and empty of music we can come back and play what you wrote today and see if it doesn't need any editing."
Moa rubbed at her nose, but for once there was no belligerence in her eyes. "OK," she said. "Whatever."
Ravess's eyebrow twitched. She hated that word. "You're just like your father, you know that? Just as rude."
"And my mother?"
"Just as demanding."
Moa snorted to let Ravess know what she thought of the woman's opinions. "Let's just go punch some holes in a dummy or something."
OoOoOo
Two Months Later.
"I'm glad everything worked out with you and Moa," Cyclonis said, her hand stretching out like a tendril of shadow from the dark core of her being, wrapped up in that clinging, shifting cloak of hers. In her palm was a pouch full of money- a reward. Two months had passed and Moa seemed to have stabilized, no longer going on musical rampages. Cyclonis deemed her back under control again. "But don't get relaxed just yet," the Master told her servant.
Unusual for the somber master, she started to grin.
"Chances are you're likely to need to start all over again... very, very soon."
Two weeks later, she declared herself officially pregnant for the second time.