Celebrate
Independence is a wonderful thing
But don't strive for it too hard.
Everything has been done before.
Finding someone to support it;
Now, that's the challenge.
Pearl sits at one of the tables at the edges of the ballroom, sipping champagne that makes her want to sneeze and wearing the world's second most uncomfortable dress (the most uncomfortable, with its lace and sequins and corset, is mostly in pieces on her bedroom floor, though a few scraps are being used in place of fucking ribbons in her hair). Her parents glide around the dance floor, the picture of elegance in lace; many of her aunts and uncles and cousins do the same. Her littlest relatives, still blobby with youth, play games around and under the buffet tables stretched across the back of the room.
Though none have knocked an entire bowl of punch on themselves yet. Only Pearl's ever had that honor.
Someone settles into a chair beside Pearl. "I swear, my tentacles are gonna outright tear if I swing one more time," says Granny Pygmy. "What mischief have you been up to, youngin'?"
Pearl grins at her Granny. "More of the same. Can I get you a drink?"
"Already got little Oyster taking care of it. Thank you, dearie," she says, leaning over to accept it from one of her blobbish cousins. Granny reaches in with two fingers, plucks out a frozen juice cube, and puts it in her beak, then dumps the rest of the glass over Oyster's head, to his giggling delight. "Now get me another.
Oyster scampers off. Pearl leans back in her chair. "I wish I could get away with that."
"I'm old and senile and he's still ink with legs. We can get away with it. Now, 'More of the same' isn't an answer." She crunches the cube. "I set aside bail money when you were in that metal group, and it's still there."
Pearl winces. "How'd you know I wasn't still in the metal group?"
"Because your negotiations for attending the party this year didn't include wearing the crud that nearly made your Uncle Sepio faint last year." She uses two tentacles to frame her face, all innocent-like. "And last year, someone else's clothes weren't in Illexia's room. Who's your friend?"
"Damnit," Pearl mutters. She'd bought Marina clothes several times during the month and a half she stayed here, despite Marina's protests. She thought Marina'd accepted it all when she moved out, especially since she didn't protest when Pearl cleaned and furnished her apartment as a squidmas gift.
"Well?" Granny's eyes sparkle and she leans forward. "Who's your friend?"
Oyster shows up with another drink. Pearl grabs it before Granny can, hands Granny an ice cube, gulps down three swallows and dumps the rest on Oyster's head, to his shrieking giggles. "Get us two this time," Granny says to him. As Oyster runs off shrieking, Granny turns to Pearl and demands, "Well?"
Pearl sighs and rubs her eyes. "Her name is Marina," Pearl says. "She's sixteen, pretty obviously a runaway from one of those cults that think Octarians are still around, and I think she was born wrong. One of her tentacles doesn't grow, and she doesn't have enough."
Granny hmmmm's. "Not exactly the sort of person your parents would have you hang around with-"
"But Gran, she's got the most amazing voice," Pearl interrupts, leaning forwards. "And she grew up speaking some other language, so her accent sounds like tumbling rocks, which is super fresh. She's more comfortable singing in it, too, so when we—we're a band together, we've been working on stuff, and-"
Granny covers Pearl's mouth with one finger. "She sounds lovely." Granny pauses a moment, to be sure Pearl will be quiet. "You're in a band together? Have you had any success with being noticed this time?"
Pearl's grin gets wider, but before she can say anything, her mother calls for silence. "Our dear Pearlie has asked us to play music from the radio for the next ten minutes. I believe she wishes us to be more in touch with the common people." Quiet laughter spreads through the room—the quality of it varies by the person, with most of her relatives on Pearl's side of the debate and the others laughing at Pearl's naivety—but Pearl only smiles.
Granny raises one eyebrow but waits. It isn't long. Ebb and Flow starts playing two minutes in—her and Marina's voices, with the drums and guitar, on the radio. Playing for her entire family.
The room goes silent except for the radio. Pearl has to fight to keep from singing along. They have an agent now—a small timer, someone who was willing to work with Marina in person and Pearl over the phone before they knew Pearl was a Houzuki—but they're not going to be small time for long. Not with songs this fresh.
When it's over, and the announcer starts talking, Pearl's mother sniffs loud enough to be heard throughout the room. "Well!" she says, turning to Pearl's father, her skirts flaring out and her tentacles stiff, "I hardly expected something so-"
"Fresh," interrupts one of Pearl's uncles. He walks onto the dance floor. "That was quite a piece of music, wasn't it?"
"Of course it was," says Pearl's mom. "I was just expecting something more, well, traditional."
"Well, they can't be like the Squid Sisters and rip off Calamari County's old tune," says one of Pearl's aunts. She raises her glass to the room at large. "Not the way you'd do things, I know, but isn't it this originality that got our family raising zapfish to begin with, sister?"
"Well, I suppose-"
"Then let's celebrate Pearl's budding musical career!" Granny leaps to her feet and snatches a glass from someone, then raises it in a toast. "To Pearl and her partner—you said the other singer's name was Marina, right?"
Pearl's blushing so hard her vision's pink around the edges as she nods, and her family toasts her, and Granny leans down and says, in her ear, "Illexia has been looking for a reason to avoid your parents. If your friend needs that room again, just say the word, it's hers."