Yes! Your eyes do not delude you! It is a new chappie, FINALLY. Sorry about this sucker, but marching band and school owned me like crazy the past couple months. I hope you all haven't lost interest! Don't forget to review!

ERIK

It was about five o'clock in the morning, and I sat at my desk composing a somewhat threatening note to my dear manager. The dead silence of morning was present all about me, and the sound of my pen scratching on the paper as I scrawled along seemed as if it could drown out an entire opera chorus. I looked down at my chicken-scratch with distaste. I had always had little patience with forming letters. It was one of the things that didn't come easily to me, even now; especially the curved letters like the g and the s. Forget longhand, my block printing was just barely legible. When wielding a pen, I preferred cleaner lines, defined angles, things that were simple to duplicate.

Sighing a bit, I folded up the letter and slid it into an envelope. I took my time, enjoying the peace of the morning hour, basking in the darkness adulterated only by the tiny pinpoint of a single candle, burning like a star in a deep abyss of night sky. And then, a loud, telltale crash broke my reverie. I had never been one to swear before, but had recently taken up the habit, and proceeded to do so loudly, as I leapt out of my chair, and practically flew into the next room.

Sure enough, there was Etoile, sitting on the floor, sniffling. She drew a great breath, and I deftly scooped her into my arms before she could put it to use. "Oh, hush, you little demon" I said, rocking her gently. She was still fussy, however, so I set her down on the organ bench, where she pulled herself upright, something she had learned to do recently, and waited expectantly. Shaking my head at myself, my own newfound soft-heartedness, I started to play.

She watched and listened dreamily for a while, her eyes half closed, rocking back and forth to the subtle meter of the piece. Content that she was satisfied, I finished playing, with a mind to set Etoile down somewhere and continue my letters. But when I tried to pick her up, she grasped at the instrument, screaming and shaking her tiny head furiously. "No" she shouted. "No"

I continued to wrestle with her for a few seconds until the full impact of what had just occurred found me. Etoile had just spoken. Setting her down, I gaped in amazement. Not so much amazement that she had spoken as amazement that I had cared. I felt something odd welling up in my chest, something that started at the pit of the stomach and ended in the throat. Something like I felt when I first heard Christine sing Margarita in Faust…

Pride. The word hit me like a whiplash. I could feel a smile inching around my lips, as I slowly sat down next to Etoile. "What is it that you want, my dear"

She seemed to contemplate this for a moment, staring right into my eyes as if trying to read my question in them. She then struck a note on the keyboard, which I recognized as the first note of the piece I had just played. Then, she turned her head around and looked at me expectantly. I wasn't quite sure what she meant, so I started to play the piece again. Etoile reached over, knocking my hands out of balance, and hit the second note of the melody.

I realized what she wanted. She wanted to play the song. As playing the whole thing was purely out of the question- her tiny hands barely spanned two or three keys- I reverted to the single-note melody. I played the first two bars. Etoile plinked them out after me. She was out of rhythm and time, and played several wrong notes in her efforts, but it was still recognizable. I was mildly impressed. We went on like this for quite a while, until I heard a familiar knock on the door. By that time, Etoile was playing nearly every note correctly, and even starting to get closer to the rhythm. Her yellow eyes, like two burning gimlets, were fixed upon that organ as if it would get up and exit the room the second she looked away. When I got up to answer the door, she started whimpering, but allowed me to pick her up from the bench. As I walked out of the room, she crawled up my arm and gazed longingly over my shoulder.

"Oh, calm down, it isn't going anywhere" I said, righting her. I started to hum gently as I went to answer the door, and Etoile quieted down, back to her vigilant watching. I let Nadir in, bracing myself for the roar of Etoile. He obviously was as well, the grimace on his face told as much. We stood there for about ten seconds, waiting.

"She's not crying" observed the Daroga.

"It appears not" I replied, still ready. Five more seconds. Nothing.

"Is she alright" asked Nadir, sounding concerned.

I glanced at Etoile, who was twiddling her thumbs amicably in my arms. "She's fine. It must have been the organ…"

Nadir looked puzzled. "Haven't we tried that before"

"No. We've never tried letting her play before."

"What? Erik, she's a baby…you can't be serious…"

"Oh, it was nothing serious, just a single note melody, and she was pressing the keys after me. Still, it was good for someone barely able to speak…"

"You mean, unable" Nadir said.

"No, I mean what I said. I rarely say anything without meaning it, you should know that by now."

"She's spoken too" asked Nadir, shaking his head. "What did she say"

I felt my face contort into a hideous smile in spite of myself. "No."

Nadir laughed. "Well, clearly she takes after you."

"Clearly" I acceded. Etoile once again attempted to crawl up my arm. "Good lord, you are such an adorable little monstrous pest" I hissed playfully, yanking her back down. "Papa is too old for all of this. You are going to be the death of me yet."

"Here" Nadir said"give her to me before she starts screaming again. Who knows if she'll stay so complacent much longer? Hurry up with your goddamned errand, would you? Allah willing, you'll be the one to deal with the better part of her tantrum when she comes back to herself."

"Well, now, that really isn't a very considerate thing to wish upon your friend" I responded, still in oddly high spirits.

"You're the father here" he replied. "I've done my time."

As we each processed this statement, there was an awkward silence. He suddenly looked very sad, and my mood was considerably dampened. Amazing how a simple phrase can turn an entire conversation around. Some memories were just so potent, they were stronger than here and now. Well, I thought resolutely, I am no longer living in the past. I have a now to worry about. I will defeat the memories. Pointlessly forcing my smile back onto my unfortunate face (It's not as if it was really visible through my mask anyway), I handed Etoile into Nadir's care. "I should be back shortly. Just keep her from causing to much mischief while I'm away. She probably won't get hungry, but if she does, there is some milk in the cupboard. You'll have to heat it up though, she won't take it cold. And if she happens to need a changing" I taunted"I will leave that to your pleasure. I shall see you soon."

With that, I departed, feeling my spirits climbing slowly again. I could defeat the past. I just had. I can do anything. Anything that I really want to do. I had conquered many crafts, and now I would try my hand at this new field; and as usual, I would succeed.

NADIR

I couldn't help but brace myself for the tears, figuring they would begin as soon as Erik left. Etoile seemed to notice this, and looked up at me, confused, searching with her spine-tingling gaze, as though she didn't know what I was so worked up about. She observed me as if seeing me for the first time. Then she started kicking. She wanted to be set down. I let her down on the couch, but my watchful eye never departed from her. I watched her. She watched me. And after a time we both grew exceptionally bored.

Etoile began to experiment with the plentiful colonies of dust bunnies residing beneath the couch, and I decided I had to find something else to do than sit there and stare at her. I noticed that Erik had left some stationary on the desk, along with a lead pencil, so I sat down and began to sketch, without really thinking of what I was doing. My mind floated back to my youth, back to Persia, leaving the room with the Phantom's little demonic child, resting upon happier shores. Literal shores. A memory of a drawing in the sand of the beach…I had loved to draw when I was a young boy, but I never had much talent. However, this little doodle in the sand was my masterpiece. I sat back on my haunches, examining it with pride, even as the pencil in my hand glided across the sandy place of paper before me in the dim reality. And as looked at it, I heard my father, telling me the end of a story, the story that repeated itself in my head as I drew, in my solitude, while the other children played rowdy games in the shallow surf. I smiled with pride, closing my eyes…and felt my face sprayed with sand. Two cousins chasing each other about the beach had sequentially trod right through my masterpiece, marring it beyond repair. I began to cry, and cried more with the shame of crying. I never even got the chance to show the picture to my father, who had told me the lovely story.

Coming back to myself, I gazed at the picture I had just created, a pencil reprise of that drawing in the sand from years ago, a nightingale, and a rose. A story I had been told when I was very young, and had passed down to the slightly younger Erik in our days together in Persia. A story that came to have more meaning in my life then I ever could have guessed as I sat on my father's lap in our apartments so many years ago…

Etoile, growing ever more uninterested in the world beneath the couch, began her familiar whimper that would soon crescendo into a deafening cry. I dropped the drawing in my haste to pick her up. She evaded my grasp, and I prepared to lose a little bit more of my hearing, but her sob cut itself off abruptly, as she clutched the fallen drawing, wrinkling the edges in her tiny grasp. She stared at it for a time, until finally, I eased it from her grasp, set it down on the table, and held her on my lap. She looked unusually content, more so than she had ever looked around me before, and begun playing with my shirtsleeve. Sighing, I ran my hands through her soft, delicate mane of tangles, staring at a painting on the wall in front of me absently. "Once, there was a white rose, and a nightingale, and every night the nightingale would go to the rose, even though their love could never be…"

Thanks to Stephanie, for telling me about the formatting problem in this chapter!