3/23/15

Ivories

part one
serendipity

—practice always has to make perfect—

[chapter five / repetition]

Arendelle Institute's campus wasn't the ugliest thing Elsa had ever seen; in fact, it was very pretty. Verdant green trees swayed in the early spring breeze, some birds chirping in their branches. The walks were laid with bright red brick, engraved upon them names from the sponsoring class. She could see several buildings spaced throughout the campus. One of them looked like it was cobbled together from tinted glass cubes and rectangular prisms, while some others were more normal-looking with a standard building shape and evenly placed windows. There was a towering fountain in front of one of the grander, Grecian buildings. It was spewing great plumes of water into the air. Some of the droplets rolled off from the jets and misted through the air, effectively creating a small rainbow if she squinted just right.

Her father had thought it would be a good idea that morning to see the campus she'd be in come this August and to meet the staff she'd be working with and informed her that he'd scheduled an appointment with that Belle d'Amboise woman. For once, Elsa was inclined to agree wholeheartedly with him. Her omnipresent bag, stuffed with an overflowing binder and some loose note pages, was slung over her shoulder, but she didn't anticipate actually playing any of the music within that day. She carried it merely out of habit, unable to bear leaving it unattended back at the office. (Yet another perk to her visit: she had a rare day to herself, free of stress and hawk-eyed fathers snapping at her heels.)

She idly strolled around for a while, simply admiring the look of the campus. Swinging by a stand to take a quick look at a map, she forged onward, gripping the strap of her bag tightly. More than once, harried students brushed past her, instruments slung over their backs and thick sheaves of papers threatening to slip through their hands. Often, they'd barely scoot past her with nary a glance and a muttered "Excuse me," but some of the less hassled blinked at her, clouds of recognition descending over their eyes. Elsa only hurried past them, feeling their eyes on her retreating back. Their stares only made her anxiety skyrocket to dangerous levels, and she had to actively concentrate on her breathing to settle her heart rate down to an approximately normal pace. Elsa may have not cared about crowds when placed in front of a piano, because she had more pressing matters to worry about—such as the compliance of her fingers during a particularly fast passage in a Prokofiev concerto—than eyes fixing onto her. But without anything immediately in front of her to distract her, Elsa was about as socially competent as a blonde turtle who hadn't poked her head out of her shell for a decade and a half. She still was wincing over how she'd handled The Violin Case Incident, as she'd taken to calling it, with that redhead a few weeks back.

"The Violin Case Incident," really? she thought scathingly, a self-deprecating smile twitching her lips skyward.

Well, she never claimed to be good at naming things.

Beneath her feet, the brick pathway had bloomed into a large field of stones, in all shapes and sizes, cemented into the ground. Elsa looked up at the building in front of her, which was rather grand and imposing. It had some faint words carved at the top, amidst a cluster of small white sculptures, and she assumed this was the main building. It had large glass doors at its entrance, of which Elsa pushed past and into the main lobby area.

There were several people loitering around, mostly professors clutching their daily coffee dose, it seemed. Elsa wasted no time appreciating the impressive interior of the complex but instead headed straight for the main desk, where a receptionist was tapping away at a keyboard. He glanced up at her when she approached.

"May I help you, ma'am?" he said, his voice a low rumble. His bespectacled gaze never left the computer screen.

"Er, yes," she responded, somewhat hesitantly. "I'm looking for...Miss Belle d'Amboise? Um, the Dean of Faculty Management?"

"Do you have an appointment, ma'am?" he drawled, looking at her briefly before turning back to the monitor.

"I believe so," said Elsa. "It was scheduled for eight forty-five, I think?"

"Hmm." The man squinted at her again, then at the computer, and then waved a hand. "Go down the main corridor and take the second right, and she'll be in the office in the third door to the right."

"Thank you," Elsa said. "I...um, hope you have a nice day."

"Welcome, and you too," he murmured, his attention fixated back onto his computer screen.

Shivering, Elsa made her way down the hallway the receptionist had spoken of. It was closed in by creamy-colored walls, various paintings on display in well-polished glass cases. There were standard-issue cushioned chairs lining the left wall in the spaces between the doors and corridors that branched off from the hallway. Elsa took a right and made to stop in front of a well-polished door, reading the plaque nailed into the rich wood.

BELLE D'AMBOISE
DEAN OF FACULTY MANAGEMENT

Elsa took a breath, placed her hand against the door, and knocked.

"Come in," came a faint voice from within.

Elsa turned the doorknob.

And to her great chagrin was immediately assaulted with the messiest office she has ever had the misfortune to lay her eyes upon in her entire life. She blinked once, and then twice. Nothing changed.

...Am I in the right place?

The small, cramped room she had finally managed to edge her way into was not at all what she expected — for a proclaimed head of a department, shouldn't it have been bigger? — for it was bursting with a veritable explosion of colors and random...things. Elsa thought it looked like a nuclear bomb modified for house use had exploded in the office. The walls had been painted a muted shade of spring green. Picture frames were squeezed onto the tops of overflowing filing cabinets, looking like they were about to shatter onto the ground into a million tiny pieces for all they were worth. The strangest, most random little trinkets and baubles (take, for instance, the tiny bobblehead snowman staring her down on top of the single, cluttered desk that had been placed smack dab in the back right corner of the room) somehow crammed onto every other available surface that had not been taken up by tottering stacks of manila filing folders and gently whirring computers.

The brunette at the tiny desk smiled apologetically the moment Elsa had wedged herself uncomfortably in, halfway through the door and being squashed by a towering file cabinet that seemed to be about to fall any second. "I really am sorry for the mess," she said in what vaguely sounded like a French accent. "I just moved into here a week ago; this is my spare office." She laughed. "I'm afraid my assistant is not the most...organized when it comes to files and documents." She indicated the mess around them. "And he added a few personal touches to the area, as I'm sure you've noticed."

"...Why would you need a 'spare office'?" Elsa blurted, and then immediately wished she could melt into the ground.

"Too many files," said Belle simply, and there was nothing else to tell. "I'll be with you in a moment, Miss Vinters. I just have to finish this letter."

Elsa offered her a weak smile, looked for somewhere to sit in the absolute chaos, and found none. "Uh...no problem."

Despite the rather sorry state of her "spare office" (Elsa was still trying to wrap her head around this), Belle was a remarkably well put together woman. Her brown hair had been done up in a neat plait, every single hair prim and in place. Her white blouse and jacket were wrinkle-free and clean, and Elsa thought that she couldn't have picked out a speck of dust from it if she searched for the entirety of their meeting.

"Alright!"

The cheerful voice broke through Elsa's reverie. Belle leaned away from her computer and smiled once more at Elsa, sticking her hand out across the clutter of papers spread haphazardly over her desk for a shake.

"Really, I'm very sorry for the inconvenience," she said again, her eyes still sparkling with apology. "And it's a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Miss Vinters."

Elsa smiled tentatively back, gripping Belle's proffered hand for a shake. "You as well," she said. "And please, call me Elsa."

Belle inclined her head. "As you wish. I just received your letter of acceptance, which I'm sure is buried somewhere under this mess." Elsa gave a weak chuckle at that. "You'll be working with Professor Fa—she's truly a wonderful pianist. I think she's made a studio album a few years ago—?"

Elsa wracked her memory. "Er...Mulan?" she asked, tentatively. "Fa...Mulan?"

"Yes!" Belle leaned forward. "She's beyond excited to meet you." The brunette hopped up from her seat. "Which I am sure is the whole point of this meeting, yes?"

"Er..."

"Well, introducing you to the staff, that is," Belle amended. She squeezed through the labyrinth of tottering folders and cabinets before making her way to Elsa. "I'll take you to some of them right now. A few are teaching at the moment, but I'm sure you'll be able to get acquainted with them later."

"That sounds nice," Elsa murmured.

Belle nodded and reached over to wedge open the door. "Then after you."

And she led Elsa down the hallway.

—

"He'd been playing for eight years, Kristoff. Eight. Years!"

Kristoff stifled a sigh and instead chose to look at Anna over his mashed potatoes and chicken wings, a patient expression plastered across his face. The raucous catcalls and chaos of the high school cafeteria during the lunch period echoed around them. A table of boys besides them were hooting over the pictures on one of their number's iPhones, while another group conversed in what were probably normal volumes—as Kristoff couldn't hear them one bit over the din of the cafeteria—over their lunch plates.

"Kristoff!" Anna was waving a hand in front of his face. "Hey, you in there?"

"Oh. Right. Yeah, I am. That's fascinating," he said absently. He gave an unamused Anna a winning smile before digging back into his food, resigning himself to another period-long rant about the same violinist dude Anna had found on YouTube yesterday.

Unfortunately, Anna didn't buy it. She threw her hands up in exasperation and her spoon along with them. Shoving eight fingers into Kristoff's face as if hoping to enunciate her point by a physical manifestation of the number eight, she exclaimed, "Eight years! And like, I'm sorry, but..." She huffed. "Ugh, at least get the tuning of your strings right? Like, please?"

Kristoff swallowed his bite of chicken and then leaned over, tapping a red-faced Anna on the nose. "Have you ever considered that he's just not good at the violin?"

Anna scoffed, folding her arms. "Even if he only practiced for like, ten minutes a day for eight years," then she jotted down some numbers on a napkin, "that's still a good four hundred eighty-six hours! And practice makes perfect." She wiggled the napkin in front of Kristoff's face.

"No, I mean that he's just bad at it," said Kristoff patiently. "Like no matter how hard he tries, he just can't get it." He paused and then asked, "Isn't that what you're always going on about, anyway? That you need passion to play music?"

"Musicality means nothing if you don't have adequate technique to back it up first," she retorted. "You could be crying all over your instrument and that doesn't mean shit if you're producing some gods-awful noise like you're auditioning for—for Shrek honking into a soiled tablecloth or something—"

Kristoff gave her such an offended look that it could have flattened the Himalayan mountain range.

"—what?! Don't stare at me like that!" Anna squawked. "I'm a musician, not a connoisseur of the English language! It isn't in my job description to be good at metaphors!"

"You...made a simile, not a metaphor. Also, do connoisseurs of the English language even exist—"

"Thank you, oh great god of English," Anna loudly cut in, a blush bursting across her cheeks. She huffed and then crossed her arms. "My point is that—"

"No, no, I get your point." Kristoff scraped the last of his mashed potatoes off from his plate. "But you aren't getting mine."

"Yeah, 'cause it makes no sense."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You suck at Astrophysics," he deadpanned.

"What—?! Whoa. Wait, hang on. First of all, don't mention that evil thing in front of me. Second of all, what does that have to do with music?"

"Um...nothing, if you're looking at it literally," Kristoff admitted. "But look — he sucks at the violin even after doing it for so long, and you suck at Astrophysics. Ah-ah-ah, don't say anything"—he smirked at an indignant Anna's obvious intake of breath—"let's face it, even you admitted that you weren't good at Astro."

"That's different," Anna grumbled. "I've only been taking this class for a year —"

"And you've been literally driving yourself into a frenzy studying for it ever since Arnbjørg told you that you were...well, failing it. It's like all you do now—other than practice violin, obviously," he added hastily after seeing Anna glare at him resentfully. "Let's be real, Anna. If you haven't gotten it completely by now, after you spend at least...like, I don't even know, thirty hours a week or something ridiculous like that, studying for this one subject, chances are—you're just bad at it. Just like how that guy's probably...well, bad at the violin."

She didn't look convinced. "I'm not bad at Astrophysics! It just—isn't coming to me easily—"

"Hey, it's okay," Kristoff smirked, patting the spluttering redhead on the back. "It's fine to be in denial."

"I'm not in denial!"

"I was terrible at chem in sophomore year," he told her. "I did every single worksheet that Andersen gave to us, and I never cleared past an eighty-four on his tests, do I have to remind you?"

"His tests were hard," Anna insisted.

"Anna, even you ended up with an overall ninety-three average in that class."

She glared at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You hate science," Kristoff said wisely, as if it explained everything. Anna rolled her eyes.

"Ugh, that's different! Besides, I will get Astrophysics eventually. I have to. And—hey, you're right, it is like my violin playing! Like I practice a lot playing violin, and that's why I'm where I am today. So all I need to do is work extra hard on Astrophysics—"

"Anna, you're already working 'extra hard' on that class—"

"—and I'll bring my grade to above a passing level. It's foolproof!" She grinned. "'Cause practice makes perfect! So extra practice will make extra perfect!" She ducked down under the table to retrieve something, presumably her agenda, from her backpack.

"...Oh, gods, you have sunk so deep into denial that I can't even see the top of your head anymore."

"That was a terrible pun!"

"That isn't a pun!"

Anna tried to leap back up, presumably to call Kristoff a "connoisseur of the English language" again, but unfortunately, there was a very large and very hard table that had conveniently been placed above her head.

A nasty thump sounded, and Kristoff winced as Anna let out a pained yelp.

"Ow! Ow, ow, ow—oh my gosh, okay, I get it, the universe hates me—"

Kristoff shook his head and smiled, bending down to haul a smarting Anna up.

"C'mon, feisty pants. The bell's about to ring."

—

Anna was still puzzling over Kristoff's words after the school day ended, but eventually decided to let it slip her mind for now, instead retrieving her violin from the orchestra room and crossing into the auditorium. She pulled out her iPod, set it to her "Thinking" playlist, and then snatched the Astrophysics packet from her backpack. She glared at it in irritation before taking off from where she left off.

She had maybe been huddled in a chair for half an hour before a voice broke through her concentration.

"Bruch."

Anna sniffed, pulled out an earbud that was blasting one of the Disney soundtracks (she thought it may have been Pocahontas), and peered upward from her Astrophysics homework.

"Uh...say what?"

Adam, the first chair cellist, smiled at her and slid down into the plush red seat next to her. "Peter and the Wolf," he said. "Jameson wants you to play an excerpt from Bruch during the intro. I just ran into him in the hall, and you know how he's like with this kind of stuff. He said that he'll be here in a few minutes and he wants you to play a solo, when Arnbjørg's announcing the orchestra and such."

Anna was now sitting in the first row of seats in Evigvinter High's auditorium with a mess of notes and papers in her lap, idly waiting for the chamber orchestra's after-school rehearsal to start while continuing to struggle through her homework. The stage in front of her was already set up, chairs paired together and folders on the stands, but there was another thirty minutes left before rehearsal was actually set to begin.

She frowned at Adam's statement then and set down her pencil, snatching the other earbud out from her ear. "Isn't the concert in, like, two days?"

"Um...yeah." Adam shrugged. "He just said that he wanted a short solo from the principal of every section when Arnbjørg listed them off."

"But we're already playing excerpts from Peter and the Wolf when Shang's narrating in the beginning." Anna frowned and tapped her pencil against her knuckles. "What's the point?"

"Hey, I never said it made any sense!" Adam raised his hands up in defense. "He's making me play part of Dvorak."

"Dvorak's pretty," she replied absently, and then set aside her Astrophysics homework. "He just could have told us about this sooner, you know?" Then again, she reflected, Mr. Jameson—the conductor of their orchestra—was never the most organized person she knew, be it teacher or student. He was more eccentric that half the people Anna knew, and she knew quite a few quirky figures. (Read: Marshall.)

The concert in question, on the other hand, was to be a two hour long monstrosity comprising of pieces that ranged from Katy Perry to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. God, she loved that piece, and she was all for "raising awareness of the diminishing influence of music programs at our esteemed school," but she thought it a little morbid to be imitating Fate knocking on a man's door in the face of little third graders. Regardless, the second half of the repertoire was pretty fun to play, so Anna told herself she could totally hold out playing Katy Perry just to get to that Beethoven.

It was at that precise moment when Jameson all but careened onto the stage in all of his possibly sleep-deprived glory, and almost fell flat onto his face. Anna nearly toppled back into her seat in alarm. Jameson, though one of Anna's favorite teachers, looked like a frat boy who'd had one too many drinks at a seedy bar the previous night and woken up in a puddle of his own drool that morning. He had a five o'clock shadow plastered around his jaw and dark circles framing the underside of his eyes, which were darting all over the place. His hair was a veritable rat's nest and his rubber ducky patterned tie was hanging loose and rumpled.

Anna's mouth fell open shamelessly. She was used to seeing the man in various states of messy dress, but this was taking it to a whole new level.

Adam seemed to share Anna's half-concerned, half-appalled sentiment.

"Um...Mr. Jameson," he said. "You're looking a little...under the weather today."

"What?! No, no, thank you, Adam. I'm fine!" came the garbled response as the conductor tore through the neatly ordered stands and chairs on the stage, knocking them wayward. Anna winced as she heard the sound of metal stands crashing against each other. Jameson all but leaped onto the raised platform before the conductor's stand and then riffled through the sheets of his scores, muttering underneath his breath all the while.

"Blast it! I need to find that abominable first page of the—you!" Jameson abruptly screeched to a halt in his rampage and crooked a finger at Anna.

She clung onto her armrests, snapping her jaw shut with an audible click. "Wha—? Me?" She pointed at herself, and tugged her violin case closer to her body. "I don't...wait, what?"

"Ah ah—Disney!" He shook his head and snapped his fingers at her impatiently. "The popular one. That song they've been playing for months on the radio! That, the one—erm—'the cold never bothered me anyway'—"

"...Do you mean 'Let It Go'?"

Oh crap, are we actually playing that? Quite frankly, Anna was sick of hearing it being played on everyone and their mother's radio stations.

"YES!" Jameson roared. "WE ARE PLAYING THAT!"

Adam blinked. "...The concert's in two days," he said helpfully.

"I wouldn't give it to you if I didn't think this orchestra could do it!" Jameson snapped back. "I'm sure it won't be difficult for this group." Then, turning the brunt of his attention to a shocked strawberry blonde: "Anna!"

Anna despaired. Oh my gosh. Katy Perry has nothing on Frozen.

"Anna!" Jameson called again, effectively gaining her attention. "I've been searching for it the whole while! There's no sheet music for the violin ones! Do you have it memorized?!"

"I—" Anna croaked.

Jameson hummed out the first few bars of Let It Go and snapped, "That's the one! Everyone loves it, you know it by heart, don't you?"

"Um, well, I can't say—"

"Roll with it," Adam hissed in her ear. "I don't think he got any sleep last night."

"—that I don't know it completely...I totally know it by heart...and how to play it on the violin...heh?" By this point, Anna's fingers were fumbling along the clasps of her instrument case at light speed. She hurriedly pulled her violin out and slipped on the shoulder pad before whacking the bow on the strings, playing a horribly out-of-tune version of the tune Jameson had just hummed.

She quickly dropped the instrument to her lap and taped on a laugh at the end that she hoped sounded convincing, but probably seemed more like a nervous cat throwing up a hairball.

Jameson, though, wasn't paying attention to her anymore. "Good. Very good!" He seemed slightly calmer now, though this was, of course, at the expense of Anna's sanity. "You and I both know the children will eat it up like cake. I'm sorry for springing this on you so last minute..." He seemed genuinely apologetic before he whipped a finger up. "But it'll attract them here! Families! Along with the third graders; they're coming from the elementary school, yes? A full house! And we need a full house!" Then he grabbed the folder containing one of his scores and ran out of sight again, tossing a "If people start coming in for rehearsal, tell them I'll be back in a few minutes!"

Anna gaped after his retreating back. Then, she turned to Adam incredulously.

"Can you tell me what the hell just happened?"

"We have to learn a really popular song from the hottest new movie of the year in two days, and if we play it incorrectly we'll probably be beset upon by screaming third grade fangirls who may or may not be cosplaying the Snow Queen?"

Anna's head dropped into her hands. "Third graders can't cosplay, Adam."

"Halloween says otherwise," Adam said wisely.

"...Well, fuck."

End Notes / ...*whistles nervously* plot, are you there? Plot? Plot?!

*coughs* Aiii updates! Breaking the fourth wall is always fun. Trying to get somewhat back on track with this story so I guess this was mostly filler #_# I apologize for that, and I'm really sorry if it seems a bit slow right now but things will be picking up pace soon~ Thanks so much for sticking with me! Each and every one of you are amazing! :)