hornsignal

"You're sure it's alright?"

Every clop of Brighid's heels had echoed perilously throughout the auditorium, covering Mòrag's pants-clad shuffling, as they'd made their way into their seats and set down this tote bag, that instrument case. Mòrag shouldn't have been surprised to the point of a wince that her question also reverberated. It just wasn't the same as when Brighid did it.

"I wouldn't be letting you do it if I wasn't sure." She was so calm. The perfect epitome. "Being principal oboe comes with certain expectations, you know."

"Such expectations that do not usually include you being this punctual, I imagine?"

"Fortunately for me, yes."

Of course Brighid was fashionable. Of course Brighid was effortless. Of course her perfect complexion contracted wrinkles only at such time as when she frowned her way through the offering of the tuning A to an orchestra that chattered, nattered, and blew.

Of course Mòrag was completely and utterly tone-deaf. Or so the wisdom went.

"I'll be damned, Brighid," she declared, "if I let these antiquated contraptions of brass and balsawood get the better of me."

Brighid nodded with a patient flick of her tongue against the underside of the reed. "Not only that, but you'll be embarrassed."

It, for the record, was constructed neither of balsawood nor of cork or grenadilla blackwood, but instead cane. Cane was not balsawood. Mòrag knew this. Brighid knew that Mòrag knew this, and Mòrag...well, you get the picture. Despite being tone-deaf, the non-SASO member currently occupying the stage had a certain flair for the dramatic and the poetic that could not be denied. In certain moments. Perhaps not actually those she chose.

"And...whose instrument is this, again?"

"Lora's." Brighid didn't even bother looking Mòrag's way; the sound of the bell hefting in her wife's grasp as she contemplated, and not for the first time, the purpose of perching the fingertips inside the opening, was more than detectable, if not actually audible. "For a horn player, she's remarkably unconcerned with the associated hygenic risks. Nothing like Jin."

The hefting stopped. "And shouldn't I be?" Nervously: "Brighid?"

Brighid shrugged, perfectly elegant. She'd compromised her own comedic timing with the nosy note about Lora's lack of resemblance to her stiff-lipped mentor and long-suffering gig contact, but couped nonetheless. "We're playing an older symphony this week. She'll be using a different horn."

"Well." Mòrag could now be heard hastily clapping her hands, wrist against wrist, behind her back. Point for none unwieldiness. "I suppose you mean for me to gather that that means the spit on this one is already dry."

"You sound so nervous. Don't you trust Lora? Or me, for that matter. Orchestral musicians aren't the type to wear halitosis like a fashion item."

Mòrag fidgeted. The horn, gamely, squeaked.

"Are you?"