Peter and the Volff
going back to reread maestoso [Make It Maestoso, Won't You?] and being not frustrated but immensely pleased with the fact that they both [if the duck were a songbird] start the exact same way even though i didn't know my bassoomf back then"Flora Hentisane, for her verbose and articulate program notes" there are things happening in my brain that even i didn't know about
"["]But two weeks in advance?" Better two weeks in advance than the night of, right?" THERE ARE THINGS HAPPENING IN MY BRAIN THAT EVEN I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT
(to explain: the 8k schoolslop [where have all the good men gone?] calls back and forward to all of this with zero reread preparation)
Flora had swiftly learned to take Yui at her word, and never inquire too terribly much; it wouldn't serve her very well, to far fall from the bleeding edge of omniscient consistency. Neither did she waste time pecking out details, when she knew that all would be revealed in time.
If Yui said she'd be playing the actual standalone premiere, plus narration, of Peter and the Volff, then Flora would expect to see her there. Flora wouldn't pester Brighid about it, nor would she fret to Addam. She'd only wait and see, and practice her part to its fullest potential, so that the cat's wiggling behind could be spied from the tip of tail down no matter the thicket of the grass.
Anything could happen. Flora trusted in it. She had to resume her place of paragon's wisdom, or else clap her trap and just get on with it.
She arrived to rehearsal, the morning of the concert. She unpacked her instrument in the green room under the stage of the miniature, old-timey theatre, and brought only what she needed to her seat - even with reduced forces, their task was tall, to fit everyone comfortably.
She adjusted her sight lines, positioned her instrument stand. Since it was a true children's concert, there'd be plenty of talking and also plenty of solicitation. It was less for her own laziness, which she didn't have, and more just so that she didn't look impatient, as she waited and looked on.
And whose head did she see in front of her, when she'd finished arranging herself?
Not Jin. Not Vess. Not even Roc.
Yui turned, slowly but not and never smugly. She held the flute just as gingerly yet confidently as she held the oboe.
Before Yui could get the first word in, Flora remarked, "You told me I'd see you here. I'm glad I believed you."
"People do tend to see what they want to see."
Flora smiled, remaining just as enigmatic, and piped herself through a few pleasant scales. If she inclined her head just so, she could hear the faint glimmer of Yui echoing her lines, because of course Yui knew how to learn these things as easily as breathing, and reel them right out in return.
Oh, it was good to be back.
It was with an especially private sort of pride and amusement that Addam regarded Minoth's conscription into the chamber-sized SASO for this gig in particular.
Minoth was a tightly-controlled loose cannon around adults, because he only barely considered himself one (Addam thought back to his taunts at Mr. Eulogimenos, who was herein not appearing; Aegaeon calmly held down the single-player stand). Minoth was probably one of those people who considered that he himself had never been a child.
And Minoth, Addam knew, was about to be the absolute favorite of many a child, because the children that came to see Peter and the Volff performed appreciated the narrator only insofar as the narrator was willing to throw them bones, and Addam knew that Minoth was not yet quite comfortable enough to be doing that on Khanoro's watch.
Instead, the children would gravitate to the fascinating-looking man hanging his long hair, or else his ponytail, over the bouts of his bass, playing all the way up the fingerboard into thumbless positions for no other reason than that he felt like it. Because he could. Because who was going to stop him, Zettar?
Zettar would do nothing of the sort. He might complain to his brother in recess, but Khanoro would never take that dissidence to the bank. Neither even would Mr. A. Malthus.
Minoth's only enemy was himself, when he got self-conscious and thought that maybe he wasn't all that.
Addam had told him, in fits and starts, that he was everything. Minoth had replied that Addam should lose the beard.
(He had, and Flora had pouted, but Minoth didn't have to know that. Did he?)
"So, is that awkward?"
Brighid quirked a brow at Mòrag, only willing to dignify the question because of the esteemed individual who'd asked it. Maybe she was trying to distract herself from her own impending throat-clearing to-do. Maybe she was just trying to make conversation.
"You act as if Yui had purposefully usurped me. If you'll recall, I was the one who invited her here. Why should it be awkward?"
Well. Mòrag, who couldn't play any instrument (did it bear repeating? surely it didn't), couldn't imagine being shown up so handily by a doubler first filling into your own seat, then popping into that of the gentleman who usually, constantly, week in and week out, sat next to you. All the unspoken communication, all the many-filtered future-layered trust...
Mòrag was well conversant with the idea of troops coming and going as the seasons and contracts took them, as qualifications progressed and experience either ousted one or carried them on to a higher opportunity. She realized, however, that she'd taken for granted just how important, or not, the seat of a principal player actually was.
"The string ringers change places all the time," she noted absently.
"And the good ones know that there's no deep dishonor in second violin," Brighid confirmed. But Brighid never did play second oboe, and neither would she deign to pick up a fiddle.
As well, Brighid's usual station at fifteen minutes to was in her seat, properly prepared with reed and tuner (she bowed to fastidiousness, but not to clipping any such implement into the end of her bell), but because her wife had accompanied her in official stead, she was content to do what strings did and lollygag out in the cheap seats.
If she were jealous of Yui, she wouldn't have done that. Mòrag, in a few minutes' time, realized this, and stayed her piece.
"Surely there are no trumpets in Peter and the Volff," Zettar exclaimed to Thomas, who was inspecting a bit of dirt under his index fingernail that had had the gall to lodge itself there as a result of some last-minute erasure of erroneous (probably quite sensical) bowings in the second violin part, which sat untouched on the stand while Haze helped Azurda up the makeshift steps to the stage. Always a good sign of a sturdy venue, that. Definitely not the type of set decoration that would appear baldly obvious to the concertgoers. Definitely not.
Well, except that the concertgoers were children, young children with young parents, so they probably wouldn't even notice. So long as they didn't make any motions to start running up those stairs...
For these smaller productions, Thomas was subnominally converted to a dual position of librarian and manager, in which post he oversaw the assortment of toy and child-size instruments for the perusal and amusal of young minds, seeing as there was no specifically appointed education coordinator, or some such, to handle the same.
Too, there was personnel to address. But Thomas didn't mind the additional responsibility; on the contrary, he enjoyed it. Any strings to pull, he would - and that was both literal, via personification, and idiomatically figurative.
In terms of personnel, yes, there were usually no trumpets. But Malos had asked to be on, and Thomas had merely raised a bored brow and intoned, "Fine. Double whatever you find appropriate," because Malos had an almost machine-like mark with perfect pitch.
(Later, he'd investigated the archives and found that there was, in fact, a trumpet part, as well as one for trombone. Malos had just smirked and replied, "Heh. I don't need it." Hugo, however, had taken the staple-bound legal pages graciously.)
"More shiny brass always pleases the uninitiated. Or would you rather they all came up to you to ask the difference between a violin and a viola?"
With the dramatically reduced string sections, there was plenty of budget to spare for these frivolous things. The principal clarinet, so he'd heard, had made a judicious and well-focused effort to advertise the performance across all grades of her elementary school. Whichever members had small children, whether their parents were playing or not, would come along, and while they wouldn't have paid for tickets if there'd been a ticket price, a suggested donation box did very well.
Thomas A. Malthus would never say aloud to his paramour that he was foolish to question the administrative mind of such an individual as the one to which he currently spoke. He would only imply it, with a scantly endeared glance.
Mikhail was the type of agreeable young gun to make his peace with whatever height of stand was required by whatever old crone he'd gotten seated next to this time (of which there hadn't been very many, as of late; instead, quite a few broad-bowing babes, which he didn't flirt with because even he knew his limits among lesbians). He didn't complain, didn't nudge, didn't sigh or philander.
When seated with Akhos, however, he squawked up a storm all over the place. Oh, his poor back. Oh, his poor eyes. Oh his poor legs. Oh, to have to reach over and turn the page all the way from the opposite corner. It was agony, torture, total pain!
Akhos's glare was hardly as red-hot as the frames of his glasses, but it surely got closer every day, or night, or otherwise.
"If you didn't want to sit next to me, you didn't have to put your name in. I'm sure Herald would happily have played."
"Patroka wanted her to," said Mikhail, not disagreeing but somehow being blatantly unhelpful nonetheless. He was good at that, actually. Somewhere distantly, he could hear Patroka's cold, hard stamp of a voice making it known that one drama queen was plenty, for the staging, and she'd step in to make sure of it if she had to. He blissfully ignored this auditory mirage, of course.
Akhos sighed, muttered, and went back to scribbling in cues. With the chances of Mikhail fatally distracting him ever-mounting, he wanted to make absolutely sure that he was certain of his entrances in the theatrical sequence about the falling rope. He'd much rather Peter fashion himself a lifeline than a noose, and they'd all be hung out to dry if Zettar screwed the pooch.
Which he wouldn't, because dear Patroka would put it right. Obviously.
"You know, to look at us, nobody'd ever believe you're in love with me."
Mikhail leered at his boyfriend just long enough to catch the whistle of barely-contained ire about who was watching and who was we, then went back to his own rounds of whistling at the first violins and singing along to the high warmup notes of the first horn.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?"
Flora asked it of nobody in particular, sighing into her seat with a heedless heaviness, and it was from that very moment that Addam knew today truly would be one of the odd ones.
To begin with, Flora didn't ask that type of rhetorical question, hardly ever. She'd talk about the weather if she needed to, if there was someone there to talk with, but to just sit and slouch, flutter her eyelashes and opine into thin air?
Flora thought that life could be a dream, maybe, sometimes, when her practicality had wended its way out especially successfully in a recent turn, but she didn't usually insist that it was.
Well, one day at a time, though. This, they all could do. Beautiful weather for on-street parallel parking without meters, indeed.
"It is," answered Addam cautiously. "I'm sure I'm glad you think so."
"You know," Flora continued, almost as if she hadn't heard him, "everyone's here, in their proper place, and we're just going to have a little rehearsal, and then some of my students will come to see it, and we won't have to play through anything too many times, and then it'll be a lovely evening when we get done, and we can have a bite to eat, as a treat, and then..."
She sighed again. She did have the right idea, Addam would give her that much. He'd often felt sort of the same way himself, but never quite knew how to voice it. It was a lovely uncapturable essence of the semi-professional style, that they nearly lived a whole day together, but were free to depart again as they wished.
He'd driven himself, parked far enough away that he didn't feel unfairly entitled to any such streetside real estate. Of course, coming in your own car usually meant that you left on your own, as well. But a man could dream, just as a woman could.
"Flora," he whispered, pretending to be discussing some very important cane and thread business, "are you going home with Yui, after this?"
"Well, no." She caught up to his conceit without very much blinking at all. "She's got her own way about her, we don't usually do that."
"But you're not going home with me," Addam continued. "Right?"
"No..." Then Flora looked full at him, and blushed, and put a hand out to squeeze his arm.
Their own special way, indeed. It was wonderful to be non-quantifiable, to be nothing and everything all at once.
They were quite different, nothing like the same soul in two bodies, but all the same they seemed to fill out each other's half-sided shape perfectly.
"Careful, dear, they'll see."
"Who's they?"
Addam waved a hand, momentarily letting his bassoon list freely above his lap. If anything should happen, Flora would surely catch it, right? She always seemed to catch him.
"The general populace. Your students. Zettar."
"Minoth?"
Addam's voice dropped. "What about him?"
"Will he see?"
In that moment, Flora's boldness flew off and out in front of her, and she wanted so desperately just to lean away into Addam's embrace and forget the whole day of which she'd only just been waxing poetic. The twenty-and-some of them could all meet again some other time, when she was more collected, when she wasn't famished for a hug and suddenly too cross to play any cat, major or minor or otherwise.
Will he see? Is he looking?
"Do you want him to?"
Addam had that characteristic way of checking his phone behind the straight pole of his bassoon. Minoth did the same, behind the neck of his bass, or sometimes he pretended to be scrolling through emails or social media when actually he was just staring at his shoes, or his hands, or his knees.
If there had been a whole section of three or four (or even just two) surrounding him, he would have had no problem pacing through the routine of staring at an unspecified point on the back curtain and letting his left hand fly over the fingerboard while his right jumped back and forth between arco and pizz, conjuring the image and appearance of an extremely seasoned player just feeling out his instrument for the umpteenth time, checking that the old gal was still kicking in the right semblance of order.
Because, you know, bass players didn't care very much for order. Minoth's bass had only recently acquired an extension, and he'd not yet used it, fearful that he'd turn out just like Vandham insisting that an E was an F-sharp in secret drop-tuning that he thought nobody else could hear.
So, all of that to stay, Minoth stared at his hands, comparing calluses that lacked symmetry and the blackened right corner-edge of his right thumb that perpetually wore away at the grip, and got worn away in gritting reciprocation.
His hair had been hastily pulled up away from the pegs, but a few strands still lingered down. Addam said it was dashing, devil-may-care. Minoth said it was the uncareless look of a poser.
But Minoth tended to say these things, when Addam was there to say them to. Left to his own devices, he'd say nothing at all.
Oh, hell, was he sentimental enough to admit that he missed Addam, away over the bickering heads of Akhos and Mikhail?
Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. The issue of the moment was gathering the courage to pick up his own head and get a view over to them - that is to say, ahem, him - in the crossed-finger hopes that they - um, he - weren't looking back.
But when Minoth looked, he caught not Addam's eye but Flora's, as she whispered excitedly to Addam and darted her eyes in his direction, furtively.
She looked. She stared. Minoth bit the inside of his cheek and winked.
And Flora's reaction to that gesture was to draw a sharp little breath and duck back behind Addam's stand again.
Minoth liked Flora. Really, he did. Addam spoke so highly of her, and her playing obviously spoke for itself. She was a great little lady, even if you only considered half of all things, and Minoth liked to consider all of them.
One thing that was always important to consider when judging the folks around you, for your own perception and procession, was whether or not they liked you. If they thought you were a weird horse, or if they thought you were an interesting specimen, not too prickly to reach out and touch.
So her bashfulness at his foolhardy little wink?
That told Minoth the rest of everything. He took his own unsteady breaths, sucking on the coppery taste pooling in his mouth, hunkered his head down next to his bass's neck, and started sawing away.
"Addam! Did you see that?"
But Addam hadn't, because he'd been too busy taking in Flora's Sunday-morning scent and the way the work lights flickered over the almost-auburn aspects of her hair.
Flora knew that he loved her, was sort of breathlessly in love with her at all times but also easily able to get around it because they just liked each other so much and found it so simple just to do things with each other. Flora knew that Addam liked Minoth, too, but he suspected that she didn't suspect how deep what had once been teasing and hijinx truly went.
She'd nary the patience for it, when Addam had gotten so jittery during the Colenstein anniversary cycle that he'd almost failed to get himself home, some nights. If she'd wanted to feed into his helplessness, she'd have waited, and watched, and worried. But she hadn't, because she wanted nothing to do with it.
(Oh, and when Minoth had so casually, yet almost accusatorily, referred to Flora as Addam's wife? Well, that had done all kinds of interesting flip-flops about Addam's hollow-hallway brain. If you could count a dozen-odd frantic repetitions as interesting, that is.
My wife? My wife! Is that what you think, my wife?! Gods above, my favorite person thinks my other favorite person is my wife! And still, he'll hold hands in the car with me! By which I mean, he'll hold my hand, like it's nothing, because he's got his own mind about him, which is apparently my type. My type! My wife!)
Wanted nothing to do with it. Had wanted, anyway. Now, she seemed somewhat personally interested.
"See what?" Addam tried to edge away from sounding sensuous and ended up somewhere among the poppyfields of groggy.
"He winked at me!"
Ah, this. "Mmm, yes, and if we know Flora, we know that Flora's gone straight to the little death, just then."
She tried to glare at him, but had to swallow her abashed smile instead. "Yes, yes, my beloved weak spot, you've found it. Remind me later."
So he tossed her one of his own. "Of course, dear. You know I will."
The first time through was...well, passable on the part of the orchestra, nervy on the part of the narrator. Though Khanoro tried his best - his damnedest - to give clear and grave cues, Mòrag still faltered, momentarily, on a few of the obligati sections where she was supposed to enter.
One, in particular, was the very tail end of the cat's quasi-recitative - sort of secco - that was accompanied solely by the contrabass. And on the contrabass's part, of course, it was clearly marked arco, but he thought, to hell with it, and played it pizz. At Khanoro's querulous look, since they'd already stopped, he just let the bass drop back into his lap, since the bow was of course already holstered, and shrugged: "Jazz cat?"
Flora peered at him, none bothered by his artistic choice but trying to tease out why he'd made a point of it.
Then the moment moved on, back to coaching Mòrag on how it all threaded together and the sheer unimportance of trying to march her syllables to the strings' beat.
Yui was perfect. Not a soul was surprised. Brighid, too, was lovely, although Flora privately thought that she missed the divine prettiness of Yui's oboe tone. The difference, of course, served to contrast the two birds, one flightless and one not, so it was alright. There was no snipping to be seen or heard between the players, only within the narration. And Mòrag's cadence could do with a bit more bite...
Akhos muttered some more, made some more markings and erased them, entered completely into his own head while Mikhail just patiently held the stand as it was battered to and fro under the merciless assault of the eraser.
Brighid said nothing. It wasn't her place to, and she had no interest in catcalls. If she didn't say anything, then neither would any of the rest of the winds (the horns, mysteriously quiet, remained that way until it was their time to come a-muted prowling). Only Aegaeon made an assortment of encouraging faces as he nodded along, and Brighid seemed to smile coyly at him, so Haze figured it was okay, and smiled encouragingly as well, but just to herself.
"See, Grandfather?" Flora elbowed Addam when it was his turn to be spotlighted, and the maestro cut him off nearly halfway through to ask for more character, more commitment, more...grumble. "Should have kept the beard."
Addam rolled his eyes, pretending to be aggrieved, but he also flicked his eyes to Minoth, to see if the bassist had been listening for Flora's intentionally audible commentary, and indeed he had.
Maybe a couple more winks. Maybe a bit more pluck. Maybe it'd all, very soon, come together.
They took a quick breather between rehearsal proper and the final run-through. Mythra and Wulfric set about moving bell trees and other miscellany that Zettar was even more sure they didn't need, but the concertmaster was too busy spontaneously eavesdropping on Lora's conversation with Alvis, to find out where Jin had gone and replaced himself with a silver-haired doppelgänger (or hadn't he been there all along, with the red jewellry), to make any further complaints to his ever-attentive artistic assistant.
Thomas was convening with some board member or other. Mòrag was conferencing with her wife, who seemed to give her that final and ultimate bit of confidence that she needed to bring it off just right - twice more, anyway. Patroka was attempting to stab Mikhail with her bow, via Haze, with Azurda pointedly staying out of it, and Hugo was having a much better time coaxing laughter out of Perceval than Malos was, much to the trumpet's intense chagrin. Yui, finally, had lit upon Akhos, and was giving him her standard cryptic treatment.
This, of course, left Addam and Flora and Minoth unoccupied, to throw some more inadvisable eye contact around the stage and see what stuck. Why no one else found Addam any more amusing to needle was beyond Minoth, but he really didn't feel like testing his luck.
Maybe when it was time to don bowties and bolos and boutonnieres - that had worked out pretty well last time, hadn't it? More than. Actually, last time it had gotten Minoth a no-holds-barred kiss. And this time he had double the odds of landing someone.
Not that that was his angle, primarily. He also had double the odds of making a fool out of himself, so what was the rush?
Addam waggled his eyebrows at Minoth. Minoth shot a testing look at Flora. Flora, mouth on her mouthpiece where it belonged, raised her eyebrows in the posture of a player and a player only, looking appraisingly at Addam.
"Meet me," Minoth mouthed, and even if his meaning had been misapprehended, watching Addam and Flora confer with each other about what they thought he meant was just as rewarding.
"So you're back as the bird this time. I think it suits."
Yui didn't use a flute stand, instead just holding tight to the instrument as she always did. Was she, perhaps, afraid she'd be mistaken as any old audience member if she didn't carry her flute with her? Was it a stolen flute, just like Mòrag had wondered to Brighid if it was stolen valor?
"You're a clever cat," replied Yui, reaching out to Flora without asking permission or signaling intent as she looped a layer of hair back behind Flora's ear. The ear had no point, nor a clipped tip, but Flora let herself preen into the casual touch, just as casually.
Behind Yui, Addam set his brows to work again trying to communicate his apprehensive confusion to Flora. This, here? And what even was it?
Flora would have summarily ignored him, but then Minoth appeared next to him, quite like a shadow. Rather than brush Yui off with an apology, Flora just blinked slowly. Yui, still thinking of cats, nodded through the bloom of a curling smile, and stepped off sideways to move past Flora into stairs that spiraled down to the green room.
"Am I in trouble?" asked Flora, now that she had the both of them before her to study. Next to Minoth, Addam's up-ruffled hair appeared exceptionally wild, but of course Minoth was not so very tame either.
And Flora, with her neat plaits that she was about to trade for a concert-ready crown, liked them both so very much. Minoth, perhaps mostly by osmosis, but she liked him all the same.
"Only if we are," replied Addam; the look on Minoth's face said that he agreed implicitly.
Since there was no one on staff who was particularly fun-loving (even Adenine, when she aided A. Malthus in librarianship, was very clean-cut about these things, even if she didn't mind bent paperclips and the occasional humorous marking - if easily erasable - in returned folders), the decision to make the matinee dress merely dark suit and colorful tops, rather than all-black or tuxedos or middle-school tops and bottoms had fallen to a sort of tenuous community vote, driven principally by Flora and Lora, with Mythra putting her two cents in that whatever allowed her to scuttle around in the battery without making too much noise was alright with her.
So Flora wore black slacks on bottom, but her favorite bright pink sleeveless button-down on top, with her usual accents of gold where they wouldn't bangle all into her barrel.
Addam had some abominable combination of gray waistcoat, red vest, and brilliant yellow tie, which shouldn't have worked but which really did, Flora admitted, even though she had to do a bit of unprompted wrestling with the tie clip to get it behaving where it was supposed to go.
"Careful, dear," Addam said again, and Flora looked inordinately pleased with herself as she looked away, completely unculpable for this forgivable sin of touching his chest when and where and how she liked.
The others were wearing mixes of suits and skirts (Brighid and Aegaeon were very pleasingly coordinated, even down to the block heels at the very end of their flowing silhouettes), and whatever tie Malos thought was funniest, matching on both him and Mythra. Hugo's military-styled vestments vaguely recalled Mòrag's smart buttons, which in turn vaguely recalled the fact that they were distant cousins. All in the family, universally, wasn't it?
In fact, Lora and Haze also matched, as did Akhos and Mikhail. Flora would have almost been unsettled by it, were she not infinitely comforted by the fact as well, drifting back to her dreamy state of earlier and blissfully content to stand with Addam (because who else would she stand with, herself?) as they waited for Minoth to produce himself and let his tie be tied, or clipped, or some secret third option.
"It's almost like we're at a wedding," Flora remarked, mid-shallow in thought. "And it's only a children's concert."
"A concert's a concert," replied Addam. "Any one is a grand affair."
Grand affair, grandfather, grandiose aggrandization. The children might well have loved it even - or especially - if the performers were in blue jeans, at the very least matching, considering how many high schoolers just slumped along to school in pajamas, practically, nowadays. But the getting gussied of it all just gave it that final festive gala touch.
Minoth, apparently, agreed, because he'd broken out his best flashy embroidered-placket shirt and gleaming belt buckle to match.
"What, no hat?"
Minoth shot Addam a scornful eye, then rolled it up to the ceiling (read: underside of stage) much too close by to ever allow for something so gratuitous as a cowboy hat.
But since Flora had put her hair up, he apparently felt it his duty to let his down, and without thinking, both Addam and Flora reached out to run their fingers through it.
"What am I, a show pony?" he quipped, of course. But he let them do it, because they were better looking than him, actually, and that was a high enough compliment in itself.
The concert itself passed without conscious effort, Flora felt. She heard Yui play, through her unlovelorn haze, watched the back of Haze's head adorned in a darling tiara as Peter skipped through the meadow, smoothly squinted sidelong at Addam's concentration to empower all the gruffness of Grandfather, and almost missed her own entrance, but for Minoth's palpable eye contact landing white-hot on her.
Mòrag was triumphant, now sufficiently worked into the role, and it seemed she'd lit upon a face in the front few rows to speak out to. Whether or not this was actually young Sena, the ideal impressionable audience plant escorted by her "cousin" Cammuravi, was nobody's business but the orchestra's, and they all seemed perfectly content not to say a word.
No, the word-saying was for after, when all was swabbed and packed, and Wulfric was wrestling Malos for Mythra's mallets while Yui entertained the curious children with the various joints of her flute. (Brighid, of course, was happy to let her do it, so long as Sena loved Papa and Mama the most.)
"So."
"So?"
Flora reserved her repetition, cautiously eager to see what Addam and Minoth would do with it.
But they did nothing, actually, except turn their distinctive and characteristic noses upon her.
"So..."
She drew the syllable out as if guilty, but she so surely wasn't.
"You and Addam are together, or no?"
Minoth looked a bit pained as he asked it, half as much for the anticipation of the answer as for the crude way of having to ask.
"I'm sure we're together," said Flora, lightly, after a beat paused to peer up at Addam. "We couldn't not be."
"And you and Yui?" asked Addam, to continue the train.
Flora frowned, drew in a breath through her nose. She clutched her case to her chest, wondering why she hadn't brought a coat of some description, at all.
"It's a strange thing. It's not nothing, but it's not much either. Now, you and Addam?"
Minoth, for his part, swallowed to show his trepidation, careful consideration. "Mutually attracted, I'd say. Right, Prince?"
"Right." And Addam grinned, because he liked the way this was going. "My turn to ask, again: you and Minoth?"
Instead of answering, or even pretending to look like she was about to, Flora set down her clarinet and closed the distance of a couple steps a-waiting between her and Minoth, willing him to close his arms around her as she shut her eyes.
When she felt that he'd done so, she murmured into his chest (around the bolo tie), "Mutually intrigued. Figuring it out."
They were stood between a sycamore tree and a fire hydrant, in no real proximity to any of the three of their cars, which made it particularly difficult to figure out where to go from there. Addam, in his various formalwear layers, made a show of shivering, since no one was bothering to hug him (and who worried after poor Yui? if her husband existed, and knew where he was), so he also turned his attention to the evening, now.
"It seems a wonderful night to go out for dinner, I think. All those in favor?"
Minoth popped a peace sign, angling his wrist into Addam's view, then turned the signal into a beckon for Addam to come closer, because maybe he, too, was cold. It had been a slightly overcast afternoon, just bright enough out to exhibit the outside but then just cloudy enough for people and parents to want to usher their children in.
Addam, too, wanted in, as did Minoth. They wanted in to Flora's world, so long as Flora would deign to entertain them, since Flora's world did also include those strangely intense women that she knew, and Jin and Lora and Haze, and Mikhail and Akhos by extension, and the entire ensemble as a convenance for continuity.
"Next time we'll meet up with the others, I promise," Flora said as she reluctantly extricated herself from Minoth's hold, voicing Addam's thoughts aloud. "But this time...oh, today really was just so special."
Minoth raised an eyebrow at Addam, then turned his head back down to Flora, who was wrapping one arm about each of their waists and pulling them together - close enough to kiss, in fact, and had she forgotten that she'd never gotten hers? If only she'd asked...
The point of getting together, moreover, was to give oneself and oneselves an opportunity just so grand and brilliant as to make every day special, regardless of the signature or the soloists assembled around.
"Methinks the lady is drunk on some unknown substance. Key oil, perhaps?"
But Flora swatted him away, for that injudicious comment, taking Addam's hand instead as they walked back toward and past the theater to find some cozy little restaurant at which to procure a table for three. Addam's bassoon was hanging on his back via two bolt-snap straps, and Minoth's bass had been left in the theater, unassumingly.
"Is it more about good against evil or the importance of good company and friendships, do you think?"
"It's whatever you want it to be," said Addam, while Minoth replied, "Animal polyamory."
The Southeastern Alrest Symphony Orchestra presents Peter and the Volff featuring a chamber ensemble:
OUR NARRATOR
Mòrag Ladair
~ Personnel ~ (players are listed alphabetically, an asterisk denotes the section leader or principal while two asterisks denote a substitute player)
VIOLIN I
Zettar Lenkovich *
Patroka Pyne
VIOLIN II
Haze Amatea
Azurda Barrett *
VIOLA
Akhos Harrison *
Mikhail Kramer
CELLO
Aegaeon Ragland *
BASS
Minoth Castigo
OBOE
Brighid Ladair *
FLUTE
Yui Uzuki **
CLARINET
Flora Hentisane *
BASSOON
Addam Origo *
TRUMPET
Malos Davidson
TROMBONE
Hugo Ardanach *
FRENCH HORN
Lora Moyer *
Alvis Ritson
Perceval Shale
PERCUSSION/TIMPANI
Wulfric Summers
Mythra Bennett
STAFF
Thomas A. Malthus - librarian
Khanoro Tikaram - director
it really was all in one day. it really was. god bless (this was drafted empty back within a year of maestoso, say May 15 2022 to coincide with my first children's concert of this kind)