to our mightiest powers

There's what's to be said about low brass players, and then there's what's to be said about the strings. Well more than half the orchestra, if it's balanced right, and they get paid when the winds don't, confoundingly. But it's the game they're playing, the system they're scrying.

Pyra is not new to the mental invocation that string players are a dime a dozen, so she'd better make her best showing at it. She's a far cry from any yen for arrogance, at any stage, but sometimes it would be nice not to have to be handicapped by the low calling of a high register only ever assigned the melody lines.

But, at least modern symphonies make them work for their outsize pay. The final movement of Prokofiev's Fifth is no joke - you're more than apt to be caught faking if you're not committed to shaking loose some rosin and caking some oils on your fingertips as you dig everything you've got into the strings.

It's not showing off if it's a righteous effort, is it? It's no more (well, maybe just a little bit) than is necessary and sufficient to bring it off for all it's worth - and it's worth a lot, Pyra happens to think.

She can't help being dedicated, and she doesn't want to. It's a badge of honor, a sign of prestige in the only vaunted gauntlet that matters.

Pyra has never wanted to impress anyone with her playing, especially, unless it's an audition she dearly needs to pass. She'd much rather entertain retirees in a rec room, or busk for clapping children.

Making good music is like making good food: it feeds people, particularly their souls, and invites them in.

And Pyra, being a timid and gracious sort, never really has anyone to invite. She greets all the other members brightly, kindly, warmly, and is greeted just the same in return. But she's not there for herself, or else that's all she's there for.

It's saddening, sometimes. While she'd willingly deny, if not decry, the attention-seeking behavior that is proudly announcing a social calendar of her performances, for various ensembles of various sizes, she knows that if she doesn't say anything, the orchestra itself will suffer for attendance, and that's not right. It's the one duty she has, as a player.

Well, besides, you know, playing.

But there are many, many people who make the efforts of such ensembles possible besides just the players, the ones people can see and hear and feel.

There's someone at the township, for instance, who grants the group storage of their timpani and miscellaneous battery. Someone who condones the parking and schedules the auditorium. Someone who makes sure the door is opened and the lights are on.

Acutally, at this very moment, there's someone bob-haired and short sitting out there behind the lighting console, and they're trying to get her to turn down the work lights that are shining directly in the principal bassist's eyes, apparently, so Pyra has plenty of downed-scroll time to squint through the haze to catch a glimpse, and to feel bad for all the rigor and rumpus it has to be just for the conductor to sneer at the orchestra that it's not his job, sorry, so stop asking.

They'll never get through to the frantic fourth movement at this rate, or even touch the elegaic third. A shallow pit forms in Pyra's stomach as she realizes that she's not really looking forward to the rest of what this evening will bring, anymore.

Unless it brings that mysterious lighting manager down toward the stage and puts a spot on her, instead. That, Pyra would perk up and get interested in.

Since when is she so prone to gawking, goggling, gazing off?

Well, of course she has her moments of distraction. Especially when the lights are piercing...

Pyra moves her head slowly, eyes unfocused, to face somewhere towards one of the rear auditorium doors. There's someone standing in the aisle, just below the level of her nose...

Oh! It's that girl. Her chin seems to dip, her eyes setting back.

And then the entire place is plunged into pitch.

"I'll call facilities," a heavily-accented voice rings out in the blackness, tired but readily resigned.

Perhaps it's apt, for the neoclassical industrialist mecha monument in symphonic form. Peering keenly toward the first row of seats, Pyra makes her way offstage to tuck her violin safely away.

"Sorry about that," says the voice, much quieter this time, and Pyra gapes to realize that it's talking to her - much closer as well.

She turns. There's a silhouette: blunt-cut hair with cat-ear space buns (or...no, cat-ear headphones) and a jumpsuit, maybe overalls.

"I think it's great, what you all do." the girl points raggedly, waving with the heel of one hand while the other remains shoved into a back pocket, palm flat and elbow crooked. "All that...musical. Stuff."

Pyra's heard it called worse. She's heard it called better, too, but sometimes it really is those with the most disorganized, displaced comments that bring the nearest tear to her eye. Those who regard it as a magical world, when they hardly even know - for themselves, that is! All the boundless possibilities, the unconventional composers (and lucky them, Prokofiev pretty well counts, for a town like this), the impassioned programming.

Like on the odd occasion that Pyra visits the bank following a gig, and the teller starts to go on about how her mother played a violin in the old country, but now it's in the attic collecting dust, I was supposed to learn in elementary school but I wasn't very good, we used to have a piano, isn't it funny how that happens?

"Have you ever wanted to learn?" asks Pyra, without an idea in the head of which instrument she might possibly consider accessible to one such as this Nia, who acts with all the air of a middle-aged and balding custodian, instead of a post-adolescent volunteer. But then, maybe she knows somebody, some distant relative or other, that has such an instrument, and Pyra could feel herself inspired to teach for free, right at this very moment.

"Welll," Nia rolls the Ls with a lush bite of her lip, "not really. But it might be nice to be able to play a few little tunes, when I felt like it. You do that, right? Or is it only all this...grand stuff?"

Grand stuff. A funny thought, here, for Pyra, the ever-introspective critic. All this about striving to the outer limits of skill and worthiness, ignoring the inner light of pure joy in musicmaking for melody's fantasy.

"I think a lot of the time I forget to," she replies honestly. "I'm glad you mentioned it to me."

"Awww, well." Nia grins sheepishly. "What can I say? Might not be the intellectual type, readin' all those tiny notes, but I do have a thought, every once in a while."

That's irksome in itself, the persistent denial that even while musical pursuits are inaccessible and twee, the common folk are too base to understand. Maybe that's a mindset Pyra can work herself against, for a while. She'd like to know how Nia ticks, that way.

Metronome. Steady on. Tick. Tock.

Nia kicks the carpet.

"You haven't even called facilities, have you?"

Pyra's reproach is slight but real. It's a bit of nerve, isn't it? To say that you think it's great, wonderful and marvelous, and then leave it, this blossoming organism, to shrivel and wither and die in the dark.

So dramatic, Pyra! Such a stern, scowling brow. Prokofiev must be getting to her - just as much as it had to Nia, and then again much more. This liminal space, of the rehearsal where they're not rehearsing, but practicing something very much different at all...

It's ever more frightening than sawing sixteenth notes. Pyra's fingers yet ring with phantom dents.

But that's alright. There's always next time, to earn their keep.