notes in the shape of a nose

She knew every entrance like a vigorous breath down her left side and up her right. She'd never boast about it, never elbow her way up empty chairs into the first stand, but she had a consistency and a core that no other violinist brought into this section ever came close to having.

Not flashy, but vibrant. Always giving her best one-hundred-ten percent; no lounging back. Though she balked at loud, unapologetic warmups, Pyra's violin sang when she wanted it to.

The rhythm that began the first movement of this symphony was neither offbeat nor rhythmic. You almost just had to know. Especially in a group as unprepared as this one. Which was fair, because it was the first rehearsal of the season, categorically - yesterday had been a holiday - for this group and all others.

There were the cellos - wrong. Second violins - also late, listening to the firsts though they outnumbered five to three. Pyra kept going, confident in herself and willing to own her mistakes. If she was going to be wrong, it would be because she went for it.

Onward through obligato, octaves, oboes. When the strings paused to let the secondary theme begin to wend its way in, Pyra listened for a blistering octave and mellowing seventh from the horns. Engaged by sight and sound and the whole of the symphony running through her, she never really stopped playing.

You couldn't get rid of strings, really. They were always there, exerting their influence. Sometimes Pyra suspected that if she didn't show up, a pretty significant chunk of coherence would fall away. And by suspected, she meant hesitantly admitted. Sort of self-aggrandizing, wasn't it? Didn't it have to be?

Even in rest, she was thinking of how she could add to the music going on. How could she help; how could she express the symphony as it played out in her head?

(Shouldn't her head be enough? Wasn't she enough for herself?)

Third stand outside: her case was slid neatly between the piano bench and its pedals. Nearly outside of the entire orchestra, on a direct sight line to the horns and timpani, she waited, not bothering to count (because who was to say they would get anywhere near her next entrance without stopping?).

The piano, though upright and shut tight, beckoned to her. An alluringly sophisticated possibility: just prise up the lid, and play along. It would fit so perfectly. What, six notes?

Just six notes. All told, forty-four measures of rest to play them in. No trombones, tonight.

But Pyra could feel what she imagined to be the eyes of Gray, Perceval, and Wulfric on her hypothetical bout of doubling, and though she knew Danbar would do no more than limply leer at her if she made any sort of spectacle (Vess might give that vacant, granola smile of hers), the thought was paralyzing enough that she left the piano as it was. The notes, she imagined.

Flute solo. Horn solo. Violin solo. Absent celeste. Debilitatingly stilted ländler. They skipped the third movement, thank goodness, so unerring disorganization held Pyra in its good graces, that she didn't have to walk out alone among a sea of strings.

And in the elevator, afterward, when Perceval lamented the number of ringers they'd need to bring in order to pull this massive symphony off, in between ribs at Wulfric for all the nothing he'd gotten done, Pyra tried to put in, "Yeah, I thought about opening up the piano and playing along, you know, in that one section, but I figured..."

There was Perceval's piercing stare - what Pyra got for begging attention. "Yes, I know the one you mean. Well, why not?"

"Just didn't want to make a fool out of myself, I guess."

"Come now, Pyra. I do not believe you are capable of such a thing."

"Certainly you could be no bigger a fool than Ashigu, eh?"

Chaghan and Ashigu, the evil twins. Wulfric's comment was a rare snipe, and it took Perceval on a cutting tangent about their ever-so-slightly-pompous conductor at the wind symphony, but indeed, Pyra would have to work hard to bury her well-controlled playing underneath the wreck that Ashigu had laid out, in absence of her brother while her equally useless husband beat on. At times it seemed that these catty four in reluctant week-on-week attendance were the lifeblood of the entire ensemble. Pyra didn't have to be hesitant to admit that.

Gray, of course, said nothing. His keys jingled and Pyra was reminded with a pang sharper than Ashigu's misplaced harmonic that soon they would all be on their separate ways once more. Well, not Gray and Perceval. But Wulfric's keys, too, hung off of his mallet bag, a glistening threat. Pyra's own shivered in her hand.

She looked up at Gray. A single eye darted to her. A flash of teeth. Then stoic again.

No warmth. Pyra, bright red, glowed dimmer and dimmer next to drab, discolored old men.

Four people, all jammed together in a deliriously creaky elevator, and she still felt so, so alone.

Pyra knew that her prowess was recognized in terms of how sorely the violin section needed her; how they'd never use her in the horns because that would be hitting the ailing Torigoth Sinfonia while it was down. But was it only that?

Did Gray actually think her too good of a violinist, or just too amateur of a hornist? Surely he knew how serious Perceval was about his craft. Unshakeably committed, even to the point of ignoring what Pyra truly needed to learn at any given moment in favor of his personal pedagogy and dogma. Sort of a manifesto event she merely witnessed, every time she had a lesson. Which was fine, honestly. Whatever would make him happy.

But she didn't talk about that, with Gray. She didn't talk about much of anything, with Gray.

She just figured he tolerated her incidentally, as long as Perceval and Wulfric welcomed her presence. He drove the car. Sometimes she got in it. She wasn't one of the group, obviously. How could anyone like her ever hope to be one of them?

And so Pyra toyed, sometimes, with the idea of just...spiriting away, generally. Ditching the violin completely, for something more mysterious and totally ignorable. Maybe she should take the piano back up, after all, and travel around giving lessons to whichever grade school children had parents who'd pay.

(It wasn't about the pay, of course, but if she had to be alive- if she had to make a living...)

She wasn't part of the string section. She also wasn't not part of the string section. She tried to be knowledgeable about the winds, and certainly conversational with the other members she knew, but was someone like Pyra ever meant to stick around for very long?

Was this someone else's dream? All she'd ever known, so she took it as her own, despite how ill the cloak seemed to fit her, at times?

But the symphony she clung to, industrial and melancholy, full of secret quotes and far-off battles, tugged at something in her.

This was Pyra's Shostakovich 5. Not just showing up for the sake of it. Not just holding the door. This season, this year, this life, was whatever she made of it. Whatever she was going to be, it had to start now.

"See you next week?" she called, at the inflection point in the sidewalk delineating here from there. It came out a murky muddle of a question and an exclamation. Who knew that they were even paying attention?

Perceval said nothing, only nodded, and Wulfric clapped her on the back, but it was Gray who grunted out, "Probably wouldn't come if you weren't here."

Pyra knew that he was lying, because yes, even though none of them would want to come, they still would, and yet...well, that wasn't half bad, was it?

She thought of blossoming bell tones all the way home.