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It had come as quite a shock when he had located the small upright piano in a tiny room off the north hall. He had almost jumped into the air when he pressed a key and found the instrument to be in tune. But then, LOTUS had been full of surprises from day one, and now that the drought of new recruits had ended life was really becoming quite active. Estrelas chasing chickens about, Lai cooking all the time, Einar... doing whatever Einar did, and then all the miscellaneous others running around and...

He hadn't realized he was so stressed. Picking up his hand off the keys, he waited for the nerve-jangling chord to end its echo. Then, uncertainly, he sat down at the bench. It had been so long since he'd last set his mind towards piano, the priest found himself rather uncertain as to whether he actually remembered how to play. Some things he knew he'd never forget- the right way to pose his hands over the keys, basic scales, when to use which pedal. Arpeggios. But...

No. Piano was like bicycle-riding; it came back to him the second he played the first few notes of Maria's lullaby. Sure, there was some faltering, but he had always been a fairly talented pianist and it seemed very little of his skill had been lost.

Lifting his hands from the keys, he stopped for a moment. The Vatican seemed so long ago, and Rome even longer, but...

Was that footsteps? "Hello," he said, a bit of a question at the end of the word. Asmadai looked up from his extended contemplations of the keys, waited for a moment for someone else to step through the door. But no one did, and he couldn't discern if someone else was there. He'd not noticed while not tempted, but he had missed the feel of playing the piano. And it wasn't like being able to play an instrument perfunctorily was a shameful thing.

Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he wondered if he could still play that old piano etude. It wouldn't hurt to try, decided Asmadai, so he set his attention back to playing. The notes came back easily enough- he had had it memorized before, after all. And though he didn't play it quite as fast as the music would have required, it wasn't like he had an audience or anything. It was just him and God, or so he thought.

Caught up in the complex notes, he didn't notice Lai's arrival until he'd finished that song and begun a new one, much slower and more peaceful. This slow melody allowed him the peace of mind to look around, and he stopped abruptly on spotting the Russian man. "Lai," he said, trying to tamp down on the slightly shocked note in his voice. "Forgive me, I didn't see you there."

Slightly embarrassed, but trying not to seem so, he hastened to stand up. "You should have said something," he said, only a slight note of scolding in his voice. "I would have stopped."

He shrugged and sat back down on the bench, but this time facing away from the piano. "Then we can both rest easy, knowing we are both attempting to take the blame."

It had been a while since he'd actually thought about the names of pieces. He pulled this one out of the blank places in his mind. "Angel Fire," he said, "it's an etude. It's meant to be played faster." So I wouldn't have minded the interruption, he added, but he didn't need to say that out loud. The way he thought it, it sounded almost resentful.

"How is your cello playing going," he asked politely. "Did you ever find anything to play?"

"That's kind of you to say," said Asmadai, who was remembering what it was like to be a perfectionist at something. He itched to prove that he did actually have a modicum of talent, but that wasn't an appropriate emotion for a man of the cloth. Pride was one of the Seven Deadly Sins, after all. Instead, he sat on his hands to remove the temptation. "I'm glad to hear you're doing well, you seemed to know a lot about your instrument that day in the library."

"Six, that's quite a while." He smiled. "That's no indication of skill level, though. My sister..."

With a sigh, he turned back to the piano. "I hope you don't mind," he said, setting his mind off the subject of his sister (Don't tell anyone, I'm haunting you) and onto playing something. He couldn't obtain quite that level of single-minded concentration as before, though, aware as he was that another person was in the room. "She started playing piano at the same age I did," he related. "And never did quite get the hang of the C major scale. I don't think she ever played an arpeggio correctly in her life."

It was good to talk music with someone else. Perhaps better, though, was an opportunity to speak of Maria to someone else.

Asmadai smiled, glad to hear that Lai had enough self-esteem to say so boldly that he felt he was skilled with the cello. Pride might be a sin, but those without it were... Well, less than people, as wrong as it was for him to think it. His fingers slipped on the keys at that thought, and he shook his head to clear it. "You seemed quite adept at reading the music in the library," he said, the closest he could get to an assurance that he agreed with Lai.

"Maria and I were professionally trained," he said, "and I taught my younger siblings, for a while." From the way the piano in Rome had been so badly tuned, he doubted they'd kept up with it. "The tutor... Well, she was kind. Perhaps too much so. Then, Maria always was more of a dancer than a musician." Yes, it had been dance; ballet.

He paused, looked over his shoulder at Lai. "Forgive me for saying so, but I don't believe it's in you to hate someone or something." The Russian was, Asmadai believed, a good person. Imagining Lai even angry stretched his imagination to the breaking point, and that made him glad to know someone so... Well, pure was the word. But it was one he hesitated to use. Unable to articulate the thoughts in his head, he smiled, then turned back to the piano.

"I wrote her a lullaby. She would never sleep well after our parents fought, and we were a floor up; the sound didn't seem to carry the other way. Or perhaps they didn't mind..." A shrug. "It's a talent I lost, the music."

He shook his head again. It wasn't kindness, it was duty; much of what the priest did was directly traceable to duty or fear, which shamed him but there was no point in saying so. You teach your siblings because you know and your parents want them to know, not because you want to. Truthfully, he'd rather have been reading. It had turned out to be good practice for later in life, though. Asmadai rose, closing the piano's cover over the ivory keys. It seemed strange to stop playing so early, but it also felt rude to keep playing while he was having a conversation.

A cheerful, accepting smile and he said, "Of course you may pry, Lai, a priest has no secrets." The question wasn't even exactly personal, and he continued, "It was 2050 when time fractured for me." Time seemed to have fractured in many different places for many different people. It was, he thought, a shame that it had to have fractured after Maria's death- even for Maria. The line of questioning, though, reminded him of another curiosity. He had been well-schooled, so normally placing someone in their era of existence was easy. Nationality was sometimes harder, but Lai's accent was distinctive, at least to him, so he didn't need to ask. "May I know your era as well?"

It was a relief that he hadn't inadvertently offended the Russian with his statement; he returned the smile, but the expression faltered and disappeared completely as the conversation progressed. "No, I didn't lose it. I never wrote it down, actually; I..." He shrugged, an expression that was equal parts bitterness and anger slanted off towards the corner. "I just don't like to play as much, so I've lost the ability to continue adding to it as I used to..." A muscle in his jaw twitched; not that he was mad at Lai. Such a thing seemed impossible. Asmadai didn't even know who or what he was mad at, just that... "I'm sorry. This subject makes me uneasy."

An understatement, but... Perhaps a subject change was in order. "So. What brought you down this way?"