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 Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:37 pm
Casia sang hesitantly in the music room. A lot had happened recently, and the fact that her education had been a real constant through it was so comforting, something cherry in her otherwise hectic life. So she would stay after for as long as she could, anything to prolong the feeling of zen that she got from something that remained the same.
However, not everything could remain the same, and the fact remained that what with everything that had happened recently, she hadn't had much time for singing. Her voice felt odd as she eased back into the familiar melodies, and her heart felt odd as she remembered hearing and trying to sing them at Anna's house.
"They're gonna put me in the movies
They're gonna make a big star out of me
We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely..."
She paused and sat down, frowning. The melody didn't sound quite like what she had remembered, and she reminded herself to scour the new woman's house for records. She didn't quite know if the woman was a Beatles kind of chick. If she asked politely and batted her eyelashes though, perhaps records could be purchased if she wasn't. She was relying on the cute card until she could get a good read on the new guardian, but until then...
"All I gotta do is act naturally." she finished.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 5:48 pm
The sudden noise of the door opening put an end to further contemplation. "I thought I heard someone in here," said Merroth, standing in the doorway. Had it been the sound of piano or violin in the hallway he would have expected one of the music teachers. Instead, this girl -- Casia. They were in the same level, but unless he was making a scene during class and trying to embarrass the teachers, Merroth tended to keep to himself and ignore the other children, so he wasn't terribly familiar with her. She was just one of so many children he had seen around school. She did have wings, which was a bit of a standout, but it seemed half the children at school had some weird physical attribute.
Merroth narrowed his eyes at Casia in silent evaluation. Friend or foe, fight or flee. "What are you doing in here?" he asked.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:04 pm
Casia bristled as the door opened unexpectedly, clamping her mouth shut while her heart did complicated acrobatics. Turning around, she saw a familiar looking boy, but it wasn't because she had met him before. Almost everyone could at least recognize his face, he was That Kid, the one that seemed to always up to some hairy stunt. He didn't look unusual, but he was a case of looks being deceiving. And now he was narrowing his eyes at her.
Well, two could play at that game, and Casia was too tired and nervous to let a class clown act like he could bogart the music room. She opened her mouth to spit out a sarcastic retort, but paused. This was supposed to be time for her to relax. Flinging insults about wouldn't do at all, so instead she counted to ten and thought about his question again. "Singing." she said lamely, and bit her tongue so the What are you doing asking me what I'm doing? wouldn't accidentally slip out. She was okay. She was in control.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:10 pm
"Oh," was all Merroth said, and closed the door behind him.
The music room was vaguely similar to an auditorium in some ways, the chairs set up on tiered levels to help direct sounds to the front. Merroth headed down towards the front of the class, a little bounce in his step each time he stepped down from one tier to the next. "Well don't let me stop you," he said to Casia. He headed for the teacher's desk.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:28 pm
Casia bit her lip. She was not in the mood to let people hear her sing right now, she really wasn't. But she was just so annoyed. He had come in here and bothered her and now he was just acting like what he had found out wasn't interesting at all. She felt an itch to show him just how boss her singing really was. Lightheadedly, she thought that then of course he would feel terrible and she would get to secretly gloat over how terrible she had made him feel. This sounded like a good plan to her, and so she nodded firmly. "Maybe I will, then." The only problem was that saying you were going to sing meant that you had to start singing first, and that part was the hardest part. Closing her eyes, Casia tried to pretend that he wasn't there and sing quickly before he left and therefore eluded her scheme. "Ah... W-well... W-well,"
"Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movies gonna make me a big star
'Cause I can play the part so well."
She paused, taking a breath and a moment or two, but in that moment she remembered that he was there and that furthermore she could only vaguely remember the rest of the song anyway.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:46 pm
Merroth had been intending to get his score and run, but now that he was closer, the tantalizing hint of something from the hallway was like an ocean undertow. Invisible, but inescapable. Merroth stood next to the desk and listened, forgetting entirely why he had come to the music room, focusing on the notes and measuring them in ways only he could.
He was still processing the music when she stopped, running over numbers in his head. It took him a moment to realize the data was gone. He turned towards her, leaning against the desk. "You stopped." Apparently he was a fan of stating the obvious. He stared at her expectantly.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:38 am
Casia looked nervous. He was staring at her, and she felt indignantly like he was ordering her to sing some more without actually bothering to waste breath saying it. However, a part of her that had been starving for attention since she had said goodbye to Anna was purring delightedly in her subconscious. He didn't seemed wracked with guilt and despair yet, but he hadn't disliked it either. Still though, she felt a twinge of indignation stronger than the urge to continue, and a twinge of fear that she might mess up the lyrics. She decided to buy time, trying to wrack her brain for the silver threads of song in her memory. "Yeah, I did." she said evenly, and leaned on a chair in a casual kind of way. "I'll finish, maybe." The song was coming back now, she could feel it. She just needed a little more time to get it right in her head. "Do you sing?" she asked him, and tried to remember his name. Come to think of it, from what she had heard about him and seen of him, the fact that he was being so quiet seemed pretty weird in and of itself. "Are you okay?" she added as an afterthought.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 11:52 am
He was prepared to answer the question about singing (only if the music was so loud his voice was washed out by it, or when he and Emma were shouting lyrics together, not that he would mention the second part) but then she asked if he was okay, and he had no answer. There was only one other person who ever asked Merroth that, everyone else just seemed to assume his mental state was or wasn't and rolled with the assumption.
Those same exact words, that same exact tone. Merroth was taking far too long to answer the question, which was an answer onto itself. He finally said, "I don't know, are you?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:08 pm
Casia's eyes widened in surprise. "Me?" She bit back an automatic 'Groovy'. She wasn't doing that great, but she didn't want to admit it to someone who was almost a stranger and maybe a bogue. But he had answered her in a way she thought could have been honestly and it gave her pause. She considered herself from all angles before answering "No."
And it was true, wasn't it? She wasn't bummed out or anything, but she wasn't okay, not yet. It would take time for her to reach okay from the low she had recently reached, and even after that she was worried she would never be quite as okay as before. She watched him warily after she said it though, and in case he got any ideas she added, "Don't tell anybody." She shifted uncomfortably, wanting to get off the subject of her okayness and remembered that there was someone else's okayness that still needed to be addressed. "Want to talk about it?" she asked him and then bit her lip. "Sorry." It was a weird thing to ask someone she hardly knew, and she was sure he didn't know her, so by way of apology she added "I can just sing the next part instead if you don't."
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:15 pm
"No, keep singing," said Merroth. He climbed up onto the desk and sat with his legs dangling, pushing aside the file organizer and mug of pens and pencils, completely destroying the careful order on the desk set up by the meticulous Mr. Etoh. It was the best seat in the house for the moment, and in Merroth's mind at least, that more than justified it.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:32 pm
Casia shrugged and closed her eyes again, taking a moment to remember where she had left off and run over the song one last time. Her stalling had ended up giving her more time than she needed after all. She took a deep breath and started shakily.
"Well I hope you come and see me in the movies
Then I’ll know that you will plainly see
The biggest fool that ever hit the big time
And all I gotta do is act naturally.
We'll make the scene about a man that's sad and lonely
And beggin down upon his bended knee
I'll play the part but I won't need rehearsin’
All I have to do is act naturally."
She concentrated on hitting the notes, but she knew the song well enough. She had always thought it was funny that anyone would sing about being famous and sad and lonely at the same time, but as the music flowed from her mouth it occurred to her that maybe someone could be well known and feel alone all at once.
"Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movies gonna make me a big star
'Cause I can play the part so well.
Well I hope you come and see me in the movies
Then I’ll know that you will plainly see
The biggest fool that ever hit the big time
And all I gotta do is act naturally."
She finished and opened her eyes, moving to sit down on the chair and take a breath. Her brown eyes flickered over the boy sitting on what used to be a tidy teacher's desk and she thought about why she would sing to a stranger that would listen even when she wasn't in the mood and why he would make a reputation for himself even when he didn't know if he was okay or not. Who were the famous fools around here?
Shaking her head a bit, she tilted the chair back a little, sinking into it pensively. She was probably reading too much into this, so she distracted herself, turning to the boy. "My name's Casia, by the way. Don't think I'm going to clean up the desk." she warned him jokingly.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:39 pm
"I know. I'm Tenebras Merroth Garmondsway, but people call me Roth," said Merroth, sad the song was ended now (he so loved the undertow of her voice), but unable to resist an illustrious introduction when the opportunity presented itself. Until he realized what he had just done. Her singing had pulled him somewhere else for a moment, far removed from reality, and he had drifted halfway down the path into memory, completely off-course. He panicked at his mistake. "Clark! Tenebras Merroth Clark!"
Not Garmondsway, not ever, ever Garmondsway. Not any more. Merroth felt instantly terrible, like he had just betrayed Boston and Emma, two people who had never given him any reason to betray them, which was more than could be said for most of the world.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:15 pm
Casia's eyebrows furrowed for a moment at the abrupt outburst, but she didn't say anything. After all, she still wrote 'Casia Fairhaven' on her assignments. "Well, Tenebras Merroth Clark," she said, rolling the name around on her tongue. It sounded musical, she couldn't help but let it slip out half-spoken, half-sung. "You still haven't answered my question." Hoping to distract the boy from whatever train of thought made him yelp out a different name, she continued, "You know I can sing. Can you sing?" She didn't say she could sing smugly, it was a fact of life. Casia was a Siren, so she could sing. If people liked her singing, it was just the proverbial cherry on top. But Roth had to be able to do something too, or why come to the music room? "Can you play, compose, or conduct?" She used the last two terms with a hint of glee. Having just learned them recently, the feel of casually slipping them into conversations was still new and wonderful.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:32 pm
"I compose. Actually, I came in here..." Merroth glanced at the desk papers and started rummaging through them, looking for his sheet music. "The teachers, they wanted to look over one of my scores, I was supposed to pick it up." He had just gotten distracted a bit, and now both the music teachers were gone and he needed those sheets. They were bound to be somewhere on the desk.
As he destroyed the tidy organization, Merroth asked Casia, "What were you doing in here?" If she wanted to talk about her not being okay, it was an opening to do so.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:56 pm
Casia grinned. "Far out. I'd love to hear one sometime." As for the other question, the siren shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Singing. Avoiding reality." She flashed a weak smile. "I'm in here pretty often afterschool these days." She didn't want to continue. When she continued, people tended to leave and things like new homes and paperwork happened. Instead, she hopped from her chair and down to the desk, moving to look through the pile if only for the sake of the little organization that could still be salvaged. "So how does composing work?" Casia often made up her own little songs or melodies, but composing was something completely different, something that she suspected involved sheet music, sleeting rains of inspiration, and large orchestras. She wasn't familiar with much beyond the clean songs and soft sounds of the Beatles, but when people talked about composers they inevitably talked names that were foreign to her, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. Familiar, but difficult to attach to songs and faces.
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