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She nodded, and placed her hand on the keyboard. Her grin had disappeared, replaced by a serious face. Once she learned how to play she could enjoy it. But until then she would take it seriously. She gently pushed his hand aside, and copied him, with a couple stumbles.
"Like that?" She asked, looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

She quickly got off the bench and went to pick up the music. She quickly glanced over at him. "You okay?" She asked sweetly, gathering up the sheets. "How are these sorted?" She asked, and looked at the violin. She stared at it, even after it was put away.
It was a beautiful instrument, and it looked old too. She wanted to look at it again... She opened her mouth, and asked, "Its beautiful!" She quickly looked down, slightly embarrassed.
She quickly picked up the sheets, and proceeded to sort them.

"I won't." She muttered, and soon finished sorting. She sighed, and picked up the book. She took another look at the case, and then at the door. Her curiousity flared, what was the history with him and that instrument?
She gnawed her lower lip, and left the room. Oh geez, she had to change into something nice. She couldn't wear a t-shirt and jeans to this thing. She set the book aside, and went to the closet. She pulled out a sweet little dress, and tossed it aside. No! No! No!
She banged her head against the wall. Her mother had no taste. The only dress she had left was...
She opened her eyes again. Yes! The pretty dress! She pulled it out, it wasn't too fancy, but it wasn't super casual. It was a cute green dress, and it went well with a pair of sandals she had. She quickly tried it on, and smiled. Yeah, she could wear this without hiding her face.
But her hair! It was limp... and not very pretty. She went to the bathroom and began to style her hair. She brushed her hair, and curled it slightly. She now tied it up, and looked in the mirror... no... not in this style.
She tried again, and smiled at her reflection. This was good!
A bit of lipgloss, pink grapefruit flavor, and she was done...
When was the dinner again?
She looked blankly at the reflection. She couldn't remember...

Alyekzander briefly saw Markus pass him as they both went to their rooms and wouldn't have given it a thought except it was fairly rare to see his brother so despondent. He almost said something, got as far as opening his mouth, then shook his head and moved on. Certainly if he was concerned for anyone's welfare, it was his brothers' but did they not also require privacy? Alyekzander certainly knew he did. And so he returned to his room, set down the painting and stripped off his clothing to return it to its box. He had left all his supplies in the garage, but did not give them a thought. They always wound up back in his closet of discarded interests sooner or later.

He needed a shower. Somehow today had felt longer than it really ought to have and they had not even had dinner yet. Alyekzander strode into his private bath and stepped into the shower. As he added plenty of hot water, he let his mind linger on the thought of the newly expanded household all at one table. Those girls would not be awed, he thought. At least, they would not show it, except perhaps Naomi who did not seem to possess a defiantly unimpressed streak.

He started making predictions as he soaped up. Madeline would be wearing headphones and still trying to hold conversations. Cecelia would smile entirely too perfectly with a glint in her eye he had yet to identify. Emilie would, by some cruel twist of fate, be seated directly across from him to alternate between glaring and still being too exhausted to glare. Naomi would bubble on about some painting on the wall that only one or two of them would even remember owning. And his brothers?

Markus wouldn't brood long, not publicly. He would come to dinner prepared to more than adequately bear the mantle of the approachable one. Maksim would be pointedly absent. Alyekzander himself would quietly observe whether any of his prediction came true as a sanity preserving distraction technique. Would the other two arrive? Perhaps only so late as to have just missed dessert and coffee, but it was oh so nice to meet you all, goodnight.

Oh God, what would his father be doing the entire time? He hoped the old man did not start flirting and cooing at his new woman like a damned teenager. How was anyone supposed to eat with that level of nausea permeating the room? Alyekzander finished his shower with a burst of frigid water, as he usually did, before stepping out and toweling off. What would he wear? What did it matter? If he dressed well, he was a spoiled rich boy. If he tried to dress poorly, he was a spoiled rich boy daring to pity his poor, underprivileged 'sisters'. Such was life.

Fortunately for Alyekzander, his wardrobe was shockingly uninventive any way and there was not much choice to be made, really. The argyle sweater vest, white shirt and tan slacks looked practically identical in all but color to just about everything else in his closet. Clothing was the one interest that simply never had hooked Alyekzander, nor was it ever likely to.

((I taught myself to play piano whee well, at first. Then I started taking lessons... I think I still have most of my piano books...))
Madeline grabbed the piano book. Hey! Someone would come find her when it was time for dinner... so off she was!
She started humming as she walked towards the piano room. Hopefully no one would interrupt her, because she needed time to learn this.
Ah! Here she was!
She opened the door, and strode to the piano. She set the book out, and began to teach herself to play. Okay...
Her face returned to its serious form, and she played delicately, so as not to disturb Alyekzander or whoever else might be nearby... but as she continued she became louder, and didn't care who was around to hear.

Emily’s eyes fluttered open, then squeezed tightly shut again as she curled up into a fetal position on ‘her’ silk bedspread. She lay there defiantly for a moment, trying to slip back into her dream –something about being trapped in a painting—but it was no good; she was awake. Her dark eyes opened again, focusing on the comforter as one hand moved across the fabric, which was so soft that she could barely feel it against her skin. It was her favorite color, blue-grey, and smelled like juniper, her favorite sent, but it was not hers. It had been purchased for her by perfect strangers, and suddenly the fact that strangers had picked out a bedspread in her favorite color bothered her. In fact, it bothered her enough that she sat up, wincing in anticipation of the inevitable soreness.

It was not, however, as bad as she’d feared; her muscles were stiff, certainly, but did not cause her an unduly large amount of pain, and her catnap had done much to take the edge off of her exhaustion. She got to her feet, glancing at the clock, then sighed and moved into the bathroom. She should probably start getting ready for—

She froze, staring at the girl in the ornate bathroom mirror with increasing horror. The girl was still wearing a Utopia apron, her dark hair, greasy with sweat, was pulled back into a plain knot at the back of her head, and her face was puffy with sleep. Seeing that girl forced Emily to recall the events that had taken place in the garage, in all their mortifying glory. She stood transfixed for a moment, a slow flush creeping across the face in the mirror; then bit her lip, hard, stormed back out, and threw herself onto her bed again, facedown in a truly obscene number of pillows. A muffled shriek of absolute frustration filtered up, followed by another, and another.

Finally she surfaced, her face brilliantly red but calm. She took a deep, cleansing breath, then got back up off her bed, untied the apron, and calmly deposited it in the trash bin. She was done with Utopia; that much was absolutely certain. Pulling her sweaty t-shirt over her head as she walked back into the bathroom, she contemplated implications of the rest of it. She had to admit, now that she was thinking clearly, that the situation had not really changed, embarrassing as the whole encounter had been. Her stepbrother’s opinion of her had probably not improved, but nor was that particularly likely under any circumstances.

Emily stepped into the enormous shower, complete with a bench for the lethargic shower-taker, and picked up the shampoo, frowning slightly. Juniper scent, formulated for easier curl and wave management, read the bottle; that was not a little disturbing. Brushing her unease away, she turned on the hot water and instantly melted. It would be so easy to just sit there, letting the water cascade over her head until it was time to go to bed. No one would blame her for missing dinner; she’d had a hard day. Her mother’s face, miserable with disappointment, rose unbidden before her eyes; she sighed, slid the elastic out of her hair, and reached for the shampoo.

Some twenty minutes later, she stepped back from the bathroom mirror to appraise her overall appearance; considering the time constraints, it actually wasn’t a bad effort. Her dark hair, still too wet to leave down, was caught up in an elegant french-twist, with a few damp, wayward curls gracing the sides of her face, and the makeup was minimal, just a hint of dark eyeliner. Her top was a delicate, off-the shoulder-affair, and the off-white color of the garment made her hair and eyes stand out even more. The rest of the outfit was simple: nondescript black slacks and black strappy sandals; it was classically elegant. She would show him-- She shook her head, booting that thought out of her head without pausing to examine where it had come from. She was doing this to show support for her mother; God only knew what her sisters were going to show up in.

Madeline's head shot up. She turned her head to glare pointedly at Alyekzander. "I came of my own free will!" She snapped, puffing her cheeks out, then let them return to normal size.
She turned back to the book, and continued to practice. Her hands detoured to one of the few songs she knew. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
The first song that the Johnson's kid had taught her. The boy was half her size but forced her to learn the song so that he could chant along while she played. At first she was eager to play... but it got old, so she forced him to teach her some more songs. About halfway through Mary had a little Lamb the kid got bored and dragged out Chutes and Ladders for them to play.
She smiled at the memory, all those kids songs made her want to bang her head against a wall, especially the endless choruses of Old Mcdonald that the kid came up with.
'And on his farm he had a tribble! Ee-i-ee-i-oh! With a...' The kid would pause, trying to remember what sound the tribbles made. How the kid knew what tribbles were Madeline didn't know.