PROMPT TIEMZ
This is your first New Year being... Different. You have hands, and feet, fingers and toes. You have human eyes and a human nose and hair. Everything is strange and the New Year's festival is no different. There are hundreds of people and dozens of booths, all waiting for you to indulge in things you never could before. Are you social? Are you shy? What do you do with your freedom? What firsts do you indulge in? Was it the best night of your life or a complete disaster?
Your Name: Face Your Demons
Pokemon: Chimecho
Gijinka Name: Kale'o [Hawaiian for "The sound, The voice"]
Prompt Response:
This is your first New Year being... Different. You have hands, and feet, fingers and toes. You have human eyes and a human nose and hair. Everything is strange and the New Year's festival is no different. There are hundreds of people and dozens of booths, all waiting for you to indulge in things you never could before. Are you social? Are you shy? What do you do with your freedom? What firsts do you indulge in? Was it the best night of your life or a complete disaster?
First, the light is overwhelming: I can't begin to register all the movement, the lantern blurs, the flashing teeth from smile to smile. All illuminated, all cast around me in what seems to be motion without end. There is no one I am looking for, but I can hear something far off, a strange sound which I find I can't focus on. My heart feels light, and my throat catches. A celebration of this size thrills me; I can, for the first time, engage with what I see and hear. I turn slowly to my left, the beads of my wrist charm clicking against one another. There is a man selling what appears to be some kind of white fluffy candy, but I am hesitant. I could use something to drink.
If I close my eyes slightly in such a way, the lantern light blossoms across my vision and becomes butterflies, flickering in place. I open them again, and turn to my right, always slowly, deliberately. I inhale, exhale. One step forward, two, and then I remember how easy it is to move if I want to: there is someone with a berry game to my right, and I watch that for a while, but do not participate.
"Hey, hey, there's a pretty lady, step up, try your luck!"
Sometimes it takes me longer to pick the right sound, and every word is special. So at first, I smile at the boy running this game, shifting under the soft cloth draped over one shoulder. He must not have seen me properly, or only looked at a glance. I have noticed that since assuming this new form, not everyone sees clearly. Not that I can complain. My strength is in sound, after all.
"You must have me confused with someone," I finally answer. My voice has a layering effect to it: there is the sound of the words, but also of something within me which reverbrates, as if I speak with more than one voice. It can be alarming, at first. Or disorienting. Haunting, in the darkness, with only my voice as company.
"Hey, man, you'd really make a pretty woman, you know? You really would. Here! Have a berry, try your luck to get more!"
Even though he didn't seem to care about his slip, the boy tosses a berry at me. I catch it as carefully as I can, cupped between my hands, and pop it into my mouth. Quite sour, the Colbur berry's tartness abates my thirst for the moment. I smile at him, again. My temper isn't always this even, but with so much to do and see, I feel a sense of excitement that keeps me floating in a blissful state.
The boy gets distracted by another customer. Should I take it as a compliment, that he would deem me attractive? I shake my head, and turn back to the crowds and the rows of booths. There is too much to see, and that constant sound which I heard before on the breeze reaches me again.
I close my eyes.
My sight, while fine, is still flawed: it's my sense of hearing that I covet. Voices; vendors; the metal of a bracelet hitting another bracelet as someone shakes their fist, perhaps; sandals scraping against the rocks underfoot, which have been used as a kind of pavement over the ground; there are so many living beings, and I never had to be so close to such a crowd. In my original form, I hardly left the plains. Focus is all it takes to distract me from this fact. I walk slowly through the crowds, my eyes still closed, towards the sound: broken voices, whose dischord sounds out to me in such a way. Where I was before, they were spiritual humans who chanted mantras and lifted their voices to reaffirm their beliefs or to reach out to a presence they felt was listening. The dischord I hear now reminds me of this, and as I stand next to its source, I finally open my eyes.
Karaoke? There are individuals in various states of inebriation, and they seem to be taking turns singing along to musical accompaniment. I try to watch on the fringe, but someone far shorter than me stumbles off the stage and heads to the edge of the crowd, on their way to ...well, somewhere. I can't begin to guess where, really.
"How'd I do?" they slur, stopping suddenly to ask me. "You just got here, right, and you stopped to listen to me, right?" This ... thing has slung its arm around my shoulders, and although I try to remain amicable, its face is extremely close to mine. Its breath is awful. I reach one hand up, the cloth draped over it, and try to cover my nose and mouth. This was never a problem at the shrine. When I work myself up to replying, the reverbrations of my voice have a different tone. They are sharp, and quick; clipped.
"Perhaps you should drink more water," I reply. And then, as the creature recoils (is it a man? a woman? I can't tell, its hair and clothing are so ambiguous) I realize that I was perhaps too sharp. My voice softens. "You were fine," I say.
By this time, a few others around me have turned to look at this latest singer and whoever they are talking to, which is unfortunately me. Instead of being repulsed by the way in which my voice echoes within itself, the stranger seems egged on. "You should sing, sing, sing, with that weird voice of yours." It wags a finger at me, and totters off into the crowds, with a mumbled "I need more libations."
"I do love to sing," I admit, to the few who still pay attention. The stage remains empty, as another drunk is trying to stumble up the steps, and can't quite manage it. "But I've never performed in this way before."
My protestations are met with an enthusiastic: "Well, drink more!"
No one warned me about karaoke. One of the friendly, helpful strangers pushes a cup into my hands. At least no one is draped across me, any more. I smile awkwardly, and stare at the cup, then back at the group, and back at the cup. By now, the group clustered around the stage has largely turned to face me. They aren't that numerous, and most of them have a drunken glow to their faces. It seems like the only way to truly enjoy karaoke is to drink copiously, if the audience is any indication.
This is my first New Years. Why not? It can't be that bad. I sniff the drink, which I identify as what I believe to be some kind of beer, and take my first sip. A shudder runs down my back, and I feel my cheeks flush. The strangers burst into whooping, clapping and in some cases fall over themselves. I bow, and take a few more sips; the awful taste becomes progressively less awful. I only make it through half the cup, and all the lights are becoming butterflies. I drank a little too fast, and when I take a step forward, I feel that the ground has become suddenly less solid. Floating around was so much easier. I laugh at how tall I feel, how far away from my feet I seem to be, and make my way up on the stage. Well, I'm assisted up to the stage, rather: my new fans have become so determined to get me onto that stage that there are dozens of hands pushing and pulling and moving me upwards.
It's like being in a living sea, until I break the crowd and broach the stage. I stand with my cup, neglecting the amplifying thing that the previous singer used. I do not need it. I laugh, and my face is getting even warmer. I reach up with my free hand to tie my hair back, spilling a little of the beer over the edge of the cup held in my other hand as I fidget with my hair.
While I would normally use one of the temple's songs, it seems like these people are so happy, so animated. I take a deep breath, feeling even lighter than before, and say, "I do, in fact, feel pretty. You should all try this sometime-- I'm king!" I take a step towards the crowd and try to spin, but nearly fall over, laughing. They laugh with me.
My voice, with all its layering, seems to be attracting spectators. I try to act serious, and perform a piece: I clear my throat, close my eyes and press my brows together. The very picture of concentration. But I feel ridiculous, putting on such a serious expression in the midst of celebration, so I burst into a chain of laughter, before I manage to calm myself down enough to sing.
"Pick up the microphone!" Someone in the crowd yells at me. I shrug. I don't need it, but it won't hurt me to use it, so I pick it up and keep smiling, bringing the black metal a little too close to my face. "Well, what are you waiting for?! Sing!"
"Sing, sing!"
"Yeah, sing!"
The cheering carried on, until I took a long sip of the beer, and closed my eyes, feeling a little too warm suddenly. I felt like a bubble, like for the first time since becoming human I was weightless again, floating. I leaned forward as best I could, picking my song off the prompter, which looked like it had taken quite the beating. It was a folk song which I recognized.
I neglected to figure out how it worked, or what was going on, until it was already a few lines in. Eventually, I understood the way the words were scrolling, and joined in with my warm and layered voice:
As on thy fiery soil I stand,
I look across the plains.
And wonder why it never rains.
Till Gabriel blows his trumpet sound,
And says the rain's just gone a round.*
I finished the song, line after line, executed as well as I could without laughing. Finally, I stopped, and bowed enthusiastically, downing what was left in the cup that I hadn't yet spilled. There was an awkward pause, then some sparse applause and cheering. Following the initial positive reaction, once it had startd to die down, I heard someone mumble, "I didn't even know that song was on there..." and the response from their friend followed.
"What song was that?"
I set the microphone down on top of the prompter and head off the stage, trying to look as dignified as any spiritual practitioner might look. But I am hardly that. My beads click against one another, and I feel like I am drifting through the crowd. While someone else takes the stage, and they keep on partying, I wander down the rows of booths, my eyes unfocused, light blurring everything. I close them and rely on my sense of hearing again, going nowhere in particular.
All in all, a success. A happy, wobbly success. Perhaps next year... I will know someone to share it with.
[[*The song lyrics are from the folk song Dakota Land]]
