miles baines: riff-raff! street rat! (mimicks) wrote in emillion,
[HANA (Nobles) - 10:00AM]
Having stopped by Hana to find Rin and deliver some of her paperwork in person, Miles was in the mood to linger up until the performer stepped on-stage.
The other man was a flamboyantly colourful bard (more like a minstrel, he thought) in alternating stripes and blocks of colour, an enormous feathery cloak that was more ostentatious than fashionable, and another drooping feather which wavered in the man’s face. Miles’ gaze initially slid over the bard, exhibiting the habitual blind spot reserved for most public performers that he didn’t know. Whatever warbling singer the Hana had decided to hire for the morning, well, it wasn’t his problem.
… unless it was.
Setting his cup of green tea aside, Miles cast the performer a second glance, squinting. He was performing the lyre deftly enough; Miles could admire the man’s fingerwork. But he knew most of Rin’s fellow dancing partners and singers – he ghosted the teahouse often enough – and he didn’t recognise this fellow.
Nudging his way closer, towards the edge of the small performing space, Miles watched the rest of the song. And he listened, his senses unpacking the slight tremble in the voice, the softening of the vowels in the wrong places (accents tended to be flattened in singing, he’d found), and becoming quite obsessed with the sight of that bushy moustache. It looked real enough, but so did many of the things Miles wore at the theatre.
Hm.
Once the bard finished with another set, the mime flicked a few coins into the second hat which was perched on the edge of the stage, equally befeathered. “Bravo.”