the musical education
Characters: Wren and Leandro Setting: his room, early evening
Wren had had a pretty good day. She'd absolutely adored the music that she'd heard earlier, and had replayed the songs several times, getting to know them as she did so. She had met Mojo, who she thought was a very nice girl and someone she would like to spend more time with and really, she had no complaints. So, when the evening rolled around, she eagerly found her way to Leandro's room, smiling to herself as she knocked on his door.
She stared at the number two on his door. The High Priestess. Not a bad connotation at all.
By contrast it had been a very long day for Leandro. He hadn't expected to be pulled into the tentative society of the place so quickly, or even at all, but it seemed as though a series of events was determined to throw itself at him. First meeting a pair he had admired very much when he read about them on the outside, then a fellow pyro, and then the good doctor who had so surprised him by not being as bad as he'd imagined. The only dark cloud on his day, surprisingly, had been the test he had Cal send away for. While he was in good health it was easy to forget, but now that he was attempting to take some responsibility for it, and for his condition in general, at least so that he could be prepared for anything... it made him nervous.
This and the character of the girl that was going to meet him in his room that evening saw to it that he put on something sweeter for their meeting, something more soothing. He'd spent a lazy half-hour searching through the computer's database, which pleased him with its thoroughness, until he found a favored piece of classical music. It was a good place to start anyone's musical education. He remembered when he himself sat in the public library as a teen in rare moments of freedom, curiously poring through their sets of old CDs.
The knock at the door came just as he was leaning back to close his eyes. Leandro hopped up from his chair, letting it sit askew, and went to answer. A trio of empty tin cans strung together by strips of rag hung on the door, clattering noisily every time the door was so much as nudged. The curtains were also firmly taped down on all sides of the window sills. The bathroom door was closed.
Leo's lanky frame appeared through the cracked open door, smiling down on his visitor. "Hey, girl! I was just putting something on. Come on in." He moved out of the way and motioned her inside, waiting until he had her in the better light of his room to observe her face and form.
The noise was startling, something Wren hadn't been expecting, and she looked just a touch scared when he opened the door. She looked at the cans on the door when he opened it farther. "H-hello." she greeted, stepping into the room. She noticed the curtains were taped down when it seemed darker in there than it should have been. But there was music playing, and she liked that. So it helped ease her mind slightly. "What are the cans for?" she asked, unsure if she should ask or not, but she imagined she would feel better and less stupid if she found out from him.
Ah, that again. Leandro wasn't all that shocked anymore when anyone greeted him or his general person with fear on first meeting. He'd hoped Wren wouldn't, but the look on her face had to be addressed. He sighed some, clicking the door shut more gently behind her.
"It's just a little personal alert system," he told her, gesturing to the cans and picking up the strip they were on to jingle them lightly. "I don't like how weak these locks are, so if someone opens the door it makes noise and lets me know someone's here. Safety first, and all."
He tried relaxing her with a friendly grin, dropping his hands open at his sides to subtly signal that he meant no harm. "I'm glad you came. I have some nice stuff to show you, and it's nice to meet you in person."
Leandro offered one of his open hands, holding it out to her. Now he took the moment to gather an impression of her, being sure to skim unobtrusively so as not to startle her further. She was taller than average, which was comfortable for him, and even when she was scared he liked her dark eyes. Lovely by any standard. This would be fun.
She paid attention to his explanation, nodding as he went through his logic on it. "I understand." she said, even if she wondered if it was really the locks he was unsure of, or his surroundings in general. After all, the cans didn't explain the tape on the curtains. But she merely looked back at him and smiled, showing no fear towards him as a person. His appearance was different but not so different she'd never seen anyone like him before. There'd been all kinds at the commune.
"I'm sorry you feel nervous about your safety." she told him, reaching out to take his offered hand. Apparently that was something people did. This was the second time that she'd had someone take her hand like that, so she adopted it into her mind as something 'normal'. "This is very pretty." she added, to the music. "I'm quite excited to hear everything you want to play for me." she told him, enthusiasm clear in her eyes and tone.
If he was afraid, Leandro felt immediately and strongly that he should not let her see too much of it, that it might bleed onto her and make her unhappy and that was somehow a very disagreeable idea. Maybe it was the way she spoke, or that her sheltering made her seem more pure somehow, but something about her felt delicate to him. At her apology, he shook his head quickly. "No, it's fine. It's old habit."
He shook her hand gently, but kept it within his a moment longer to lead her towards the computer. The music came from there of course, the speakers aimed to focus on the desk chair. "Please, sit," Leandro told her, swinging out the chair with his toe for her to take. "Make yourself comfortable. I'm glad you like this. It's a composition inspired by Beethoven, a classical composer. His story is very cool. See..."
As he went into his explanation, his gaze grew in intensity, one hand waving towards the screen in illustration. "When he was a young guy he went deaf, but he had such a passion for music that he kept composing anyway, just because he remembered what it sounded like. Isn't that amazing? So this was composed about his sadness, and the fact that he couldn't hear anything for real."
Wren smiled at him and accepted his answer, even if she wasn't positive she didn't still sense something fearful there. But she was there to listen to music, get an education in it, as it were. She sat where he indicated, and paid rapt attention to him, smiling brightly when he explained about Beethoven. "That is amazing." she said, quite impressed. "There were a few disabled people in the commune, one an elderly man who was blind, the other a woman who was very hard of hearing. She wore hearing aids." she said. "The blind man used to say you can't miss something you never had. So I imagine it was heartbreaking to lose hearing if you had a deep passion for something that required it."
Sometimes it was just better to forget for a minute. Leandro was happy to be fully involved in the music, and was glad she didn't pursue anything else for the time being. With only one chair available, he tucked his hip in on the side of the desk and half-sat on the side with the mouse so that he could move through selections. As the first song played on, he listened to her impression curiously, still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a commune.
"Ah..." he murmured. "I don't know if that's true for all, to be honest. Sometimes, I think, you can feel when something's missing and it burns. It just doesn't feel right, no matter whether you can name it or not. But yes, Beethoven had a really sad life. He started to write letters talking about how he thought he might commit suicide, and the last time he was ever able to perform because his hearing was too bad, story goes that he cried. I don't think about his loss though, I think about his dedication. To keep going after that. He wrote some of the most famous pieces of music in history. Here,"
He paused and leaned in towards the screen, switching to something by the real Beethoven: Moonlight Sonata, Movement 1.
Wren considered what he had to say, watching him as the music played. "What are you missing?" she asked. Since he seemed to be speaking from experience. Or, that was what she was thinking, anyhow. That he had something in his life that he was missing, and even if he never had it, it was something that ate at him. She'd seen it before, of course. People with acid in their tummy over something. Some dark event, some shadow over their life.
She looked sympathetic at Beethoven's story, and when the new song started, she closed her eyes, letting the piano surround her, wanting to immerse herself in the sounds.
That was a bold question. Leandro didn't stop meeting her eye, but sank a little lower against the side of the monitor, pressing his chin onto his closed fist. It wasn't that he expected her not to ask, but he thought that most people would not have. They would have some sense of distance, maybe masked by that familiar phrase, "minding their own damn business". From her, it didn't really disturb him, but that still didn't mean he knew how to answer.
Briefly, he closed his own dark eyes and concentrated on the wash of soft piano notes. So it wasn't a real sound system, and he could feel the way the keys lost some of their best low resonance, but it still had a sweet feel. That, he thought, was how Beethoven must have carried on. Because he could feel it.
"I don't know," he said at length. "That's a hard question. Not really one somebody can answer all at once." After that, he stayed quiet until the movement was over, waiting till the last thrum dissipated before asking, "So, what did you think? What do you want to know next?" His head tilted slightly, colored peaceful from the music, as he awaited an answer.
She reopened her eyes when it ended, and she looked at him. "You could always give me an answer in pieces. A little bit at a time. I'm patient." she offered. She didn't need a full explanation. But maybe just one fragment at a time, one little sliver would be something.
"As for what I think, I think it's beautiful. I think all of it is beautiful, in it's own way. I really appreciated a lot of what you'd sent earlier. So, the question is," Wren smiled at him. "What do you want to show me next?" she asked. “You’re my tour guide. Guide me.”
The young man's jaw worked a little, as if to roll that silvery spring-tension around in his mouth and sort it out. His gaze left Wren for a moment, drifting towards the far wall, and then back to her. He was resisting the urge to ask her why she wanted to know, what she would do with or think of such intimate information, but in the back of his mind he thought he already knew. She'd said it herself; she knew little about the outside world, and wanted a connection. It was sort of sweet to be offered a piece of that.
Leandro decided to extend a little mercy, nodding once but deeply enough that the long side of his hair tumbled over his brow. He changed the song to a classic requiem, this one by Faure.
"This one's a little further in the future, around 1890. All of the lyrics are in Latin. It's a Catholic mass for remembering the dead. This part is about being glad for God's glory. It's an important part of mass for the dead because in the Catholic religion, those who live good lives spend eternity in paradise." He closed his eyes briefly, the sounds of the choir filling the emptiness of his chest in a way the piano did not. "I don't know if it's really true or not, but thinking that way helps the people who are still alive be... comforted? I guess." He hadn't really answered her question. Or had he? He wasn't one to speak bluntly about the things he kept close to his heart. If one really wanted to know, they'd need to see the clues in his choices. He bore his life out in symbols, some of them on his skin.
She smiled at the start of the new song, liking the high strains and the voices that came in. Her attention remained on both the music and Leandro, happy to listen to anything he had to say just as much as she was the music he played for her.
When he talked about the meaning behind the song, there was a shadow cast over her eyes. She finally looked down herself, rubbing her thumb lightly over some of the runes on her left wrist. "Is it a comfort to you?" she asked. "Those departed, lost to you, you think of them in a better place than this one?"
Leandro glanced over at her wrist, noticing the strange markings dotting it under her thumb. He leaned forward then, and once again held out his hand. "What's that? Can I see?"
To answer her, he cleared his throat as if to consider, but said. "...yeah. Yeah, it is. Mostly. It's hard sometimes to imagine there's anything other than 'this'... but the people I come from give up their lives and their dignity to be here. Maybe it's kind of a shared thing. Genetic trait, or something. We always want to see if there's something better. So we hope that the ones who go away found it, and one day when we get there, we'll see them again." Once again, he felt as though his answer was not nearly as cheerful as he would have liked to provide, but he watched her eyes to see if that veil that went over them would lift at all.
"Runes." Wren answered, holding her hand out towards him. They went around her wrist, and disappeared beneath the sleeve of her shirt. "Initially an alphabet, they also symbolized ideals, and can be used in divination. I used some of them this morning, in the hopes that the sour man would have more positivity in his day." she explained.
She listened to his take on things, and nodded. "So you believe people move on, forward, past this." she said. "I've never been certain though I didn't feel the need to be, either. I will find out myself, one day, and if I do..." she trailed off. She always wavered on things with that. So many had died, and she didn't know how they might react to her. Anger? She imagined some of them would be. Like she had misled them. She still didn't know where she'd gone wrong. "You gave up your dignity?"
"Runes, huh?" He tilted his head so that he could see all of them running up her arm, squinting a little as if doing so might help him read them. "What do they say? And what sour man?" Leandro had to smirk a little at that. Prisons were full of sour men, so it was kind of cute that she still had it in her to waste her morning on helping any one of them.
After that, though, he had to prove himself to be one of those sour men, frowning vaguely. "Well... I didn't say I thought I'd actually make it. I said it's in our blood to try. It's like a maze. It looks straightforward at first, but the further in you go the more twisted it gets." Where Wren may have wavered, negative emotions made Leandro charge straight ahead, as if confronting them that way would frighten them into submission. When she asked about dignity, he nodded with a slight wrinkle to his nose. "That's a word for it, when people you actually know have resorted to riding for dozens of miles in the trunk of a car just to live in a different country." That was as impersonally as he could describe it. The person he was really thinking of, he couldn't mention just yet.
"I have them all, so it isn't so much a word, as it is a representation." Wren told him. "And Chance. He's...very negative." she said delicately. "I was hoping to help." When he switched gears, she listened, letting him finish before she even tried to comment.
Even then, she gave it a few long moments, assessing. "The world looks as twisted as you believe it to be." she told him, though her voice was gentle. "It's always going to reflect some part of you. If you're looking for something, you will find it, if you expect something to come to pass, it will. There are different ways to go about things. Ways through the twists and turns, as you say." She paused another moment, considering the last bit. "I wouldn't think that's a loss of dignity so much as a means to an end. Clearly not the most comfortable, but people throughout the ages have all suffered to get to someplace they believe to be better, literally and metaphorically."
“Why don’t you believe you’ll ‘make it’?”
The mention of that name perked him up again, and he sat forward on his knees with a short laugh. "Chance, huh? I met him. Actually, I arrived with him. He's... interesting. Very caged-in. There's no way a normal human being can be that repressed, so I think he's doing it to himself on purpose for some reason. The upper-crust is kind of like that." Here Leandro waved a hand dismissively. "They'd rather keep up the illusion of order than fix real problems. He has a personality in there. Probably. What'd you to do him, anyway?"
Thinking of pretty, gentle Wren making Chance uncomfortable just made him laugh all the more, slowly shaking his head. The image blotted away a bit of the sharpness that might have invaded his tone had he given the rest of her words a full appraisal. "Yeah, well, what do you when you have lots of people all hoping for things and having their mental prayers clash? Someone's going to get the crap end of the stick. And anyway, not everybody is honest. Not everybody is satisfied with having what they have – they want their neighbor's too."
He left it at that, reaching over to change the music again, this time to something more removed from the heavy European classics. It had a mild, but distinguished Latin beat. As it went on, Leandro started to snap his fingers along to it lightly.
"I didn't do anything to him." Wren said, unsure what to do with the accusation. She turned her wrist to point out the four runes she'd written on his door. "These. I put them under his number, they're to help with positivity. He's already in a good room for it, but I thought he may require more aid than that." she explained, hoping that was better than Leandro thinking she'd 'done something' to Chance. She wished they could discuss the other matters further, but he was clearly moving ahead of it, and not addressing the most prominent question. She merely made a mental note of it, deciding to come back to it at another time. He had given her something, and she would be happy with that for the time being.
Concentrating on the music wasn't hard with the more lively beat, and she smiled, both at the song and at Leandro snapping his fingers. "You like this." she noted. "I do too. It has a life to it, no?"
When Wren came back that she didn't do anything to him, Leandro only laughed a little more, trying to hide it behind one raised hand. "Oh, oh, don't get me wrong. It's okay. Chance would be offended if you breathed in his direction. Just looking at my face traumatized him for life, pretty much. It was outrageous. It's a sweet thought, though. Maybe it'll work for him." Or maybe he'd just scream bloody murder. That seemed more likely in his mind, but he didn't say it aloud.
The beat of the music was infectious to him, though, and after he'd caught his breath with a slight huff of a cough he bobbed along with it. "I do. It grounds me, reminds me of who I am. There's also a certain way to dance to this. I'm no dancer, but hm... come here."
All of a sudden, Leandro hopped off the desk and as if in one movement of energy was in the middle of the room, raising his fists to his hips. "The life is in the beat," he explained. "See how it has kind of a three-beat energy?" One boot came out to tap first heel on the floor in front, come back on the toe, and then snap the full sole onto the floor to emphasize the final beat. He stopped there to look up at her, see if she was watching.
She was, in fact, watching. She'd been about to ask him what was wrong with his face that Chance would react like that, since she didn't see what the issue was, but then he was abruptly hopping up, and apparently dancing? So, she turned to watch him, standing up, since he'd said 'come here'. Wren dutifully watched what he was doing with tapping his foot, nodding that she understood what he was saying so far. After a long moment of confirming things in her mind, she mimicked the motion.
The next step was supposed to be a tidy cross-over, his foot crossing in front to be the male lead, rather than behind for the female, but he tangled it up a little in his chronic un-athleticism and the fact that Wren's face was really too serious for Latin dancing. He stopped again, totally out of rhythm, and shook his head with another deep laugh. The exertion of dancing put a little wool in his throat. "Aw, okay. That's great, but emotion's more important than getting it just right. The flat part, you have to feel that in your hips. Oh, and cross your foot backwards, or there won't be enough room for both of us." He wasn't sure, actually, if she knew anything about dancing, but rather than ask outright, he decided it'd be more fun to just find out.
"Don't hold back, now," he teased, but openly breached the gap between them and put a hand on her back. He went through the motion slowly – heel to toe to flat – and on the cross-over it provided the smallest flick of the hips that made the dance look distinctly Latin. There he paused to wait for her to follow or not, just a step in away from her.
Wren was out of her element, that was certain, but she'd felt it earlier, the urge to dance to the songs he'd given her. So, if there was to be dancing, she was going to have to try. It wasn't that she never had before, of course, it was just that her dancing was sort of...her own. There weren't actual steps, it was more just moving along with the flow of the music however it fit in her own mind. She'd just also never heard anything quite like this, and so her idea of how it should go was much different than her usual style to begin with. So, when he was showing her things, she blinked slightly at the contact, but smiled and made an attempt to follow. "So I need to feel it?" she asked, to check that she had it right.
"That's right!" Leandro encouraged her, giving one short nod. He was breathing a little harder than what would seem normal, but the smile on his face was still perfectly airy. "Imagine you're at a party, maybe it's a block party – that's when everybody goes out and has a party in the street. The music's coming from a live band with real trumpets and stuff, and it's so good it's rattling the pebbles on the pavement. Maybe you've had a bit to drink, too, and it's sharp in your mouth like good tequila." He had to give his hair a slight flick out of his face, but he was back a second later, winking playfully. "I wouldn't invite you to a party without good tequila. We're at a fantasy party, okay?"
He seemed to light up considerably on invoking play-time. His imagination seemed easy to trigger and maybe even tried to be charming. Still, though, he watched for her reaction, trying not to take off without her.
Wren didn't have a frame of reference, really. She'd been raised to be The Prophet, which meant she had to behave a certain way. It was really only ever around Chester that she'd not adhered to that strict code of conduct. And while there certainly had been celebrations at the commune, she was thinking what he was describing was alien to her.
Alien, but something she really wished she had experienced. Because it sounded very nice. She smiled, trying to make a conscious effort to relax, and it was easier than she would have thought, with the music playing. "I've never had tequila." she confessed. "Is it good?"
Was it good? Leandro could only make a bit of a face, crinkling one side of his nose with amusement. "Eh, well... that depends. Are you a drinker? Doesn't seem like you are. So if not... well. It tastes even better the more you drink. How's that?"
Maybe that was a misleading answer, but some things just had to be done. After a few breaths, he added, "If you really want to find out, I'll scour the new bar. They should have at least been nice enough to drop a bottle of Cuervo in there. It won't be great but it might be good for entry-level."
The more she asked, the more he wanted to know what exactly her life had been like. He regarded her thoughtfully and added, "So what did you do for fun back home?"
Wren found herself in a position where she fell ill equipped to answer, again. She shook her head slightly. "It's not there anymore." she said. "But I used to...Chester used to go for walks with me." she offered, feeling like it wasn't good enough an answer. "I needed to be busy a lot. I had things to do." she explained, rushing in with that to explain herself. "Are we going to look for tequila now?"
The music wound to a close, and Leandro paused in dancing. One of his hands involuntarily went to his side, as if to rub out the stiffness, but his free hand gave Wren's elbow a grateful squeeze and then let her go. "Sorry I'm not the best dancer in the world," he began to explain again, perhaps at the anti-climactic nature of the thing. "But hey, now you wouldn't be lying if you said you'd danced to a vallenato with a Latin lover. I heard that's supposed to get you a lot of girl points or something."
He laughed at himself to show he was kidding, his tiredness making it come out kind of froggy, heels heavy on the carpet. He quirked an eyebrow though at Wren's description of a good time. "Workaholic, huh? Did that have to do with your prophet thing? Alright though, I guess. What made going on a walk fun? And ah..." Leandro paused to glance over his shoulder at the door briefly. "You really want tequila now?"
Girl points? she thought but truly had no idea what that might be, and she was too embarrassed to ask. "I had a duty to perform." Wren told him, not sure if that was the same thing he was describing, but it was clear she didn't see where the issue in understanding was. Didn't people have those? Functions they performed? She supposed it might be different. People had jobs outside the commune. Where they went to work, and when they went home they were finished. She was the Prophet all the time. There was no 'break' from it. At Leandro's question, she looked hesitant. "...should I not want tequila now?" she asked, utterly unsure of herself and that was stunningly obvious. she was trusting him to know what he was doing.
Leandro apparently had not yet grasped the scope of what her job was. He put a few fingers over his mouth in thought, trying to process this idea of duty. "You'll have to tell me more about this," he decided, "But in the meantime..."
His free hand came up to offer an open-palmed shrug, eyes widening. "You can want tequila or any other alcohol any time you please. If you really want it, I'll go get it for you. Lady's choice. I'll just have you know, though," Now he changed his pose to that of a traditional boy scout, one hand over his heart. He had the quirk about his mouth that indicated another joke, topped off with another silly wink. "I am not the rogue who would imbibe a lady with alcohol against her better judgment."
Smiling a little uncertainly, Wren tilted her head to the side as she regarded him. "I'm at a loss here, myself. So, I'm going to trust your judgment." she told him firmly. She was in his hands on this, she would trust she made a good decision until proven otherwise.
"Can't say you're not game, can I?" Leandro answered with a smile. He regarded her for just a second longer before nodding, his decision made. "Alright. For the sake of making the music come to life, or something, class will take a short field trip. But just one, okay? If you're not a drinker it might hit you hard." He was a little worried, and being honest about that fact, but he did trust himself to be able to set her up properly to where she wouldn't get sick on him. And if she did? Well, she learned something else about the real world.
"Let's go, then?" He turned sideways and motioned towards the door.
"Okay." Wren said, starting to head for the door with him. She had no real idea what she was in for, but...it would be interesting, no matter what.