OTA

[willysilver]

It was a lovely night by all accounts. The weather was just cool enough for a jacket, the breeze making the leaves flutter and twitch. The moon hung bright in the sky, nearly full, and in the park there were people enjoying the night.

Willy was out busking tonight, though he had no heart for it. No joy, no enchantment. Tonight, as for the past nights, he sat on the edge of a fountain and he played sorrowful songs of lost love. He understood them now. He had never truly understood love, that much he had come to realise since Fin had departed. He knew desire and passion, he knew friendship, he knew possession, but he had never understood partnership or equality or even the necessity of respect. He knew now, though.

It was a hard learned lesson. His music wasn't the only thing lacking enchantment. His own visage was ashy grey, his luxurious hair drooped flat, the curls dull and limp. There was no light in his green eyes, they were flat and dull and dark.

His fingers strummed the strings mournfully.

I've stolen all the stars to make a wish we can fly
Away, away up high to that old place in time
Where our pictures never fade and our hearts don't lie
Won't you stay a while and watch our world go by
I'll keep holding on to you and your Saturday smile

Has our Autumn died
Help me find you again

I think it's love
I think it's love
That gets us through
All our goodbyes
So when we die
Think of love
I'll think of love
And thoughts of you
To lay me down
I think it's love
That keeps us new

If only it could be the very first time
Kiss me like it means something inside
I don't want to leave and I'm afraid to find
Our fate die in a dream and let me know you're not mine
Lie a little longer, my Saturday smile

Has our Autumn died
Help me find you again

I think it's love
I think it's love
That gets us through
All our goodbyes
So when we die
Think of love
I'll think of love
And thoughts of you
To lay me down
I think it's love
That keeps us new

The people who passed nearby were struck by the power of the fae's melancholy. He mourned not only his lost love, but the fact that he couldn't find him. He had visited the hotel many times but now the Phouka and Winter had gone off to make a home of their own and Fin did not come or go from the hotel anymore. And the longer he was gone the harder it became to feel him with any specificity in the city of millions. He knew he needed to find Fin to speak to him, do make what repairs he could, but he could hardly find the energy to even strum the stings tonight.

Comments

[willysilver]

"West Virginia," he replied. "I learned the music and walked with the mortals."

[wispofathing]

Curnen nodded. The Tufa kept mostly to Cloud County, but the seed sometimes spread like a dandelion's. Wouldn't have been impossible for him to have run into one of them up there, but away from Needsville the blood was guaranteed to be diluted. They probably wouldn't know what it was or what it meant.

"My people keep to Tennessee, usually. What brought you there?" Not that there was much of anything to draw people where she was from either, but the state did at least have Nashville in it. She had no idea what would bring a body to West Virginia.

[willysilver]

"A bluebird," he replied simply. "It told me to travel, and so I did. It followed me across the ocean and sang to me until I made friends. And then my guide was off to give counsel to others. I will always be grateful for his coaxing."

[wispofathing]

Curnen gave no more thought to coming closer and sitting down beside him, setting her instrument down at her feet. Plus once she was closer she could ask, "And how long ago was this?" without having to fear the answer wouldn't make sense to anybody within range who probably should know.

[willysilver]

"Not so long ago. There had just been a war there, but it was over and people were recovering from all manner of wounds," he said. Time meant little to him and the American Civil War could just as well have been ten years ago as more than a century.

[wispofathing]

Time meant little to Curnen, but she had to have a different perspective on the whole affair. Had to be aware of what year it was and what that meant. The Civil War had never touched the Tufa, but that was only because Layla Mae Hemlock sang the threats away.

Her lips curled in faint amusement. "Yeah, don't let them hear you say it wasn't that long ago. That war was four or five generations back for them."

[willysilver]

"Has it been so long?" he asked, then sighed softly. "I should do many things, little one, and paying attention to details such as that is but one."

[wispofathing]

"Curnen," she supplied, though she had a feeling she wasn't about to escape epithets by offering it. "That got anything to do with why you're in... the shape you're in?"

[willysilver]

He huffed a small, bitter laugh.

"Yes," he said. "In small part it is my thoughtlessness. More to the point, I was selfish and stupid and sold my love to another as a wish. And because of that, I am fading. I will fade and it is my own fault."

[wispofathing]

Worthless girl, this is all your fault.

Curnen gripped the edge of the fountain so hard her knuckles turned white, her eyes going full black and her teeth going pointed and sharp... but only for a blink. Quick enough that anyone looking who didn't have the eyes to see would have justified it as glimpsing weird shit in the dark and there was nothing but a small woman who maybe looked a little nervous talking to a much bigger man.

She was still here. She was solid and real and Rockhouse was broken and could never hurt her again.

"That sounds pretty fucking stupid," she observed, like that momentary freakout had never happened. But then, perhaps she hadn't noticed.

[willysilver]

Willy had noticed, but it did not trouble him. In fact, it gave him comfort to know without a doubt she was kin.

"Exceptionally stupid," he agreed. "Moreso than I can even tell you."

[wispofathing]

"You're makin' yourself fade," Curnen said quietly. "I think I got an idea."

[willysilver]

"And what is your idea?" Willy asked, aware it was upon his shoulders that he was fading. Is own actions and inactions had brought it about.

[wispofathing]

She gave an awkward shoulder-jerk of a shrug as though trying to force off the memory even as it lingered uncomfortably close. "I just know the magnitude of... anything needed for that to happen."

Rockhouse had really had that much petty spite for her, when the whole thing was his fault from start to finish. It wasn't even really hate, just spite.

[willysilver]

"Ah, yes," he replied softly. "Unfortunate you understand so well. This is nothing I would wish for anyone else to feel."

[wispofathing]

"Curse. I survived it," she said, but not with the certainty she'd have liked to feel at those words, as though lucidity were a strange dream she was having. Curnen had come most of the way back, but the devil was in the details, little things like not being able to control herself in moments of blind panic. And her wings... She hadn't flown since her husband died.

"You can still play, it ain't that bad yet."

[willysilver]

"This is true. Though my songs are sad, they still come to me," he said, gently touching the neck of his guitar and then fingering one string to make it sound.

"If I can win Finlay back I think I will sing of nothing but happiness the rest of my days."

[wispofathing]

You can still win him back? Get on that, I don't even get that chance, she wanted to say, but didn't. She didn't want to talk about Brushy.

Do it while you still have words, she wanted to say but didn't. It wouldn't help none. Pantomime's a bitch. And by then, your reasoning starts to go anyway.

Curnen was quiet for a moment before she asked, "When's the last time you sang with someone?" By someone, she didn't mean humans either. It was good, and she enjoyed it, but for her the difference in depth was incomparable.

[willysilver]

"Not long. I would sing with my brother, though he has now grown and gone," he sighed, his breath shaking as he felt the loss of Winter's presence like a knife in his belly.

He turned his head to look at her.

"Would you like to play with me now?" he asked. That he could invite her at all was evidence he'd not faded entirely yet.

[wispofathing]

Curnen smiled at him, a subdued but real expression. "Wouldn't've brought it up otherwise." He looked like he needed it, really. Or maybe she just couldn't turn away from someone in a place too like where she'd been fifty years ago. It was a horrible fucking way to go.

[willysilver]

"What would you like to sing?" he asked, picking out a few notes just to hear the sound of them and maybe spark inspiration.

[wispofathing]

This was one of those moments where what she picked had to be right somehow, as he might want more melancholy or be done with it. And most songs only had one mood to them, two maybe if someone really creative got at them. "She Moved Through the Fair" for example was always a tragedy, no matter how many idiots cut out the third verse and sang it at weddings. "Lanagan's Ball" for example was always going to be fun (not that she'd been aiming for that one in any case).

"Tom o' Bedlam," she said finally. Because its ambiguity made it a song of a thousand moods, really, and it could be played to suit anything. You changed it a bit and it could be a dirge, or a really rowdy drinking song, like you were a little or a lot out of your mind, or like an epic adventure where, fuck you, Maudlin was going to get her Tom back come hell or high water.

Or, as Curnen tended to think of it these days, it could be played as the opposite, a tragedy where Maudlin knew she was never going to see Tom again.

[willysilver]

Willy began to play, lightly and slow. It wasn't melancholy exactly, but certainly not spirited. He hummed but did not sig, saving that for Curnen since she had chosen the song.

[wispofathing]

That told Curnen everything she needed to know, so that within a bar or two, she felt entirely confident to lift her head and sing. "For to see mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I've traveled..."

Compared to humans, she was a damn good guitar player. Among her own kind, she was perfectly acceptable, but nothing special yet (she was still learning how to use all of her fingers to their best effect). Her real talent and treasure was her voice, high and pure.

The ambiguity of the song was helped a great deal by having far more possible verses than any one person could sing, and the picking and choosing of them could change the entire meaning. The first two verses were standard, set by years of tradition. The rest was a playground, and Curnen went to work in it. She cut out the verse about fairies that musicians seemed to like these days--it was stupid--but she brought in a lot of the stranger, sadder elements that tended to be left behind for more fun or weird elements. She sang about spirits white as lightning and murdering the man in the moon. She sang of cages and the wars of stars. She sang about a host of furious fancies and the knight of ghosts and shadows.

She made it a song about love fighting and losing to death, filtered through the rambling of a madwoman.

And whether she meant to or not, she poured herself into it, the hollowness and the horror of fading away to nothing, the increasingly desperate scramble to fight and live that remained even when all higher cognition had gone, and the heartbreak she still felt when she thought of her husband.

[willysilver]

Willy kept on playing until it seemed Curnen had reached an end. He gave the last bars a bit of a flourish, then stilled his strings.

"You have a truly amazing voice," he said. "So beautiful I forgot myself as you sang."

And he had. For that small bit of time her voice enchanted him and though the words told a clear story, Willy forgot his own heartache and got lost in the sound of her voice.