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

[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.

[wispofathing]

It was high praise, and Curnen blushed and ducked her head, making herself even smaller then she already was. "Thank you," she murmured, even though Bliss had warned her not to do that with old world fae. In trying to be polite, she'd forgotten her manners.

When she noticed, she blushed so hard her ears went red.

[willysilver]

The thanks made him bristle a little, but he had lived among mortals for so long it didn't hurt like it once had.

"You are welcome, my pretty little thing," he said. "Perhaps we could do another?"

[wispofathing]

Displeasing someone more powerful than she was unfortunately wasn't new to Curnen and at first she flinched, but when the words registered she relaxed again.

Thanking folk wasn't something the Tufa avoided, and Curnen didn't understand the aversion not really.

Rather than apologize, she nodded. "You pick."

[willysilver]

His fingers plucked the strings randomly until a tune began to take shape. He smiled softly when he realized what he'd lighted upon.

There was nothing quite like Whiskey in the Jar to make him smile.

As I was goin' over The Cork and Kerry Mountains I saw Captain Farrell And his money, he was countin' I first produced my pistol And then produced my rapier I said, "Stand and deliver or the devil he may take ya"...

[wispofathing]

Curnen knew this song well, even if she'd never quite heard it done this way, and her awkwardness melted away in an instant. The primary difference was the rhythm, though, so once she felt she understood she sang with him. It was simple at first, just the melody taken an octave up--she knew women who could sing tenor, and she was not one of them--but then taking advantage of her familiarity. Her voice was not one for grit, but she could harmonize in such a way as to create a similar effect, effortlessly dancing so close to the melody at times as to almost be discordant, but never slipping into something harsh or unpleasant.

There were many things to love about music, but the dance of voices around and through each other was far and away her favorite.

[willysilver]

If it had only been their voices together it would have been enchanting in its own right, but Willy's own power swelled as she joined him and the enchantment swirled around them. The melancholy that had made so many mortals weep was replace with something very close to mirth as Willy sang. He matched her, their voices coming together, then parting for harmony, only ti twine together again.

[wispofathing]

The weaving of voices was her favorite part of music. The hum of power was her favorite part of singing with kin. Between the silly nature of "Whiskey in the Jar" and the electric feeling of magic, Curnen very nearly started bouncing. She'd been deprived this sort of thing for far too long.

Bliss had scolded her for howling when she was cursed, but it was the only approximation of the experience that hadn't been denied to her.

[willysilver]

Willy played on, getting lost a little and repeating the last verse twice before he finished off. By the time he stilled the strings he wore a smile. Soft and tired, but a smile.

"You are a balm for my heart, little one," he said warmly.

[wispofathing]

"Glad I could help," Curnen murmured with a shy duck of the head, this time remembering not to say thank you. She felt a little better herself, since she'd had no chance to do any singing or playing at home before she'd fled with Rob. She sang with Bliss over Skype sometimes, but that only went so far.

[willysilver]

"I should repay this debt. Perhaps now, perhaps later. What are your needs, Curnen? Do you have food? Shelter? Would you like company? You could come sing with me again," he offered.

[wispofathing]

"I'm gettin' along fine," she assured him. This too was something that Curnen had been warned about, creating debts in either direction with other fae courts. That wasn't why she'd done this, and she tried not to look a little afraid. She desperately didn't want to fuck anything up. "But I wouldn't mind singing with you again sometime."

[willysilver]

"Then we shall. Do you have a phone?" he asked, putting his guitar aside so he could produce his own to get her number.

[wispofathing]

Curnen nodded and reached into her pocket to pull it out. "Easier if one of us does this," she said as she held out her hand for his phone. It was the first clear look she was giving him at her fingers, and that came as it always seemed to, with a pang of self-consciousness. It meant different things at home and out in the world. Most people let it pass with a bit of a double take, but not everyone had even the manners for that.

[willysilver]

Her hands were unique and, to him, beautiful. A reminder of home where not every fae was shaped the same. It made him smile faintly and he watched her as she worked his phone.

"Tell me more of your kind, little one," he urged, unable to contain his curiosity of an exotic fae unlike any he knew.

[wispofathing]

This was one of the first things Rob had taught Curnen how to do, since it seemed everybody in mainstream America had a cell phone. She called her phone from his, saved her number in his phone before dismissing the incoming call on her phone and saving his number. She handed his phone back. It was an excuse to take time to think before she spoke. "Well, like I said, we keep to Tennessee. Eastern Tennessee specifically. Most people leave us alone because they think we're just some weird ethnic group and backward mountain folk besides. Then you get the conspiracy nuts who think we're aliens or the lost tribe of Israel, but they ain't all that common."

[willysilver]

Backward mountain folk brought out a soft chuckle from the melancholy fae. He took his phone back from her when she was done.

"I have not been among anyone like your kind in years and years. So long, in fact, I cannot recall."

[wispofathing]

Which was more true than he knew, probably. Curnen didn't think he was old enough to have any memories of Rockhouse. Or at least, who Rockhouse had been in the homeland. And even if he was, it was so long ago now that the whole mess had probably faded from memory. Even the queen probably didn't recall the forester who had displeased her.

Which sucked for Rockhouse, considering waiting for her pardon was all that he lived for.

But she couldn't say these things. At least not right now.

"Ain't that much to us," she said with a shrug. "In some ways, we aren't that different from the humans around us. And then in some ways, whoops, someone tried to hard to dig into our business and they get lost in the woods for God knows how long. The locals know better by now." Fairy circles were alive and well in the new world, only now they took the shape of a barn dance and a forest that would fucking betray you.