MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

[pumpkinhollow]

SYMPHONY OF SORROW

If the Audience Would Please Take Their Seats

You find yourself at the theatre.

You may be asking how you got here, why you are here, when did you arrive. But none of that matters, does it? Nothing matters. Whether you are shocked at yourself for thinking so or whether you have known that nothing matters for years on end does not matter either. Whatever meaning there was to be had in any of this escapes you now. Who you were and what you wanted, what you valued and stood for, it all seems now like such a hazy dream. Out of reach.

There is a ticket in your hand. It tells you where to go. You follow it dutifully. Ticket stubs are exchanged for playbills. A schedule of performances. Whatever. You numbly proceed to where you belong. Performers and stage crew to their places, orchestra to the pit, workers to their positions. All with the knowledge that there can be only pain.

A four-armed conductor in moth-eaten robes raises his baton, and there is music.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

You deserve this.

Observer’s Overture

First Movement in E Minor

adagio, con dolore
PP

Lights down on the chorus, who sits in the stands. They are playing the role of the audience. Ad lib spoken word between chorus members seated near one another. Soft music begins to swell eerily.

Lights up on the stage. A performance begins, apparently in media res, where the chorus is meant to observe.

vacillante, improvvisato
cresc. P

The performers on stage play out their acts, appearing fearful. The chorus ad libs quiet uncertainty from the stands. Some of them will look down at their playbill and find their own name on the schedule of acts to come. There is a brief description on the page of the act that is scheduled for them. It is clear by the state of the ones already on stage that this isn’t something they have a choice in.

Chorus members attempt to rise from their seats, but cannot. Not yet. Foreshadowing to a later movement. For now, they must endure the overture.

Opera Infernale

Second Movement in Various Keys
( A medley of vignettes, performed in various styles)

chorale concerto a tutti, con affetto

F

Various chorus members rise between songs and make their way to the green room, where they are costumed. They have some time to talk with other incoming acts. They will find themselves and their loved ones being prepared for their acts.

segue

Those who performed before stop in the green room again. They look drained. A fate which awaits the incoming acts.

segue

On the stage, each act is a musical recreation of trauma. A worst fear, a most painful moment, an act of cruelty, a time of hardship. The styles will vary accordingly. If the other players in a given tale are present, they will receive their role without question. If a cast member has no fellow performers from their own world present, an understudy will be chosen to play any other roles from those that they are close to. Everyone is off book. Vocal quality is adjusted to match the conductor’s standards. Staff ensures there are no interruptions. The show must go on.

CODA: Für Nimona
A Coda in A Minor

There is a stranger in the green room, unmoving. Pale glowing eyes peer out from an ungulate-shaped void perched atop a high end suit. Antlers leer overhead. He is waiting for someone. Staff take no notice of him.

Ensemble's Lament

Third Movement in G Minor

bocca chiusa
PPP

There are other places to be besides the stage. Other roles to play.

pesante

Behind the stage, the stage crew toil under Baritone, the stage manager and the Viscount of Suffering. There is a pipe organ built into the man’s chest, and the bell of a horn where his heart ought to be. It shows. He is as cruel as he is miserable. He runs a tight ship.

declamando, letando

There are others in the pit, if they have the musical skill for it. And while this part of the performance is managed by a kinder sort, the Contessa of False Comforts is not so named for no reason.

The opera is long. There are no intermissions. The orchestra plays until their lungs ache and their fingers bleed, while Sonata assures them that it will all be over soon. Surely she cannot be lying. Surely there must be an end…

freddo, pietoso

Just outside the auditorium, there is work for the chorus serving food and drinks, taking ticket stubs for the endless stream of audience members, cleaning messes, or all other manner of soulless work. Perhaps these ensemble members simply did not interest the Conductor. Or it could be that they were made more miserable elsewhere.

Reprise - Observer’s Overture

Fourth Movement in E Major

impetuoso
FF It would seem that once a chorus member’s concerto is complete, they are free to move about the premises. At least until they are scheduled in a supporting role for another soloist. This means a chance to explore--- or escape.

presto repente, bellicoso
cresc.

Those attempting to escape will be met with resistance, however. Guarding the doors are shades, creations of the Conductor who can wear the faces of those held dear by those that look upon them. Escape, more likely, will come from within.

Members of the chorus who attempt to do battle with the Conductor, however, will find themselves up against something far more dangerous. Figures of glass, in all different shapes. Some abstract and solid, some hollow and human-like, and everywhere in between. Perhaps some chorus members will find one to be familiar.

The Hero will need an ensemble of her own to make it through and strike at the Conductor. Perhaps a resistance can be formed in a hidden location near the green room.

Homeward Aria

Fifth and Final Movement in C Major

tiempo di fanfara, vittorioso
F

When a dagger of Aster is driven into the heart of Prince Efrain of Sorrow’s Song, at last, the illusion fades. The members of the chorus relinquish their roles and find themselves on the summit of Crane’s Ridge.

It will be an arduous journey home, but it can be done with the solace that there is one less Demon Prince to trouble Pumpkin Hollow. Music in a joyful major key swells, then decrescendos.

enfatico, mancando poco a poco

| CONTENT WARNINGS: altered states of consciousness, entrapment, grief, depression, mood control, loss of bodily autonomy |

Comments

[stoneoftherose]

A Murder (Reaction tags only please.)

[Lights up.]

[Enter KAINS and GUESTS. NINA KAINA holds court like a queen, HUSBAND, BROTHER-IN-LAW, ARTISTS and SERVANTS orbiting around her like Jupiter and its moons. Only SIMON KAIN stands apart, watching with fond indulgence.]

Enter the TWINS, ANDREY and PYOTR.


PYOTR
I don't see why I have to be here when you're going to do all the talking.

ANDREY
I've told you before, it's for the look of the thing. Just smile and bow to the rich lady who's paying us, and then I'll cut you loose to get drunk.


[They make their obeisances to NINA. As PYOTR steps away, FARKHAD leaves the group of ARTISTS and approaches him.]

FARKHAD
So this is the mind that birthed the Cold House and the Dancing Bridge!

[PYOTR looks at him with great surprise.]

PYOTR
You know me?

FARKHAD
How could I not?

[Exit Partygoers. The great collaboration begins: FARKHAD's resonating baritone drawing out PYOTR's shy tenor. As the CATHEDRAL takes shape on the back wall of the stage, flanked by the skeletons of two roofless and wall-less houses, their multi-floor spiral staircases reaching for the stars, PYOTR and FARKHAD share theories, calculations, and eventually philosophy. Sometimes they are joined by NINA and PYOTR; sometimes SIMON steps forward to lead the CHORUS, flanked by the ever-watchful, ever silent ISIDOR BURAKH, Artemy's father. But they are alone as they share a bottle of TWYRINE and PYOTR tells FARKHAD of his visions, the great inhuman SPIRIT he has been trying to contact all these years.]

[FARKHAD is disturbed.]

FARKHAD
You first encountered this spirit in the Capital, but your impressions have only grown more clear since coming to Town-on-Gorkhon. Petya, how do you know your spirit isn't the goddess the Kin worship?

[PYOTR laughs.]

PYOTR
How can that be? She isn't in backwards tribe's superstition, she's some glorious. Transcendental, even. The idea that something like her could be limited to a base medium like dirt...it's nonsensical.

FARKHAD
The Kin don't just believe their goddess lives in the local dirt, they believe she's the entire world. The soul of a planet...what could be more transcendental than that? Have you talked to Burakh about this?

PYOTR
Of course not! We need him to keep the Kin in line...without his support, we'd never be able to dig in this town again.

FARKHAD
But if I'm right --

PYOTR
You're wrong.

[They argue. Their words grow heated, angry -- wounding. FARKHAD exists. PYOTR pursues him. The CHORUS shrieks. PYOTR re-enters, his hands drenched in red.]

[ANDREY enters.]

ANDREY
Brother! The trench is finally finished! You must come immediately, I need you there for laying the pintle -- what's happened?

PYOTR
Andrey...

ANDREY
What's on your hands?

[Pyotr grabs him by the collar.]

PYOTR
What did you see?

ANDREY
What?

PYOTR
In the trench! What did you see in the trench?

ANDREY
Nothing. Just rocks and dirt.

PYOTR
...Thank god. Thank god.

[He lets his head fall limply on Andrey's shoulder. Lights up. Curtains close.]

An Accounting [CW: emeto-adjacent imagery]

Pyotr does not linger in the green room after his performance. He hurries out, not speaking or looking at anyone. The demons don't try to hinder him; if asked, they will shrug and say he's probably gone to his dressing room.

You haven't heard of anyone else getting a dressing room.

It takes a while to find him; the opera house is a labyrinth backstage. But eventually, if you're lucky and your hearing is sharp, you may hear the sound of someone retching. Follow the sound and you'll reach Pyotr Stamatin's dressing room.

If you enter, you'll find him bent over a basin, quicksilver dripping from his mouth and eyes. He is not surprised to see you, merely annoyed.

"Close the door," he orders you crossly.

Anodyne

The opera house and the casino may both be the playgrounds of demon princes, but otherwise they could not be more different. There is no pleasure or indulgence here, only pain and despair. Your turn on the stage has left you broken and weeping -- or perhaps you are simply exhausted by your own misery and that which surrounds you. Either way, you abruptly realize that a man has approached; he now stands by your side.

Even if you've seen Pyotr Stamatin around town before, you might not recognize him now. He stands up straight, his hair pulled back from his face into a severe ponytail. His eyes burn like two hot coals, but his voice is flat and lifeless as he quietly informs you, "You're hurting. I can make it stop, if you'd like."

accounting.

[abhorrently]

The door shuts without a sound. The shadow who has slipped in, dark clad and severe, holds his gaze with a look that seeks to pierce him through, flay him until she sees bone, until that voice of his ruins itself with howling shrieks.

"I don't enjoy someone making a fool out of me."

He had said he had no idea. He had said he did not know. And fool that she was, she had felt heartache for him, offered comfort and consolation for his lost love. Had he lied? Had he lied to her when she had extended herself and tried to honor friendship with honesty? If he had lied, she'll make him dance, so shall be his spasms of agony.

(But he is her friend, her friend, and does she really want to cause him such pain?)

(Does a man with a death wish even fear such?)

[stoneoftherose]

"...Neither do I, if it comes to that." He coughs, clearing his throat: more quicksilver drips down into the basin before he straightens, wiping the remnants from his face and eyes with hands that tremble with exhaustion. "But if you're angry about the show...Believe me, I didn't intentionally lie to you."

He picks up the basin, carrying it over to a dressing table on the far wall. There, in the corner, an armature of wires has been hung from the ceiling. The outline of a man in glass is just starting to come together; already one can distinguish his long, curly hair, the bridge of his hawk-like nose. Pyotr carefully places the basin next to the sculpture and covers it with a length of cloth before turning back to Fever. "I really don't remember how Farkhad died," he says quietly. "I was so drunk that night...and I got even more drunk in the nights to follow. I remember we argued, I remember finding him covered in blood...and I remember Andrey clutching my face, insisting that he was the one who did the deed, that Farkhad died for his jealousy and petty interference with our plans. Perhaps that's what he wished had happened?" He shrugs. "I see no reason to think the show our host arranged was an untruthful depiction of events. As for my rose..."

He's too calm for this conversation, his voice too flat and dispassionate. He appears exhausted, but not grief-stricken. Depressed, but not sorrowful. Where did his passion go?

"I suppose it makes sense that I would make myself forget such a warning," he says thoughtfully. "I pinned all my hopes on the Polyhedron. The idea that I might be wrong, that a tribe of primitive throwbacks might understand my idol better than I...it was too great a blow to my ego. So I rejected it as thoroughly as I could, washing away even the paper it had been written on with twyrine." He shakes his head. "I was...such a fool. I deserve anything you want to do to me for that alone. But I never meant to deceive you, Fever. Everything I said to you was the truth as I understood it."

[abhorrently]

He's talking, on and on, and Fever stands there frozen. Disbelieving, confused. The words mean things, the words flow into sentences, and yet. They make as much sense as the dreaming did, and perhaps she needs to streak his mouth with her own blood to make sense of it - he's too weighted down, too bound to earth when he should be straining at his tethers.

"...What the fuck has happened to you?"

She strides forward, hands now resting on his shoulders to make him look at her, to try and understand what's occurred. Has someone drugged him? Filled him full of that silver, so much that someone should cut a channel for it to bleed out of until he's red again, until he looks enough like himself that she can remind him what fear tastes like.

[stoneoftherose]

He blinks at her slowly, cat-like. "Just a little gift from our host," he says, and nods toward the bowl of quicksilver. "I can finally do something productive with all that useless pain."

[abhorrently]

"You-"

She forces herself to take a deep breath before the grip on him tightens even further, feeling the prickling of another headache behind her eyes. And she's already taken her medicine - this one is going to test the limits of the chemicals, and most likely, they wouldn't stop everything. But she's dealt with worse pain, more than can fit into such a little bowl.

There's a flash across her mind where she binds him in place, forces open his mouth and makes him drink the contents of the basin. There's a flash where she takes it and drinks it all down herself. There's reality, where the basin is untouched.

"Why is the pain useless?"

[stoneoftherose]

"It made me useless, anyway," Pyotr admits easily. But he didn't pull out all of his emotions, just his fury and grief and horror at what he'd done. As he studies Fever's face, real concern blooms in his heart and he gently lays a hand over hers.

"It's not permanent, Fever. Time is hard to judge in this place, but on Marrow Island the effect only lasted for a day at most. I'll be back to normal soon enough." And then he'll have to begin all over again. It's just as well; the pauses give Farkhad's memorial time to settle into its new materials.

"Would you like to see for yourself? I can do it to other people as well."

anodyne

[not_a_traitor]

A few members of the pit have received special dispensation from the Contessa of False Comforts. Not merely it will be over soon, but actually getting the briefest taste of relief. A rest of a few bars, just enough to turn the page and see how much longer the music stretches. An agony made worse by remembering how it feels to go without pain.

For Gaeta, who spent four years having each of his successive hopes extinguished one by one, it's the perfect torment. Why bother putting him onstage? Just send him to the orchestra to sing backing vocals, let him leave at brief, irregular intervals to catch his breath and drink some water, then bring out a lesser demon to herd him back with a sorrowful you're needed again, sir. just one more number.

He's slumped in one of the hallways when Pyotr finds him. For a second, he doesn't respond; then he raises his head with some effort, blinking as he focuses on the other man. His upstairs neighbor? Right, the artist, the one interested in the "macabre" that Gaeta mostly just passes by with brief pleasantries whenever they bump into each other. He looks so different under these lights.

When he speaks, Gaeta's voice is a hoarse, overtaxed croak from hours of singing. "How?"

[stoneoftherose]

"I can take the feeling from you," Pyotr says quietly, putting his hand on Gaeta's shoulder. As he speaks, it slides back and forth before gently moving to cup Gaeta's throat. "It won't hurt, and once it's out I can make something beautiful out of it. And you'll be free of this pain. Will you permit me to do this?"

cw: suicidal ideation

[not_a_traitor]

His hand settles perfectly over the thick scar across Gaeta's neck, the one Fever left behind almost a year ago. Gaeta feels his breath catch involuntarily as he locks eyes with him.

It could be a trick. One quick wrench of Pyotr's wrist, too fast to hurt, and some of the pain would be gone, certainly. A twenty-four hour reprieve from the little things like his burning throat and the ache in his bad leg. While part of Gaeta wants to kick at the potential trap on reflex -- out of a desire not to be fooled, or the ingrained habit of trying to stay alive --

A larger part of him is just too tired to care.

Pyotr will be able to feel his throat move as he swallows. "Yes," he whispers.

[stoneoftherose]

"You won't regret this," Pyotr promises him. For a split second, barely more than the span of a single heartbeat, his grip tightens -- and then, a release, as he follows Gaeta's interrupted exhalation up his windpipe.

"Just relax and keep breathing," Pyotr instructs him, his hand moving back down the length of Gaeta's throat. And this time, on the rise, there it is: a pull from down his chest, like a hook tugging on the sinews of his heart. There is no pain, as Pyotr promised, but the pressure grows, and then comes a sense of weight -- something moving there, under his skin.

[not_a_traitor]

He shuts his eyes, trying to obey. No killing blow comes, and Gaeta isn't sure if that makes the order to relax easier or more difficult to follow.

The sinking heaviness settles in his chest. All his arteries seem to turn to lead, tangling around his heart to pull downward like a fish struggling in a net. Pyotr's hand drags upward, and the leaden net rises with his grip. The hooks work deeper.

It feels --

It feels wrong the same way a joint feels wrong when it bends a way it shouldn't go. A queasiness, a discomfort that isn't physical... but that's all. He keeps breathing. Tries to keep his entire body still, as if the missing pain will suddenly arrive if he moves even an inch.

On the next upstroke, Gaeta coughs involuntarily.

[stoneoftherose]

"That's it," Pyotr encourages him. "Don't fight it. Just breathe and let it happen." He strokes Gaeta's throat twice more, and a lump of fluid forms in his throat. Thick and viscous, it will have no trouble triggering his gag reflex. And when he coughs it up, Pyotr's hand will be there to catch it, trapping it between his fingers and palm until it solidifies into a semi-spherical shape, the color of mercury and the size of an orange.

"This is grief," Pyotr softly declares after studying the substance for a moment -- before turning that same appraising look back on Gaeta. "So small? I think you can give me more than that."

anodyne

[staybizzy]

Capochin recognizes the face, and nearly greets the strange but clever artist who sketched him not too long ago, but frowns at his demeanor immediately.

The words are far from untrue. In the wake of his own performance, the second grand artistic memorial to his failure in recent history, an old ache in his heart gnaws at him once more. And any other time, he might think nothing of trusting Pyotr, a fond acquaintance from his first days in Pumpkin Hollow. But there's something about the eyes, the voice, the posture...

Capochin's own posture becomes defensive. Closed-off. Hostile. Second nature to one who grew up in Drain, taught young how not to get mugged. His tail bristles. "I can take care of it myself."

[stoneoftherose]

"But why should you?" Pyotr asks, with a slight tilt of his head. Everything feels distant and hazy right now, like twyrine without the loss of coordination and control. He dug perhaps a little too deeply into himself, trying to finish Farkhad's memorial; now he feels nothing but the urge to continue sculpting and a sort of blunted curiosity, as if he were watching these things happen to other people, strangers, from somewhere far away.

"Efrain is just going to keep hurting you, if he can. But if you let me help you, he'll lose interest for a while. I've seen it happen with other people."

[staybizzy]

"Let him," Capochin says coldly. "I've had worse. Why don't you look after yaself? Yer actin' kooky."

[stoneoftherose]

"I'm perfectly fine. I told you, I can stop your pain. Why wouldn't I also do it to myself?"

[staybizzy]

"So, what, you wanna make me all--- numb like you?"

Capochin can't deny there's a temptation to that. To just have all that emotion pulled out of him. It seems so easy. Such a simple transaction in order to spit in the face of the thing holding them here.

"I'll pass," he insists. "Didn't spend thirty years learnin' to turn sadness and fear into rage just to need help with that from a young buck like you. I don't need no fancy shortcuts."

A beat, however.

"What'd you even do?"

Accounting

[lordoftheozarks]

It took even Erik a good deal of effort to find this dressing room, but in the end, his nose and hearing led the way. He steps inside and shuts the door with a snap of his wrist, but his gaze doesn't leave the quicksilver substance he sees weeping from Pyotrs mouth and eyes.

"Is that any way to speak to me, Pyotr?"

[stoneoftherose]

"Fuck." Indeed, that is not how he would have greeted Erik if he'd been thinking at the time. It's an embarrassing mistake -- and one he has no time to atone for. "Erik," he sighs, straightening up and wiping the quicksilver from his face. "Forgive me. Must we do this now? You can see I'm preoccupied."

In the far corner of the room hangs an armature of wires, to which a few molded pieces of glass have been attached. It's too early yet to tell what they might be -- yet Pyotr's most provocative paintings often begin with similar, simple abstract forms.

[lordoftheozarks]

That reaction is satisfactory enough for now. They're all under some undue stress, after all--Pyotr seemingly more than most. The man can become engrossed in his work, that's true, but this seems different. Pyotr seems different.

"What, exactly, are you preoccupied with?" Erik asks as he starts to approach that armature in the corner.

[stoneoftherose]

"A memorial," he says, more than a little distracted. This is very strange -- he'd known that he was fearful and desirous of Erik, to the point of awakening his temperamental and long-dormant lust -- but he hadn't realized until now how deep that fear ran. Not the fear that Erik might hurt him -- he enjoys that. But the idea that Erik might abandon him...now, that's unexpected. When did this man become so important, so needful to him?

"Did you see my opera?" he asks, reaching out to brush his fingertips over Erik's shoulder. "The man I killed...I'd forgotten that he'd tried to warn me. I made myself forget. The least I can do is give him tribute now."

[lordoftheozarks]

"Yes, I saw." Erik's eyes are dark with concern. He doesn't lean into Pyotr's touch, but his tone nor expression give any sign of judgement. Who would he be to do that when his hands are far from clean. Still, this feels like he's found a deep vein in Pyotr and he's going mine it.

"Is that why you turned to drinking the way you did? To forget him?"

Anodyne

[apocryphalarchivist]

Blood seeps into bandages around Jon's palms, and he's not yet had the opportunity to find Martin in the crowd of misery after their shared performance. Maybe he needs space; Jon couldn't blame him, after a glimpse into a future that both had heard fleeting stories of, but both were forced to face far too soon.

He's too busy battling the strain at his mind to understand it, to try to dissect it, to find a way he's certain he can prevent it, nursing these wounds both physical and metaphorical, to notice that someone's spotted him.

Jon has seen fleeting glances of Pyotr, but never spoken with him. There are some people in this town, so heavily tinged with anguish and pain, that Jon steers clear, lest he feel the urge to try to reach beneath the surface and find the source of these scars. Pyotr is one such person, but something is... different. Wrong, he thinks, in a way that he can't place, caught in this storm of his own.

"Make it stop?" Jon parrots, quietly; this particular hall, hidden away from most guests, performers, and shades, is hushed, and he finds himself unable to break that quiet any more than he must. "What do you mean? How?"

He shouldn't be asking, of course; nothing good can come from an offer like that. And yet, that insatiable curiosity bids him to look closer.

[stoneoftherose]

"I'm starting to get it a sense for it," Pyotr quietly explains -- well, it's something approximating an explanation, anyway. "I can't see it directly, but the shape of it, the way it weighs on you...you've been through a hard time, haven't you?" He gently lays his hand on Jon's shoulder, idly tugging his shirt-collar straight.

"Wouldn't it be nice if it all stopped bothering you for a while? You won't forget anything, if that worries you. It will just...stop hurting. For a time."