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

[2onostromo]

It's a miracle when Fever appears in the Green Room, thinks Ellen. Minutes spent contending the fact she's just murdered in front of an audience drop through a trapdoor into nothing. So too does her stomach. She's alive. Soaked in blood at neck and abdomen, but standing, walking, fiercely alert and looking as though she'll throw something— something about the wrenching back of her shoulder, the way her fingers dance to palm, signaling action seconds before the shattering takes place.

Blood on her tongue. On her hands. On her skin. If not her's, then whose?

Crash!—

She's staring.

She's always had a staring problem. What draws Ripley's attention draws it wholly and without discretion, and she's ignorant to how prying eyes burn holes into Fever's bare skin even after they've left the audience. Turns the simple lace trim of her chemise chalk black in her looking. She doesn't mean it. She doesn't mean to probe what's already vulnerable. She doesn't understand any of this— the binding magic, the costume, the action. What was that horrible blade? What was the stone she unearthed from Fever's skin, and why had she felt so rapt by it?

Who was she?

A glance down at her own body, red faux-armor still clinging to her.

Who is this person?

Her hands feel uncoupled from her arms. They're numb, blood rushing to her fingertips where they hang limp at her sides.

"I thought you were dead."

Because, what else do you say? Are you okay? Stupid question— of course not.

Ripley starts forward, quick at first, concerned and relieved— she's alive, my god she's alive and she's breathing, breathing hard, harder, faster, like she'll break something again or else feel herself break first— then moves slowly, cautiously. The manner one approaches something wild and unpredictable, but no less relieved. Her hands are raised. She isn't a threat.

An aborted noise as she grasps for words that don't come.

And so she says nothing, close enough now to hover a hand over Fever's brachium.

[abhorrently]

Ellen isn't a threat. Ellen isn't Orin, and Fever's mind carefully puts some pieces together, arranges them in the right way. Hysterically, she almost thinks she would take Pyotr's offer to temporarily pull out her emotions, and just as quickly as such a thought is born, it dies. Let her retreat into many places in her mind, but the river will surge in its banks, this clawing desire to hurt someone, knowing it would offer some relief.

But she is in control, still. As much as it wants to rip out of flesh, take myriad mirror shards or the three knives held close and hunt someone down, they are only thoughts. Only a desire that she binds and sinks into the earth. Sink. Sink.

Say something. Say anything. She cannot meet her eyes - and what are Ellen's eyes on her skin, when everyone witnessed a great sundering? When Fever is still struggling to place the when of it all, hands reaching into the muck and mire of her mind and pulling out a memory and why did she think that this time it would be anything worth saving, anything that isn't stained and grotesque and fetid and -

you deserved it.

If anyone deserved such a happening, if anyone deserves to have every past memory be miserable, another wound that needs to bleed out every time it comes back, it's her.

"No. I didn't die the first time that happened either."

Lacking any better explanation, she takes Ellen's hand, brings it to the back of her head. Lets her feel what's hidden under her hair - the scar from knifepoint at the back of her skull. A little higher than the re-enactment, but unmistakable.

[2onostromo]

Ripley's fingers travel slow down the split where knife's edge marks skin, tough like a callous beneath her hairline. To her relief, her own attack makes no wound. No evidence of actions not her own. No blood. So, whose...? It doesn't matter. Demon magic or syrup, she doesn't care. So long as it isn't blood, and so long as it isn't Fever's.

Her mind's gears turn, slow and un-oiled, churning through details that mean nothing without the proper context.

Strange, Fever looks just as clueless as she does.

"That stone— she took it from you. Why did I— did she want it so badly?"

[abhorrently]

There is so much she could say. So much she doesn't want to say. Things that only her father knows about her - things that need to stay buried. For as much as she believes in owning her past, some truths would cause too much harm to let out - and what would the point be in voicing them?

So Fever keeps the whole sordid truth inside, and plucks out the pieces that make sense to tell.

"The stone was powerful. Part of something bigger. But it wasn't about the stone - it was taking everything I had." She shakes her head a little. "I was...remembering it as we performed it."

But not all of it.

"It's a long story and a short one. I'm not a good person, Ellen, and back then I was worse. Whatever you think of what you saw, know this - it was necessary."

[2onostromo]

Amnesia— that's right.

Ripley opens her mouth to speak. To oblige the hundred questions buzzing incessantly inside her skull. Always keen to know the why, the where— a product of her detestation for the unknown. And a greater need to know what the fuck she was just apart of. The words are lost, and out comes another strangled half-noise, a question in itself.

"Necessary to drive a knife into the back of your head? And this person—" She gestures down to herself, "—She's supposed to be the lesser of two evils? I find that hard to believe. The costume, the performance— I felt her intention. She was savage."

[abhorrently]

This is not a conversation she wants to have at any time - not with those she loves, and certainly not with someone whose encounters with her have skipped the line and gone straight to some of her most brutal memories. But she was part of it. Ellen is owed clarity, if nothing else, and Fever can feel a headache creeping up into her neck.

"...Ellen. I promise you this - I'll answer your questions." Even if she'd rather do another stint on the Stag Beetle. "But not now. Not in this place - find me, when we make it back home. Please."

Oh, Fever hates feeling like she has to beg. But she will, if it buys her some time. Time enough to survive this, to find a way out of Efrain's sick little game.

[2onostromo]

Ripley nods firmly, a yes without question. (She's asked plenty of those already). "You're right, I'm sorry. Force of habit."

Drawing back her hand, she becomes distinctly aware of the carapace-like armor still hugging her form. Trapping her. Turning her into something she's not— someone whose blood thirst drives blade between vertebrae. No matter how deserving Fever declares herself to be of such a fate, it's a pain she doesn't envy.

And so she begins to work it off, red shell ripped away with little care for how the seams may pop, until she's free of it. Stands in similar underclothes across from Fever, holding the vinyl costume in her fist like a shed exoskeleton.

"Will you help me destroy it?"

[abhorrently]

"With pleasure."

The fabric would have yielded to fire, to acid, but there's a deep satisfaction in using their hands to break the seams. Tearing it apart, until it's only shreds mixed and mingled with the remains of Fever's costume - red and black, remnants on the floor, a mess left for the sheer defiance of it. Fake blood, fake everything, left to be destroyed along with the rest of this place. It doesn't get to survive. It gets to be pulled up by the foundations.

Time passes, after the death of the Prince. People go home. Fever finds her own bed and sleeps fitfully, like she used to. But time passes, and thankfully, they have been allowed to breathe. So things settle into a routine again - including visiting the Temple and offering a helping hand there. Degas never tells her she can't, and sometimes existing in a space that's quieter helps.

It is, however, impossible to fully sweep when some residents would rather bat at the broom, or lay down and refuse to move. And so she's cleaning and tending one of the altars instead, removing old offerings and giving it care. Three have come to lazily witness - a more ragged looking black cat, a solemn gray tabby, and Christopher Mango, who seems again more amazed at the fact that he draws breath every day.

Hearing the door open, she looks up from her work, eyes widening a little when she sees who it is.

"Hi, Ellen."

[2onostromo]

Seams are torn, vinyl comes undone against oppositional force, and there on the ground lies the remains of memories Ellen might never understand. Magic, coming from a place inside which has no home in her. Gods and fathers she knows nothing of, born to a world too rigid, too banausic to allow for any meaningful spirituality.

She won't forget her place on stage.

Ripley spends the next several days holed up underground, knocking away at the earth for its most valuable ore and thinking only of the stone she'd torn from Fever's bludgeoned person. The taste of blood persists— enough to make her contemplate visiting the local doctor.

She doesn't.

The metal in the air, she tells herself. That's all.

A week passes before she's able to carve away the time she needs for answers. At the tail-end of that week, Ellen finds herself visiting the Temple.

"Hi— is now a good time?"

[abhorrently]

Ellen's arrival means a conversation Fever was almost hoping wouldn't happen. But, they're in a place of sanctuary. The Temple has always been a place where she can gather her thoughts, where she's felt safe, and it makes things easier.

"Yes, it's fine. I was just helping clean, and we're the only ones around - Degas is off on errands." A beat. "Unless you count them."

Gesturing to her little audience, the gray one's already perked up her ears, head raised to see who the newcomer might be.

[2onostromo]

"Degas?" She asks as she drifts in through double-doors, glancing around like she might be spat out at any moment for her disbelief. Never certain where magic ends and proper Earth-physics begins. "Sorry— I'm not familiar with how these places work."

Tables with tidy offerings of fruit, bread and incense speak of an era long before her's, and for the gazillionth time since her arrival, Ripley feels transported.

She is familiar with a certain species of fluffy mammal, and at the sight of several cats she grins broadly and sits right on the ground. A grey shape meanders toward her.

"You've got friends."

[abhorrently]

"They seem to like this place quite a bit - there's a number of them that come and go."

Fever finishes her duties at an altar that isn't so grand as the ones for the Mothers, they of the representations and hidden faces. It has a circular mirror balanced atop, that any who might come near might witness their own reflection, and has a slightly eccentric collection of items - new flowers, but also fused glass, a few books, a tangle of string, a plate. The Temple as a whole feels warm, though - the light falling in from stained glass keeps it airy, and it's certainly quieter than outside.

"That's Bernadette," she remarks, indicating her head towards the gray one who's come to sniff Ripley and judge her acceptable to bestow attention. "That one's Christopher, also called Mango-" the orange, who remains in that blissful brainless state some cats achieve - "and then Jude. But a friend says he's more of a Conan, so I think of him that way."

The black cat watches her as she finishes her duties, and she comes to sit near Ripley, abandoning pretense of formality.

"People come in here for services and worship, but it's also a good place to gather your thoughts. Degas is the head priest here, and he never minds people just stopping in." A tiny pause. "No real chance that I could give you the tour, answer your questions?"

They know what they actually have to talk about, but she makes the joke anyway.

[2onostromo]

Between religious fixtures, images set into colored glass and the cats who call this place home, it’s the cats who seize Ripley’s attention first. If presented with a challenging civil law case file, a fresh cup of coffee and a hundred-thousand credits straight to her bank account, her answer would remain the same.

Bernadette treats her to an aloof head-bump before stalking off to lounge in the multi-colored sun. Jude, however, remains fixed by Ripley's side, deciding to give his lowly human guest the time of day. He stretches his neck to sniff the sole of her shoe then flops to expose his belly. A not-so-subtle demand.

She coos and assortment of hi's and what a sweet baby's.

“You mean I’m not breaking some sacred law by coming here empty handed?” Ripley gestures limply to the gifts at each alter for emphasis. “Good to know. Normally I wouldn’t buy into this kind of thing, but they’ve made it real difficult not to.” She recalls the woman who’d first softened the blow of her arrival; pale, featureless, somewhat incorporeal. A Goddess.

“I’m interested. After you answer my questions.”

[abhorrently]

"Very well. There's nothing but time to spend, after all. Especially not when this little flirt wants attention."

Jude will get some scritches, even though he's shameless. Who carries him around to high places? Who shoos away the others so he can eat? Who tells him he's a warrior and not "busted" as she heard someone say? Yet look at him. Look at how he's letting Ripley touch his stomach. Affectionate beast.

[2onostromo]

Ripley turns her attention from Fever to the unabashed flirt at her feet. He throws his head back against the Temple floor and basks in both sun and the scritches Ripley gives him; gluttony with no discernible bounds.

"I'm starting to think you planted him and the others here to distract me." She teases, then settles into the gravity of their situation. "If there's anything you can't answer, just say so."

Quiet.

Spring breeze singing just beyond the double doors.

A baritone rumble from cats' bellies.

The air swells.

She feels an air of safety she can't explain.

"That woman. Who was she? What do you remember about her?"

[abhorrently]

"Her name, as you know, was Orin. Perhaps it might be apt to call her something of a living weapon. A killer more cruel than you might be able to fathom. And my kin."

Once. That fate has been unbound. Bhaal will only have one Chosen, and now, he only has one option. The only kinship is that distant physicality, as opposed to cosmology. And flesh and blood could mean so very little. But careful, careful. The moment the word cult comes out of her mouth is the moment she has to be worried if Degas might ever overhear.

"I don't remember much about her, save her existence, and that she and I had fought before and would fight again. And, that a short while before I came here - before I left my own world - she was part of a scheme that risked the entire Coast, if not the whole continent."

If not all of Torill. She doubted Orin would have made it to the full death of the Material Plane. Fever could have, though - such is her own opinion.

"I'd suspected for a long time that she was somehow tied to what happened to me, when I lost my memory. What we went through confirmed that."

[2onostromo]

A living weapon for family. Now that's some bad luck.

Ripley folds her hands into her lap, listening intently. Shedding what preconceived notions she has about the world— her world— to adjust to one ruled by magic and the unfathomable.

"The stone she took from you— I felt something when I held it. Like this..." Ripley gestures vaguely. "Triumph. Like finally I'd won what I felt I deserved more than anything in the world." Not to mention the wild beast's joy Ripley felt at striking Fever down; one that makes her sick remembering. She's determined not to mention it.

"Why did she want it?"

[abhorrently]

"Because with the stone, she had part in the plot. It...how to explain it without confusing you..."

Absently, she reaches over to pet Jude, stroking soft fur.

"Those who had the stones had great power, power enough to threaten everyone living there. Taking the stone meant that she was taking my power, and my place in everything."

She doesn't want to look at Ripley, when what isn't stated links itself together, when the caustic way she had treated herself - I deserved this - now has reason behind it.

"But more than that, she wanted everything I had. Everything she felt I deserved. I know enough to say that."

[2onostromo]

"She took your part in the plot." The words are leveled. Not accusatory, but not indirect, either. Fever averts her eyes. Attention better placed in soft, dark fur. Ripley can't say she blames her.

"What were you intending to do with it, before it was taken?"

[abhorrently]

There is silence, the sort that means someone is really, really not wanting to continue. But she makes herself do so, even as it feels like forcing herself forward. Ripley was there. And more than that, the path of honesty cannot be turned from now, after so many hardwon attempts to stay on it.

How simple it would be, to look up with soft eyes and claim she doesn't remember. How bloodless. How much she wants to hide in the amnesia, her cloak for so many misdeeds.

"The details aren't the clearest, but from what I've pieced together as some fragments have returned...I was to use its power to help control a great and terrible creature. And through that, and my own work, to sow fear and discord through people, beginning a war of conquest."

A manufactured war, one hand offering a solution while the other orchestrated terror. There is no pride in this. There is no glee. Whatever dark satisfactions her heart still holds for it, they are long, long hidden.

"I've hurt a great number of people, Ellen. So many that it might as well be a mountain of them, unable to be counted. I cared for nothing and no one." If Ripley hates her now, then...there would be relief, that someone else sees her as disgusting as she is. "Being stabbed in the head was probably the only way I would have ever stopped. I just...didn't have the decency to die from it."

Now she makes herself look at the other woman. Bear witness - do not look away. Accept her verdict, with empty hands and a willing heart.