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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

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 |

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"Hush."

The word comes out from an instinctive place, a tone she's never used with him before. Sharp as a whip laid across flesh, a weight that demands obedience, the ghost of thunderheads across her features, and a look that-

Fever closes her eyes, and breathes. Her hand finds the charm around her throat, holding on, reminding herself where she is. Let it pass. Bring yourself back to a calmer place. He was not the one that cut her open in front of a crowd.

"Pyotr." Her voice is her own again, but her eyes stay shut for a moment. She's steadied herself, enough to merely toy with the necklace instead of holding it like her lifeline. "I haven't given up on you. But if I filled you with my thoughts and wishes, that wouldn't be friendship. If I enforced my will over your own, I wouldn't be your friend, but your puppeteer. I can't tell you what the correct way is to live, or how you should treat yourself - I barely fucking know how to treat myself, and I'm making it up every day. All I can do is be honest with you, even when I disagree with the shit you're doing."

Her eyes open, then, and the look is past. She's still Fever. Still here.

"I'm sorry that you were so deprived of companions that you think the only way you move forward is when you're being dragged by someone's leash."

What can he do but freeze when that voice demands it of him, his words freezing in his throat? He listens to everything she has to say, and finally groans at if pained, sinking back down into his chair.

"I'm sorry," he sighs, pressing his hands over his face. "Of course. Of course it all goes back to my brother. Of course it does. Has it really been that long..." Since he lived for himself? Yes, probably.

His eyes are very red when he looks up again. "If I were to die permanently," he says slowly, "How would you mourn me?"

She turns the question over in her mind for a moment before she answers, and as she does, it is surprisingly easy to think of. Things that she hadn't realized float up to the surface.

"After your body was handled how you wished, I would write your name in a book I have, where the absent and the dead reside. I would take time where I did not work, and did not speak unless I wished it to be so. I would hope Mother Mortanne treated you kindly, when she carried you away, and take an extra moment in Mourner's Night for it. I would weep, and I would let myself be injured and scarred in my soul, wanting the mark to remind me of your presence."

Something to ache in the early mornings, when the mists were chill.

"I would gather the others who knew you, and share our memories, and leave an extra chair at the table. I'd slip my way into your rooms, and choose something to keep - some physical reminder of your presence, something I could hold onto and say, this was Pyotr's, and it would travel with me wherever I went in the world. I would imagine, at times, what you would say to me in a situation, or how you might have reacted. And I would hold a lingering, everlasting regret that no matter how many times I would attempt to sketch your face, it would never be right. By the time I'd have honed my skills enough to do so, I would doubt my own memory enough to always be dissatisfied."

His breath quickens, chest aching in a way it never has before. Til now, it's always been his secret hope that those he cares for would simply forget him, once he was gone. It was an easy story to spin so long as he had the good sense not to discuss it with anyone; perhaps it may even still be true of Maria and Daniil, with their many and glorious plans. But now he has torn the veil from his eyes and asked Fever to speak him plainly, and he can always count on her to be honest. For her, forgetting him would be all of a piece with her grief.

"I could..." he begins to speak slowly. "Of it would help, I could...I could leave you a self-portrait. If that's something you'd want."

"...Yes."

A picture, so that her memory would stay intact. Something so that she wouldn't have to doubt, or find the information missing one day, years and years hence.

"Very much. I'd want to be able to look at it and remind myself." A heartbeat passes, then a second one. "Don't actually know what I'd do if something happened and I forgot it all again. I'd like to not lose more than I have to."

She'd just be back to where she was before - scared and in pain and knowing little but survival and her own name. And angry, so angry, so ready to make someone pay for it.

"I could sign it?" he suggests, feeling more wretched than ever. It feels like he's only offering a mere sop for her feelings, surely it won't matter, surely he's not that important? But it's all he has.

"I could write something on the back? Just so if, god forbid, you do ever lose your memories again, at least...at least you'll still have something? You'll know that we knew each other, that, that someone cared. Even if I couldn't stay..."

"Please."

Her eyes meet his again, and Fever hopes he sees the sincerity in them.

"Every time I remember something at present, it's never anything like that. If it happens again, I'd want to have something that tells me that there were some kinder memories there."

"Of course." And then, inspiration strikes. Something genuinely good he could do for Fever, that would have nothing to do with losing him. "Perhaps I could make portraits of your other friends as well? If they were silverpoint sketches bound in a book, perhaps, you could write the important facts down on each facing page and then carry it with you. Then you would have some insurance again forgetting everyone."

When he says it, it's so blindingly obvious that she should have asked him for it months before. Sure, there's photographs - she's seen a few, remembers them. But something feels more correct to have them be pictures. A way to not lose any more faces than she'll inevitably have to, lacking images of the group she traveled with - the ones who didn't make it to these shores from the ship, and those since departed will fade, unless she finds some way around it.

A book of those she cares about, who care about her.

"Would you?"

There's hope in that. Strange, to have revealed something she's held as a fear, and to not have to fight tooth and nail to have it taken seriously.

"I could commission you formally for it. Give you a list of who I'd need, and tell you if I need to add anyone."

While you're still here goes unsaid.

"You don't need to commission me," he tells her, waving the offer off. "We're friends. And I already have more money than I know what to do with." The desk made a small dent in it all, as did Erik's insistence he increase his grocery budget, but it's still just piling up in his bank account and he hasn't the least idea how to get rid of it.

"Besides," he adds, as the thought occurs to him. "I want to do this for you. I think...it would...I don't know to put it. I thought the best I could hope for was to leave this world, at least, with an absence of any lasting harm wrought by my hands. But this is an opportunity to do something...something good. Something that will...if not bring pleasure, at least soothe one person's pain." He smiles at her, small and awkwardly. "I feel like I should be thanking you for the idea, really. And," he adds, with a pointed glance, "I've found that if I try to sketch while I'm emotionless, I don't care for the results afterwards. So I'll have to leave my feelings alone while I work on this project."

"Forced to remain as you are, if you don't want to find a pile of wasted work in the morning."

It's said lightly, but the smile on her features is a softer answer to his own. A task, a goal to reach for, and something that might keep his mind off death. Something to prove to him that he could do more than just create pain. It would take time, time that he'd have to live with what he feels, time that could in theory hold enough moments to make him want to hang on just a bit longer.

And still, she can't put to words the idea that he'd undertake such a venture just because she asked. For all she's quick to shed favorable words about herself, put them with the others in a chest, she keeps this around her shoulders, pulled tight, getting used to the weight of it. It...might fit, if she gives it some time.

"Exactly. Although existence is nearly always easier to bear if I have a project to give my attention." You're just not meant for idleness, Petryushka, Andrey used to say, in happier times before Vienna and Paris and the Town-on-Gorkhon. That mind of your always works better if it has a problem to whir away on. Perhaps it was even true.

"Think about who you'd like to have in it," he reminds Fever. "It's alright if you want to add more people later, but having a list would at least tell me where to start."

"Give me a piece of paper, and I can already start."

Because certain names would always come to the surface faster than others, and at some point, she's going to be confused at how the list got reasonably long. Enough people to reach towards and ask who was I, and maybe, she won't need to exhaust herself again looking for every trace of who she might have been.

(Someone cared enough to make sure she wouldn't lose everything.)

"Of course. Here..." To his own surprise, Pyotr feels a sense of growing excitement, rising up as if through a well sunk deep, deep into his chest, that makes his hands tremble as he leans over to dig through the box where he's been keeping fresh sketchbooks that have yet to be filled. (Of course he buys them in bulk, it's practical.)

"Here," he says, at last selecting a hand-sized, lineless notebook and a pencil and carrying them over to Fever. And finally he can sit down next to Fever, at ease in her presence once more. "Write down everyone you can think of." He can use the rest of the space in the book to keep track of sitting appointments and such. A project of this size requires a schedule.

Taking the items, she pauses for only a moment before beginning to write a list. Names in a now-practiced script, the one she uses at work for noting things down, occasionally pausing before adding another on.

One name gets an underline to highlight its importance to this list - Pyotr Stamatin. No getting out of that particular promise.

Finally, she's reached the end and turns it to him, red eyes waiting for some kind of approval or disapproval. It's going to require at least a solid chunk of time to complete, with how everything has been going around them, but the longer it takes, the better.

He merely nods in agreement when she writes his name. He made a promise; if he can do nothing else for her, he'll see this done.

"Some of these may be a little tricky to set up," he comments, once he's taken a look at the full list. "Valdis doesn't precisely hold me in high regard...and neither, I'd imagine, does Nimona." He's never said a single word to her, but she was the one who killed Efrain...meaning she first had to fight her way through a horde of his creations do it. "It may be better if you speak to them first. On the other hand I may not even need Burakh to sit for me at all, considering how much time I spent sketching him at Merrymeet."

She shrugs, but nods. "Valdis will yield if I ask her to, regardless of her personal opinion." Her friend is a proud woman, but not unreasonable. The same goes for Nimona - if she explains her reasons, Fever knows she'll be fine with it.

The mention of sketches makes her intrigued though.

"Can I see what you made of Artemy? I confess I didn't see you there sketching...I was somewhat distracted that day."

Angel. Still a closed fist in her stomach, that.

Edited 2025-05-14 17:23 (UTC)

"Oh, I kept myself well-hidden." He smiles slightly and gets up to retrieve the drawing pad, now mostly a stack of loose paper from all the sheets he tore out. The ones on the top of the stack are rather water-stained -- these he sets aside, flipping through the remaining pages until he unearths the face and hand sketches he'd made of Burakh. One can hardly say they've studied the man unless they pay equal attention to his most important tools.

"Here we are -- Artemy Isidorevich Burakh," he says grandly, passing the sketches over to Fever (at the bottom, as a surprise, waits a caricature he'd done after Artemy had taken his leave; a little cartoon of the man arguing with a large bull. Yes Artemy, the whole does know about that.)

There's an honest note of admiration, seeing how Pyotr captured Artemy - there he is, just walking through the fields of paper instead of the woods of the Isle, and there are his steady hands brought to life, still for a passing moment in their rendition. And then - she can't help but stifle a chuckle at the bottom picture.

"I wonder who would yield in the end - the bull or the man."

Probably the man, but it's funny to imagine.

"Can I look at the others?"

"Historically, the bull -- if only because it's too big for Burakh to throw across his shoulders and carry off." His lingering smile fades when she mentions the other drawings, but he nods and pulls them closer. "These were drawn before the demons showed up," he says, handing those to Fever first. Instead the stack are quick sketches of the dancing and the Flower Court, especially Dahlia Leeds and her magnificent gown.

"And these were drawn after. It's fine if you don't like them." These are the waterstained (tearstained) drawings, depicting the demons and the suffering of their victims. People lay sprawled on the ground or clutching each other in shared misery, their very bodies warped by gloom. Nightmarish spirits stalk the former revelry, and Efrain watches over all with a gloomy smirk on his shadowed face.

Pyotr got a very good look at him while they were talking, after all.

The drawings of before - he might notice she moves more quickly over those that reflect the dancers, the Court - she doesn't want to catch a glimpse of her own features. Oh, she had tried to push through, but when Efrain's band arrived, she had fled as swiftly as her legs could carry her, disappearing as morning mist does when the heat finally hits it.

But the drawings of misery, she lingers over. The anguish wants to come off the page, and something in her wishes she witnessed it, got to drink it in and add it to the collection of times she has witnessed horror with her own two eyes. The beauty in the grotesque, and a memory of what was. It reminds her of Jean's sketches of Parade Day, and the brutality therein.

"You know, I think I like them anyway."

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MARCH SADNESS - A Symphony of Sorrow

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