faderift | closed | jam session.

The theater's as fine as any theater in Lowtown could be. Shabby in spots, of course—it's Lowtown, it's Kirkwall—but that's despite the pride and dedication of its owners, not for lack of it. Even this late at night it has a dedicated caretaker on the premises. Fortunately, the caretaker knows and trusts Byerly, apparently, well enough to wave them and everything they're hauling inside through the back door with only a warning to watch their step.

The warning's warranted. Back stage is poorly lit and littered with mostly-finished set pieces for an operatic dramatization of Michel LaFaille's Storm Age liberation of Kirkwall from Qunari occupation. But in front of the curtain, the stage has been left clear for rehearsals, and on either side that empty space is flanked by wood panels depicting Hightown on its clifftops, in flames. The lanterns giving a ghostly half-light to the cavern of the theatre lend the painted flames a bit of their flicker.

When he's reached the edge of the stage, Bastien turns to survey it, still laden with instrument cases and boxes. He decides: "Cool."

Beyond him, in the orchestra pit, there's the promised piano, an assortment of large drums, a harp, and a few other instruments too large for their owners to carry them home at the end of the day. Noise machines everywhere.

Ellie arrives just a few minutes later.

She initially arrives excited, pumped, but her mood dampens quickly at the backstage, at all the props, all the scenery. Shit- why didn't she anticipate this? Rubbing her hands down her arms under her cloak, she sets her mind to ignoring it- it's not this place's fault that it looks a little too familiar for comfort.

And the floor is pleasantly solid.

Ellie gains more momentum as she heads to the stage itself, gathering herself up. The case for her dulcimer is over her shoulder, and she pulls herself into brightening for Bastien.

"Man. They got us set up."

It must be nice to have friends who are willing to do you favors. She sets down her instrument, hangs both feet off the edge of the stage, looking down into the orchestra pit with a grin.

"Very cool."

Tony is wandering along behind, lute slung over a shoulder, eyes tracking over sunglasses at the various set dressings, the dimensions of the space, the hollow sound of their footsteps echoing tunefully. Good acoustics, as promised.

"This is giving me crazy nostalgia for the theatre kid past I never had," he offers out, an aside to Bastien who can surely relate. He would have been—maybe not a great actor, but definitely an obnoxious one, which is an important trait.

Abandoned theaters are spooky. Especially abandoned theaters with such ominous backdrops. And so it's positively eerie when deep, wicked-sounding, impossibly loud laughter ripples through the space -

And then Byerly leans his head out from behind the curtain shielding the offstage area from view. Like he hadn't just done something very off-putting, he gives an insouciant little wave of greeting, and holds up a speaking-trumpet that he'd used to amplify his voice.

"What are we playing first?"

Ellie does jump, you bastard.

"I think we just found the theater kid," Ellie mumbles; she's never known what one was but this is mercifully self-explanatory. She makes a face at Byerly for good effect, puts her hands to her mouth.

"Boo!"

But she comes up grinning, then glances back over her shoulder at Tony and Bastien.

"Get your ideas in first because I have a whole list."

Bastien is too well-trained to jump, too happy to feel a need to pretend he's not, and too overburdened with delicate instruments to panic for fun. His shoulder curl inward in an exaggerated gesture of oooh, spooky as Byerly emerges, but otherwise he gets down to the business of unpacking his person.

First the box containing a melodeon—something By plays, not him, borrowed from a friend earlier in the evening with swears on various lives not to let anything happen to it. Cello case off of one shoulder, lute off the other. Regardless of whether anyone is watching, he makes a show of pretending to find a surprise flageolet in his sleeve. The flageolet was not borrowed; it was pinched, two days ago, from an acquaintance he knows never plays it and won't miss it for months.

This all might be overkill. But for lack of guitars, electric or otherwise, he determined to provide as many options as possible for achieving—whatever. Whatever sound it is they're missing.

"It is your show," he says to Tony, passing Ellie's deferment on like a hot potato. A wanted hot potato, probably, that Tony will grab with both hands. He lacks specific context for theatre kid but has perhaps far too much context for theatre person.

In the meantime, he slips his jaw harp from his vest pocket and gives it a friendly boing. The boing echoes, too.

Hmm. Everyone is being adorable. Like they all have personalities outside of the Gallows, or something.

Tony slings around the lute until it lands in both hands in what is possibly not great or at least not strictly conventional form, dancing his fingers over the strings thoughtfully as the hot potato is lobbed his way. He is, by now, standing centre stage, or will once he takes another step forward, turning on a heel, as he starts up a restless strumming that to Ellie's ear sounds suspiciously "Sweet Caroline"-y sounding,

but not quite right, and he flattens his hands over the strings. "Not that one," he says. "Rising Sun needs an electric keyboard, but that over there," he tips the neck of the lute in the direction of the boxed up melodeon, "could probably be tortured into a good substitute.

"And I got, like, four, five other party tricks on this thing, more if the piano's the same as an earth piano. And I wanna do the song my girlfriend likes."

Brriiing, goes the lute. You people are into that, right.

"Tortured!" Byerly cries, and then drops the speaking trumpet to make his way over to the melodeon. He coos to it - "Don't listen to him, darling, my sweet, he's a bad man, I'd never let anything happen to you - "

And then he picks it up and slings it around his neck. He easily starts playing it - choosing for his first performance a jaunty little jig, something that sounds as though it's likely being played on the deck of some Fereldan sailing-vessel even now.

"Just start playing," he encourages Ellie and Tony. "We'll pick up the tune as you go."

(Indeed, Byerly's manner here is just more pleasant. Tony will likely notice it the most keenly - and it'll certainly be no surprise to Bastien - but when Byerly is acting as Ambassador, there's always a tired, ragged, peeved edge to him. Here, he's comfortable, cheerful, eyes sparkling with enthusiasm even in the dim light.)

Ellie snickers to herself at the boing because god damn it, that's the most ridiculous sounding thing, and she can't think too hard about it because she'll lose it.

So instead she works at getting her dulcimer out, making sure everything's aligned for a good rendition.

Thankfully, it's a good solid beat and an easy to match the riff because it repeats through most of the song. But Ellie looks around at the others to make sure they're all on the same page, comfortable with it before she starts singing.

Her eyes linger on Byerly, on Tony, on Bastien last, because she hopes he knows that he's a genius.

Ellie doesn't often do power ballads, she's more into crooning at her guitar, but she can belt it out when she needs to, and she does it now.

"There is a house way down in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And god, I know I'm one."

As decisions are made, melodeons are protected, and instruments are readied, Bastien is scurrying about, first off the stage altogether to hang a sending crystal from the arm rest of one of the house's best seats—in the midst of this, when Tony says the song my girlfriend likes, Bastien pipes in with a, "Yes, please." Then back to rest a second on the front edge of the stage. No way to know which one will sound better until they try. But it's quick work. He's nimbler than he looks, in his slightly chubby late thirties, and charts a path from aisle to pit-encased piano bench to the stage that requires minimal hoisting to get back to the group.

Once the crystals are handled, it takes some background murmuring and prompting for him to decide to retrieve his cello, rather than one of the other instruments. Some bow tightening to be ready. But with a few hiccups he's able to pick up something approximating the bass line. The structure isn't really so alien, compared to a tavern song.

Stark seems happy. Byerly is in his element. Ellie—he didn't miss the way she was still buttoning up her good mood, when she emerged onto the stage, but she seems alright now, so asking can wait. He flashes a grin at her look. He is a genius.

And then he plays, concentration divided in even halves between getting his steady, repetitive bit consistently right and watching the others surprise him with theirs.

In preparation, there is a very vague and abstract explanation made to Byerly about what he means, that wall of sound effect of the electric organ that something like a melodeon could potentially replicate, following the riff he plays out for the other man in simpler terms on the lute—

But otherwise, Tony is a.) willing for this to be an oddly nautical sounding rendition, because whatever, and b.) trusts that Byerly can figure it out without increasingly unhinged similes from him.

Once they get to playing, Tony repeats his demonstration from the crystals, plucking out that rolling, circuitous sounding melody as an undercurrent to Ellie's vocals. Tempting as it is to sing along, he opts to stand down and concentrate—which is good, because he needs it, an occasional slipped edge of his finger earning them an apologetic wince.

Not much of an apology. He is, as observed, happy, the newness of this particular exercise lighting up the corners of his brain that always need novelty. And the rest, for nostalgia.

It's an odd way of playing, to be sure - to attempt to fill the air with sound, when often playing the melodeon you're aiming for crisp definition around the sound. But By keeps his eyes on his temporary bandmates, watching their faces for approval as he tries different sounds, and reads approval or skepticism with care.

And so, after a little while, he's hit on the general approach - wall of sound, constant noise, leaning into that riff. And he allows himself to be directed: no improvisations (yet), just trying as best he can to replicate the song they know and love.

Ellie doesn't generally look at others when she plays. She's wrapped up in the music, in her own world.

But it's not often that anybody else plays with her. She might close one eye at a discordant note, laugh under her breath through the lyrics.

But eventually they all find their center, something that threads all through them, and makes into one cohesive song. Ellie raises her voice to allow herself to be heard over the strange quartet of instruments they've used, and when the last note fades out, she's left breathless.

"... oh, man."

Bastien's felt it frequently enough. He first learned to play the lute at all as part of a double act; as a bard he worked in trios, quartets, quintets. He plays all the time with Byerly and whoever they can collect in the city. His favorite songs are the ones the whole tavern will sing together.

But it's never old, the sense of connection and belonging and ease of existence that comes from hitting a musical groove with other people. In the wake of the music he's left grinning, all of his earlier scurrying—and future scurrying, someone has to check the crystals to see which one sounds better, whether they need to be moved, whether all the sounds are being captured—set aside for content stillness.

It's after the set up, some discussion around what they're gonna do, some settling, that Tony ditches the lute for the time being—not the whole time, he has been practicing, and serenading his girlfriend with Elvis Presley is not going to go wasted just because there is, as promised, a piano.

But he is drawn to it, inevitably, swinging a leg over the bench to sit as he opens it, surveys the keys. Nothing extremely unfamiliar. Maybe it's even tuned the same, unlike the terrible things he's done to his lute to make it go.

Now this is nostalgic. His plays his fingers out over the keys, testing out a few major chords which ring out in the notes he expects. Muscle memory makes its demands, and he strikes the first chords and flourishes of Piano Man, but stops short of going into the melody.

"Anyway, here's Wonderwall," he says, more to himself, before executing a lively run, low to high, and chuckling. Yay.

Ellie's got her dulcimer across her lap, tuning it up as Tony stakes out the piano, and can't even be mad that she has to pause in that to listen to the opening of Piano Man rocking herself back and forth.

Fuck, she'd spent a lot of time listening to a lot of people drunk-singing that one. It had been a Jackson favorite. Brings back good memories.

"Cop-out," she calls, gets to her feet, toting her instrument with her as she walks over.

"You're pretty damn good, actually."

"Thanks," Tony says, glancing up from where he's repositioning his hands. Picking out a few chords, searching for something from hazy memory. "Hated it when I was five. I think."

He does not remember hating it. He remembers it differently, now. Sometimes your piano-playing mom dies and it changes the tenor of certain memories. Now he holds onto them.

Far from maudlin, however, the unmistakable opening bars of "Don't Stop Believin'" ring round and loud through the auditorium, Tony tipping a sly look to her. This one has been proven to be universal. He will stop short of any goddamn singing, or just before it arrives at the potential, with a discordant off-key press of his palm.

"Any requests?"

"Five," Bastien echoes from his further distance away up on the stage, not too quiet but to no one in particular.

It has a note of good-natured jealousy. Nobles start that young, if their parents think it's important enough to make them sit still for it. Some of the bards—the ones who started younger than he did, the ones taken as infants and raised entirely for the purpose. He always felt a little like there was no catching up.

Anyway, Tony is good. He doesn't have to be familiar with the style of music to understand the confident competence behind the playing, however abbreviated the snatches of music are.

At a more actually-talking-to-you volume, he says, "Do you know anything your people dance to?"

The corner of his mouth hooks up. He could explain again about how he's a singular genius of his time, but he was also born rich, so, let's leave it there. Contemplatively, Tony plays out a simple waltz as he says, "Well, depends what we count as dancing. Like, line dancing, ballroom, dad's drunk on dance floor at the reception again," which inspires him, and he repositions his hands. "Well, let's start with the fundamentals."

Promptly, the theatre space is filled with those first assertive bars of "Old Time Rock and Roll", keys hit hard in between dramatic pauses before hitting the melody properly.

And yeah, he sings. He's decent at that too.

Not conventionally, not free and clear and melodic like any of the more dedicated musicians in the room, probably, rougher toned in a way that is purposeful. He doesn't ham it up full Seger style either—but there is, obviously, a good amount of ham, to the extent that it is fun to sing something familiar.

Ellie gets visibly excited every time Tony starts a familiar riff, which is most of them, shooting him dirty looks every time he leaves her high and dry.

It's to the point that she doesn't actually believe him when he starts up with Old Time Rock and Roll, but she grins as he starts to sing, jumping in on harmony with the guitar. A dulcimer isn't a bass, but she makes sure to hit the harder notes, giving them extra kick, and thumps her heel against the side of the stage.

Dance music is easy to follow, even if she hasn't practiced this one, she knows what to do.

Bastien finds Byerly's eyes while he pulls his shirt collar loose from his neck a few times to release the sudden (imaginary, playfully hyperbolic) heat. He plays! He sings! He's Bastien's type in several other ways.

The piano is steady enough to find the beat, even if the beat is not necessarily what a Thedosian dancer is always looking for. Ellie's thumping heel and dulcimer emphasis help.

Bastien does not choose a dance close to his heart, because he knows enough about rifters to know he's about to be ridiculous. His grin announces it. He chooses a dance he learned for Wysteria Poppell, as chance would have it, and taught to Ellis in secret so he could dance with her. It involves some semi-skipping steps, coordinated little kicks, and an occasional clap with elevated hands.

Sped up to match the song, it's—well.

It could be worse.

Edited (wording + an important detail) 2022-08-24 04:00 (UTC)

Byerly, meanwhile, is glaring daggers at Tony - because of that feigned oh-my-so-hot gesture from Bastien. Who knows if Tony actually saw that, or if he just suddenly finds his colleague looking thunderous in his direction. (It's funny either way.)

Mid-lyric, Tony locks eyes with Byerly, raises an eyebrow at the hostility emanating in his direction, looks behind a shoulder just in case, maybe, someone else walked in—

And is immediately distracted by Byerly's entrance to the dance floor, inasmuch as any available space becomes one if you want it enough. The rest of the line is lost in a cackle, delighted instead of mocking, but maintains his playing throughout. Heavy key strikes, loud and clanging and bold, but it suits the tempo and feel, maybe even to a Thedosian.

Important to note: Tony does not remember all verses of this song, dug up from his hindbrain as it is, so it's a truncated version that still features an instrumental flourish and a breakdown, relying on Ellie's dulcimer and heel-strikes and low left-hand notes in place of the drumline, before bringing it home with some flashy, end-to-end fills.

Ellie lets out a wolf-whistle at the dancing, redoubles her efforts to keep the beat in time with Bastien's dancing.

Though she remembers most of the song, she can tell there's gaps in both of their memories, so at some point she just starts improvising, keeping time and finding harmonies.

Out of nowhere, they go from trying to show them a song to just having fucking fun with something they partially made up, which is really what jamming is about.

This time is not, of course, just to be spent on Rifter music. At some point, Byerly decides that he's spent far too much time not being the center of attention, and so he takes up a place in front of the harp.

He's not quite as adept at the harp as he is with his violin. His playing is by-the-book, not particularly inspiring. But after a moment, playing an introduction, he begins to sing -

And he is a very remarkable singer, with a clear and pleasing and resonant baritone. He sings a chanson that Bastien most certainly will know - a melancholy recounting of the episode in Remi Vascal's life when he had been betrayed by his lover Servana de Montfort. The song is so maudlin that it borders on comical - the way it goes into exacting detail on all the tortures that the Black Fox had suffered, in a way that borders on fetishistic. But Byerly sings it with deep sincerity, and it really is beautiful.

Ellie sits quietly, her feet hanging over the edge of the stage, chin in both hands as she listens to Byerly play, and sing, and tries not to smile during the worst parts.

Really, she's got eyes for Bastien, watching him watch him.

And she might sneak a glance at Tony, just to check in.

Bastien's never unaware of when he's being watched. It's a problem, sometimes—the curtain of self-awareness that hangs between him and everything he does when people are around. There's no way for him to watch By at the harp with soppy, soft-eyed adoration without knowing that he is watching By at the harp with soppy, soft-eyed adoration and knowing that other people can see him watching By at the harp with soppy, soft-eyed adoration.

So he doesn't. He's fussing over one of his cello strings when Byerly starts playing, and he keeps doing that, listening with a smile that fades sympathetically at some of the worst suffering.

When he's satisfied with his fussing, he glances up and catches Ellie's gaze. He smile widens in answer, and he thumps his fist against his chest in mimicry of a heartbeat. Gets me right there. It does. Byerly and his voice even more than poor Remi Vascal and his broken heart and body.

There's time left for joining in. Bow to string, he picks up a harmony as quietly as a cello allows without squeaking—a harmony for By's voice, not the harp, like an accompanying instrumental hum.

As a professional egomaniac himself, Tony's just impressed that Byerly held out this long.

He misses some of the looks bouncing around, roaming back from where he'd wandered to listen in from his own perch on the stage. He smiles at the sad parts—kind of a lot, don't you think? Songs that are stories carry a different weight, and Tony honestly just has not thought hard about why the music of this world doesn't catch him the way the music of his own world does, save some dismissive language around old timey sounds.

But a loop closes. Those songs—normally—don't sound like the performer means them, or feels them, non-autobiographical and unrelatable in a way that's alien or just dull. Who cares about Remi Vascal? Maybe he just hasn't heard it sold right before. And Byerly sells it well, that caring.

Bastien joins in, gaining a glance, and Tony looks to Ellie, mostly to catch her enjoying herself.

Byerly casts a look over at Bastien, and - well, yes, there's no news here. No surprises. These two are disgustingly, goopily in love with one another. (A fact which also helps to sell this song; five years ago, Byerly would have been far more likely to have been caught with his pants down than caught singing about Remi Vascal. But, well, in Byerly's mind, the Black Fox has a dashing mustache and mischievous eyes and a bashful smile. So.)

Which inspires him -

Suddenly, the lyrics change. They stop rhyming, for one - but it's because Byerly starts making them up on the spot. And suddenly, he's telling the story of the man who rescued the Black Fox from his tight spot: Bastien the hero, who swung in on a rope and fought off half a dozen guards. (The music picks up a little bit, too, because it really was so maudlin.)

Bastien's understated harmony doesn't stutter when the lyrics deviate from what he expects, but it does when his name enters into things. Then he's laughing (and blushing, but he'll take offense if anyone doesn't let him pretend otherwise) and his bow slides down the strings and hangs loose for a few seconds before the manages to catch back up to the brighter tone.

"This is not how it happened," he informs the others, words crammed into a lyrical pause. He pauses in turn for the next line of the song, then adds, "At all!"

Song.

"Servana came for him—"

And so on.

"—with Karolis," (his second favorite,) "and the others—"

Etc.

"—and they disguised themselves—"

Almost certainly fact.

"–as some Chantry sisters and the Fox himself—"

Almost certainly not.

"—and made it look like he had already escaped—"

They're both improv performers born in the wrong century, so this could go on for quite some time.

It's a performance that would've gone over well in the places Ellie's used to. There's a sincerity and a silliness, a pervading sense of love and joy, and it's the kind of thing that Ellie soaks up like dry ground in a sudden rain. The dust covering her in a fine layer sluices off, leaving her eyes shining.

She shares looks with the others, finds Tony's eyes and grins back at him.

How long has it been, since they've been among friends like this, just goofing off, doing something they love?

She looks more relaxed than any of them have ever seen her. Looks her age.

"I don't know this one," is at Ellie, rather than loudly enough for the twosome down in the orchestra pitch to catch. Tony has not, at any point, brushed up on Thedosian folktale lore, but he doesn't really need to—the comedic flourishes of song and interjection translate easy.

He lifts a hand, curves it around his mouth, mock shouting as if across more distance than there is; "Quit your dayjobs."

Byerly laughs. "Don't tempt me!" he carols back as he hits the chorus - which does not need to be repeated again, given that he's hit the damn thing about five times by now.

And then he shifts his gaze to Bastien. And it is a gaze - loving, warm, utterly charmed by that blush on his cheeks. And he calls out to Tony and Ellie -

"The two of you were there, too, right?"

- And then the next verse is going into the exploits of Ser Ellie the Bold, whose stunning cheekbones made that treacherous Servana swoon and come back for the Fox - and Lord Stark, whose clever inventions (unspecified) were the key to all escaping alive.

Grinding your bow on the cello, Ellie had said in her attempt to explain an electric guitar. Loud and gritty.

So into a lull of quiet between other songs, Bastien tries just that: a melodic stretch of some familiar country dance, played with bow-fraying force and some extra speed, notes too low to qualify as screechy but certainly creaky and loud and, "Aaahhh," he says, like a very calm scream of horror, just like it's spelled, with one eye squinting shut in exaggerated pain, a full measure before he actually stops playing.

It's a bad sound (though it has potential). Worse to his ear's than to a rifter's, most likely, but not a good one regardless.

He says, "Surely not," looking between the two rifters in question for confirmation that it did not sound like something they would consider pleasant.

"I told you I didn't describe it right," Ellie says with a groan, laying down flat on her back on the stage, her dulcimer across her middle.

She abruptly sits up.

"Hey Tony, can you make and electric guitar and an amp?"

That surely wouldn't be a enormous misuse of Riftwatch time and funds or anything.

"I mean,"

said in the tone of someone who would love the infinite time and funds to do such a thing, because nothing is impossible,

"make the argument to Flint that we can defeat Corypheus through the power of rock and we'll talk."

Because obviously Byerly would be in, and Flint seems easier to flip than Yseult. He is, meanwhile, standing nearby, arms half folding and a hand having risen almost on its own volition to half protect one ear as Bastien does his best. However,

he twists at the waist to look at Ellie. "It's close, right? Maybe if you make it even worse it'll transcend into amazing."

"Even worse?" has punctured Bastien's brow-furrowing attempts to decide how they could defeat Corypheus through the power of rock, or at least convince Flint that they could.

He looks down at his cello. Even worse. Coming to a decision, he tilts it by the neck away from him, toward someone—anyone—else.

"One of you do it. I'm not sure I can."

Edited 2022-08-25 01:59 (UTC)

Ellie pulls a face at Bastien offers the bow to her, not wanting to fuck it up, but the draw is so strong and his eyes are so sincere, and this isn't a night for abstaining from the things she wants to try.

She reaches out to accept the bow. She knows the basics of holding it, so she doesn't look like a total idiot, at least -- but she soon finds that it's a little too slidey, so she taps a little more rosin on the base, by the frog.

Starts by the base, and does a long, slow, strong drag on the C. Adds the G, and slides her pointer finger down toward the bridge.

It does sound remarkably like the purr of an electric guitar.

She nods to Byerly. It would probably work even better on a fiddle.

It feels sacrilegious as hell to play Aerosmith on a dulcimer, but this is a riff Ellie's been working on doing properly, and it's a shame not to bring it out when they're just fucking around.

She waits for a minute, then strums out the beginning riff of Walk this Way.

(Of course, the vocals are what really make this one.)

Of course Bastien is no help with the vocals. But crouched down in the pit to sort through a pile of smaller percussion instruments, he stops and listens. And he likes the riff. So much so that a few seconds after Ellie's reached the end of it, it echoes back at her—a little incorrectly, a few notes forced into patterns that are more familiar to Thedosian ears—on the mysterious flageolet.

"Look, it's not gonna—we're not going for fidelity, here."

Just so everyone is clear, even the guys who have never heard this song before. Tony is currently tuning the lute in a way that would likely sound off to their ears and would involve too much research for me to explain any further, but it is what's happening, as he talks. "We're going for adaptation."

He strums out a chord, sounds fine, settles his fingers, seems about to play—then puts out a hand. "I just want to manage expectations," is maybe more playing at nervous energy than true nervousness. Anyway, like he said, his girlfriend likes it.

"If we ever play together," he adds, hand again resettling, "we're all gonna have to learn 'Free Bird' so it's not just me on my own. This is not 'Free Bird'. I'll explain later."

Okay, okay, he's playing.

There's been a little bit of crashing and thrashing on these poor instruments, god knows, but the gently melodic tune he begins to play is only romantic, and to the benefit of the sort of sound a lute can produce. It is a song designed to be swayed to, slow danced to, has been countless times, in countless worlds, probably.

Tony's vocal rendition of "Can't Help Falling In Love" is not, either, an Elvis impression, save for the occasional inflection for those who know better. He is mostly watching his hands.

The nervous prelude only piques more curiosity from Bastien, to the point that he stops fiddling with this and sorting through that to come closer and sit a few yards away to watch with expectant attention.

Tony only narrowly avoids being told to stop stalling.

And the song, when it begins, is not what Bastien expected. Tony's earlier unspoken epiphany was largely correct: Thedas' popular songs are most frequently narratives. Their love songs are most often from first to third person or about two third-person characters entirely, with the romance wrapped safely in a story. The emotion is held at a polite distance.

Here, it isn't. Simple feelings, promises made by the singer directly to someone who it feels ought to be sitting right in front of him, looking him in the eye.

Bastien might squirm, if it weren't so damn compelling.

This is one that Ellie knows. It's been picked out on a six-string so many times on the back porch next to her garage that it stings, aches through her. Cool autumn nights, swallowing the quiet rumbles of a familiar voice, while the chords came through clear and sweet.

It's soft, loving, and maybe Ellie imagines the heartbreak wrapped up in the words along with the promise.

Darling, so it goes.

Discreetly, she reaches up, wipes her nose with her sleeve.

Byerly, meanwhile, is sprawled back in his seat - and as he listens, he grins at the sheer audacity of the song. The intimacy of it is absurd. Because, indeed, when there are those love songs, they're all about my mistress' eyes and all that; none of this awkward rawness.

"This," Byerly murmurs to Bastien, "is the horniest thing I've ever heard in my life."

(By is, it must be noted, frequently quite a bit less sentimental than his beloved is.)

It's a good thing Tony doesn't catch that. He'd probably giggle and ruin the vibe too much to even want to redo.

There are, of course, hornier songs provided by earth than a croony beachy love song from sixty years ago, but the stripped back sentimentality of it is not shied away from save that Tony checking his audience only affords fleeting eye contact. Byerly provides a reprieve with shit-eating grin, honestly.

It's a short song. Take my hand, take my whole life too, and the last chorus. Odder arrangement of chords aside, Tony lets the lute do its pretty lute thing right up to the last frilly flourish. And, because he can't help himself,

"Thank you very much," spoken quickly, where the crystal will most certainly pick it up too.

closed | jam session.

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the p iano.

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cello supremacy.

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dulce

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lute adequacy.

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