faderift | closed | jam session.

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.

closed | jam session.

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