Music to my ears (Konstantine & Dmitri)

[shyla]

C E C I



Ceci was, at the moment, not feeling the greatest. She had her piano sheets neatly in her folder and hugged in close to her chest. If she did indeed fall again, she wouldn’t let these fly everywhere. The night before she had another one of her nightmares. It was the same nightmare every time, her brothers and mother being killed by those human hunters. She gripped the folder tighter making her knuckles go a little white. That was why she felt like going to play on the piano. It was her only sanctuary that made her feel warm and secure.

The white haired girl quickly shook away the last of the frightening dream. She tried to focus on walking rather than spacing out. Her chances of tripping were about like eighty out a hundred. Some days her eyesight was all right, while on other days she would run into things constantly. Sadly enough her nose was the thing she always hit. The poor thing needed a brake from such pain. Ceci rubbed her nose apologetically feeling sorry for it.

Suddenly she hit her knee on a box, probably for some electronic stuff in the sound room. That was a little dangerous She thought as she walked around it. Today her eyesight wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t good either. She could make out most features of objects and people, but the little details would be hard to see with out her glasses. Of course the only thing her glasses were useful for was reading and writing. If she used them for other uses it just gave her a headache.

Now Ceci was getting impatient. She really wanted to play the sweet tune of the piano. No one else should have been here right? The rabbit girl looked around, which did little good, and broke out into a small jog. She wanted to get there as quick as she could so that the horrible feelings from the dream would melt away. Not paying attention, Ceci swung around the corner and ran right into another person. She fell back, obviously surprised by someone being there. The sudden collision made Ceci’s little bunny tail pop out like it always did when she was startled or embarrassed. “Sorry” She said to the other person while rubbing her forehead.

[dmitri]

Two hours on weekdays, four hours on weekend afternoons, piano every other day and cello on the others. The school had a handsome piano (there was probably more than that one, but he hadn’t done much hunting around), one in much better shape than the battered one that the Matryoshka family was so proud of, and though the keys were heavier and more resistant than what he was used to the sound was phenomenal, a deep and melodic timbre that weighed in the air and draped itself around the listener as if it had a physical presence. It had probably been a show of overzealousness on his part, but he’d been sure to reserve the school’s piano for the hours he wanted to practice with it – he observed schedules with the almost religious obsession of a newly-converted acolyte, and nothing would put him in a fouler mood than to show up with a block of time all sectioned off for practicing and find someone else on the instrument he was supposed to use. Two hours every other weekday, four hours every other weekend afternoon, it was his.

Fortunately, though, today he’d not have to compete over it with anyone. Today was a day for the cello, and he had his own instrument for that. Not that he’d been particularly keen on carrying it from his dormitory to the auditorium to practice – though the instrument itself was composed of graceful curves, it was cumbersome to transport, and when you added its own weight to the weight of his case it was quite a burden. Still, his roommate had been in a worse mood than he was, and Dmitri required a certain measure of tranquility before practicing, so he had gingerly packed his cello into its well-padded case and had made the pilgrimage to the auditorium.

Branching away from the auditorium was a honeycomb of humble, tidy practice rooms, through which students passed like quiet, polite phantoms on their way to or from practicing. Each room, like nearly everything else seemed to be in the school, was enchanted to be soundproof from the outside; sounds from the hallway would leak in, but no sounds from the rooms themselves would spill out into the hallway. He wasn’t sure if a teacher or an ambitious mage-to-be had worked this clever enchantment, but it was effective – too effective, perhaps, because the practice rooms lacked doors. Apparently, in years past, some aspiring Casanova had used the soundproof rooms for his scandalous rendezvous.

The removal of the doors and thus any semblance of privacy may have discouraged lovers from misusing the practice rooms, but, seeing as he had no criminal intentions, it didn’t prevent him from choosing a practice room and putting it to its intended use. Dmitri entered an unoccupied practice room at random, setting his heavy burden carefully down as he surveyed the room with mismatched eyes. It was small, as cramped as a monk’s cell, but the walls were painted a neutral and inoffensive beige and the hardwood floors were free of scratches despite the dozens of people and beasts that likely scraped through it on a daily basis. Lurking in the corner was a stack of chairs and a row of plastic music stands; he retrieved one of each and arranged them how he pleased, flicking through a manila folder until he found the piece that he’d been looking for and then taping the pages to the stand in such a way that no page-turning would be necessary. He moved through these simple tasks with the clinical carefulness of a nurse running their rounds; it didn’t require much thinking on his part, but it was a strange sort of soothing nonetheless. Finally he moved to gingerly unpack his cello from its coffin-like confines, sitting and, for a selfish moment, allowed himself to be proud of his instrument. It was stupid of him sure, sure; it was an inanimate object, he’d not even bought it with his own money, and it probably was going to need to be restrung in the next two months, but it was easily the handsomest and most valuable object he could call his own. The piano at home was shabby, worn down like an old horse that had spent its life dragging a plow through dusty fields, and anyway it was shared by six others. This was and would never be anyone else’s.

He glanced at his watch to make note of the time, unbuckled it and tossed it into the now-empty case, and started to move through simple warm-up exercises, scales and arpeggios that hung blankly in the air before dissipating. Gradually, as fingers quickly adapted to the familiar sensations of moving across the strings and holding the bow, he increased the speed until the notes nearly seemed to blend together.

Eh. Good enough.

Dmitri glanced to the sheets that he’d pinned to the stand, eyes gliding across the unfamiliar notes, mouthing them as he read. It was a piece that he had only a superficial familiarity with, but it didn’t look extraordinarily challenging. He could make it through the first few minutes well enough, so after nodding to himself he started to play. The bow lanced across the strings, the melodic sound bled into the air, and whatever residual tumult he might’ve been holding onto when he entered melted into oblivion.

He’d been puzzling through a few particularly troublesome measures when there was the unmuted sound of a commotion from the hallway. The cello’s music died away with an uncharacteristic squawk of indignation as he glanced to the doorway, eyebrows raised and lips pursed in cautious annoyance. He carefully set the cello down, automatically checking his watch as he did so (he’d been practicing for approximately forty-five minutes), and then decided that, yes, he was feeling particularly nosy today. Dmitri moved to the doorway to get a better look at whatever scene was unfolding, typical grin unfolding on his face as he realized what had happened. Two people had collided while rounding the corner, and one of them was a flustered, white-haired girl with an almost-comical rabbit's tail emerging from her backside like a cotton ball. A chimera of some sort, perhaps? The patchwork boy stepped through the border that marked off the room’s invisible sound-bubble, bow still in hand, and idly asked, “You okay, sweetheart? Were you in a rush or something?” It was all well and good for him to comment on the collision, seeing as he hadn’t been involved, but if some hurrying girl had careened into him while he’d been lugging about his weighty instrument… well, Dmitri would not have been feeling particularly charitable.

[konstantine]

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_{If I were} ^{s♥t♥r♥o♥n♥g} _enough



^{To be} _{s♥o♥m♥e♥o♥n♥e} ^{like you}

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That's enough practicing, Konstantine decided, lowing her violin from her shoulder. She'd just spent the last few minutes in a practice room tuning her violin and running through some quick exercises. Normally, she wouldn't have bothered practicing, but she'd recently put a new string on her violin, and wanted to run through some scales. Since that was finished though, she thought she'd go play in the auditorium if it was empty. The echo in the auditorium sounded absolutely beautiful, and the practice rooms lacked that. Carefully, Konstantine stored away her violin in it's fine case, and clamped it shut. Taking it by the handle, she walked out of the practice room, only to smack straight into someone else as she walked down the row of Practice rooms.

A soft squeak escaped Konstantine as her eyes widened in shock and she fell back onto her rear. Her violin case crashed to the ground, but luckily didn't snap open and spill her wonderful instrument on the ground. "S...sorry!" she squealed softly, and almost automatically. Quickly, she grabbed up her violin, and examined the case with wide, worried eyes, praying that it wasn't damaged. It wasn't.

Another person had emerged now too. She didn't recognize either of these people, she realized. Well, maybe she'd seen them once or twice before, but not that she could recall. Konstantine, walked over to the other two, heart fluttering nervously. Normally, she would probably have run, but she wanted to make sure the other girl was okay. Konstantine warily stepped up to the boy and girl she didn't know. "Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?" Konstantine suddenly wondered the same thing about her self. She reached a hand up to touch her forehead, and rubbed it. It felt like it was bruising really, but hopefully, it would be fine.

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character●mood ;; Nervous&affraid
word●count ;; 304
muse ;; Good : D
music ;; Panic! at the Disco
o●o●c ;; Sorry this took so long!

[shyla]

C E C I



Ceci looked up to see whom she had hit. It was another girl who held a violin case close to her. She looked to the other person, a boy, who had come up to check on what had happened. She had thought that no one else was here. Realizing that, Ceci’s face became a bright beat red. She looked at the ground nervously. Why was it that people always found her falling over or in such embarrassing situations such as this one? “Y-yes, I’m so sorry. I-it’s normal for me to be running into to things.” She said stuttering. Her face still was red as she nervously picked up her, once again, piano sheets. It was dark and a little hard for the poor sighted girl to see if she had gotten all the sheets. She ended up missing a few who had flown in the darker parts of the hallway.

Suddenly realizing how rude she was being, she turned toward the girl. “You aren’t hurt either are you?” She fretted, her bunny tail still out. Ceci’s face was still a little pink, but it wasn’t a flushed as before. She was careless and if anything happened to someone else due to her incompetence, then Ceci could forgive herself. She didn’t want someone else to get hurt because of her like her mother did. She had died to protect Ceci and she was hard on herself because of that.

Seeing the violin case in the girl’s hands and the boy hand a bow in his hand. They must both be musicians who had come to practice. Sometimes Ceci envied the people who played instruments that were easily portable because they could play when ever and where ever they wanted to. It wouldn’t be easy, though, to lug around a piano all day. Still she loved the sweet melody the piano could play and such emotions it could portray. Her mother had taught her how to play the beautiful instrument and it was Ceci’s only instrument she loved to play.