Music
This is based on a request by @a-chilleus as part of my fundraiser for Freedom for Immigrants! If you want to participate, send me a short prompt and proof that you donated and I’ll write you some flash fiction <3. The prompt for this one was music, but it ended up also being about friendship and love
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The skies were turning purple at night, the solar flowers that covered all the buildings in the city now reflecting a black indigo. As soon as those first hints of purple began to lace the evening blues, Glory’s neighborhood began to grow louder. It was subtle at first, so quiet no one outside the neighborhood could notice it. But Glory could hear it, the tension of strings being tuned, the tentative slaps of hands against drums. Any other year, that beginning swell of music would have filled her with anticipation and comfort, the way she turned her face up at the sky as soon as the summer winds started to come, the way that she watched in excitement as boats were prepared for the festivals at midsummer. But this year, the sounds of instruments being tuned and melodies being created just made her want to run into her room and close her shutters. Before she fell asleep, she would cover her ears with her pillow, hoping to drown out the noise.
But as the festival of sound came closer and closer, the noises grew louder and louder and Glory found she could no longer drown them out. Every night, she heard flutes and drums from her window and she would try not to imagine herself and Anton, hand in hand, stuffing pastries into each others mouths as clockwork fireflies gallivanted around their heads. But she could not divorce the sounds of plucked strings and reverberated breath from the sense memory of his hand in hers, and so she decided that, for the first time in her eighteen years, she was going to leave the city.
Her plan was to take one of the city’s airships to Maja, where her aunts lived, and spend the evening riding boats around the canals of that city, listening to passing conversations and the calls of street vendors and, hopefully, absolutely no music at all. But as she stood in line to buy a ticket on the airship docks, she heard a voice call her name.
It was Noni, hand in hand with all their other friends, Amadi and Dee and Eleanora, their arms full of bells and slide whistles, faces cracked into grins.
They caught up to her, and she was instantly wrapped up in them, their laughter and warmth and the stories from that afternoon. They had invited her to come along with them, to the rows of tents where vendors offered all kinds of small instruments this time of year, now that the sky was turning purple. But Glory had said no, had lied and said that she had to work in the carpentry shop. They didn’t seem hurt by her lies, but they asked what she was doing, and she explained, saying how she was going to leave the city tomorrow, head somewhere where all purples skies meant was purple canals and music didn’t come with the memories of all too familiar hands.
“No!” Noni said and she was met with head nods from the others. “No offense, I love you, but that is bullshit.” And before Glory could do anything, could even shake her head, Noni held up a finger to cut her off. “We are going to go and it is final.”
“Or maybe we could say,” Amadi said, with a soft smile. “Is that we understand that you’re conflicted, but we all deeply love you, and would love if you came with us.” Noni rolled her eyes, but then shot Glory a sympathetic smile.
“But what about Anton?” she asked. She knew he was going to be there. The whole neighborhood would be there, from great grandmothers smiling from the porches, to children practicing rhythm by the stomping of their feet. Glory remembered being one of those children, clapping along, watching in wonderment as drummers’ hand turned to blurs and people danced like water. She and Noni had been children like that together, holding hands, weaving through crowds, running away from aunts and grandfathers and parents who were trying to make sure they weren’t trampled.
Now, Noni reached out and grabbed Glory’s hand, the bells strung along her arm twinkling as she did. Her hand was firm, not soft like Anton’s, nothing like Anton’s. “If we come with you, we’ll make sure you never have to see Anton. I promise.”
And so Glory went. She and Noni and Amadi and Eleanora all gathered in the common room of Dee’s building, wrapped themselves in bells and chimes and painted their faces with purple streaks. Glory remembered last year, when Anton had smeared paint across her cheek, the soft touch of his hand. She remembered how well he had sung with the crowd, the way his fingers danced along her back like a mallet on xylophone. But she also remembered her aunt dotting her face with a purple the color of grapes and everyone laughing that it looked like she had a disease. And she remembered the way Noni’s father had played the drums and how they all had cheered for him, tumbling over themselves as they fought towards the front of the crowd. And she remembered playing a flute herself, when she was a child and did not know yet that she had no musical talent and how proud she had felt when her friends had met her in the crowd afterwards.
“Come on,” Noni said, and there was her hand again, strong and reassuring. Glory grabbed Amadi who grabbed Eleanora who grabbed Dee and they burst out of the house hand in hand in hand, like a river breaking through a dam. And on the other side, they met all the forces of the ocean, the people dancing and singing and running through the crowd with their musical instruments. A thousand songs played at once and Glory felt that she could hear each one perfectly, all of them weaving in and out of each other like dance partners. Noni began to dance and pulled Glory in with her and then Amadi was there and they were singing so loud that they were screaming and a girl handed her a flute and she tried to play but could only laugh at herself and there was the smell of sweat in the air and paint and the sky was purple purple purple the kind of purple that should not exist in nature the kind of purple that you see in your dreams.
And the truth is, Glory did see Anton that night, dancing with a girl she did not know. But all he was now was just another part of crowd, a crowd that loved her and that she loved back.
