Chapter VI

Lena

Lena held position back from the door to the greenhouse with Victor and August while Florentine went inside. Lightning captured split-second of the otherwise darkened interior, like the bulb from one of the new cameras. August’s glow illuminated Florentine’s back as she stood beneath the rain falling in through the broken glass ceiling. Lena stared at her partner; she looked quite dashing against the dramatic backdrop.

“It’s okay,” Florentine said over her shoulder, “I’ve found Rita.”

“Yeah,” August said, walking through Lena, “no shit.”

Lena and Victor, who gave her an apologetic look, followed him inside. Sitting on a bench in the centre of the room where the overgrowth had been somewhat cleared away was a faded orange pumpkin approaching the latter stages of decomposition. Its skin was soft, wrinkled, and soggy. Several holes had been torn or eaten into it. Its face had a drooping scowl carved into it, the edges of which were blackening and beginning to grow fluffy white mould like big, bushy eyebrows. A wide-brimmed hat with a tall, sagging point sat at a slight angle atop it, the silver stars on midnight blue fabric soaked through. A soft, flickering orange glow emanated from behind its face, as if a candle were burning inside. Lena couldn’t resist the urge to lean in for a closer look to try and see what lay in the carved out vegetable, but every angle yielded the same void that obscured even the interior surface. A chill crept up her spine. If she gazed too deeply into it, she might fall inside. She straightened, putting on a brave face.

“And to think I’d just started to nod off, having finally begun to ignore the rain,” the pumpkin said, hat bobbing with each syllable. “Then screaming and bickering—so much bickering! You assholes need to remember that your voices carry! And who are our guests? Why didn’t anyone come and get me?”

Lena took the initiative. “Hello…Rita?”

The pumpkin nodded in its perch.

“I’m Lena and this is my partner, Florentine.” In an attempt to be polite, her voice had hit with a full force of condescending propriety, similar to the upper class slant of Victor’s accent. It was met by an appropriately sour expression from Rita and Lena blushed. She cleared her throat with a delicate cough, then continued in a casual tone of voice, mentally noting that she’d need to catch herself from doing it again if she didn’t want to immediately out herself as former nobility. “We’re here as guests until our friend is able to deliver us the supplies we need to go on with our journey.”

Rita cocked an eyebrow at them, then looked to Victor and August; the former gave up nothing while the latter shrugged. “Nobody comes to live here. The last time we had guests was, uhm…”

“I believe they called themselves the Knights of the Firefly,” Victor supplied.

August shook his head. “It was the Firefly Knights.”

“Either way,” Rita said, heading off an argument, “it’s been a long time.”

“Do you know Johnny?” Florentine asked. The questions was met by vacant expressions, so she elaborated. “He has the farm about five or so kilometres down the road? He was the one who showed us here and said he came exploring when he first moved in—about ten years ago.”

Rita, Victor, and August shared a series of looks that had Lena wondering if they were communicating telepathically.

“Oh, him!” Victor boomed. “I had to put a hold on many of my daily comings and goings for a while thanks to him. What a nuisance he was.”

“And to think you’ve been seeing people behind our backs,” August teased.

“Oh, put a sock in it—”

“Both of you!” Rita snapped. “What part of you’re being too loud makes you think you can be louder?”

While this was going on, Lena found her attention wandering to Rita. She shimmied to the side to get a better look at what was visible of Rita’s back and sides around the hat, seeing a similar level of damage and decomposition all over. Several of the holes had the telltale signs of being made by a burrowing insect, but twice as many had the sharp tear of a bladed implement. Based on their surroundings, the result of branches or sharp edges on her old skin. And they all offered a glimpse into only the warm void within.

“Does that hurt?” she asked without thinking, completing a full revolution of the bench.

“Does what hurt?” Rita answered. “I can’t see behind me.”

“Those holes. I can’t imagine it would be too pleasant to have bugs nibbling away at you.”

“Ah. Those. It doesn’t hurt so much as itch.” She puffed out a laugh. “Might be worse, that.”

“What happened? How did you end up like…this?”

“That’s…an embarrassing story.”

“I apologise for—”

“It’s okay. I’ve come to terms with it.”

“Would you mind telling me?” Droplets of water dripping down Lena’s forehead prompted her to run a hand through her now drenched hair. “Perhaps somewhere a little drier and warmer?”

“I’m awake now, I guess,” Rita replied.

Lena smiled. “Thank you.” She went to scoop Rita up into her arms and froze halfway. “Am I permitted to carry you? Is that okay?”

“How else am I supposed to move?”

“I-I don’t know… You might have some method of arcane levitation, or… I was asking for your consent.”

“My…? Oh. Well, uh, thank you. You can go ahead and lift me,” Rita said with a nod. “Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I exercised my arcana. I’m probably very out of shape.”

Lena slid her arms around Rita like a new-born, lifting her into the air and pulling her close to ensure she didn’t accidentally drop the pumpkin. She had no idea how she’d reconcile with the fact her first kill was a talking pumpkin; it sounded funnier in principle than reality. Rita felt even more fragile in hand than she looked. Parts of her skin were soft and mushy and Lena risked puncturing her with the slightest careless movement. She didn’t want to cause Rita any harm, especially in the form of a persistent, unquenchable itch.

Lena got them both out of the rain and cold, before asking, “anywhere in particular you’d like to talk?”

“Anywhere those two aren’t.” She narrowed her eyes at her roommates. “I’d prefer to tell you without the sarcastic footnotes.”

“Makes no difference to me,” August said, puffing into thin air and leaving behind only the fading remnants of his voice and a ghostly vapour. “I’ve already heard the story more than enough.”

Victor turned to Florentine. “Would you mind keeping me company in the interim?”

“Not at all,” she replied.

Lena took Rita upstairs to their makeshift encampment, placed the pumpkin down on her own bedroll, then sat across from her on Florentine’s. The fire had died down in their absence, so Lena took one of the bed frame legs and added it to the small flame and channelled heat into it through her index finger. Similar to how she’d burned through the lock at the garrison, but less physically draining. Performing acts of the arcane that anyone with a little practice could do always made her feel normal. It wasn’t much, but she could do it with no ill-effects and it allowed her to forget for a moment that she was the disappointment to the Cavendish-Montagu-Wellesley-Beauclerk-Chicheley bloodline.

The light from the fire helped return some orange to Rita’s cheeks. “Do you still want to hear about how I ended up like…this?” she asked, rather sheepishly.

“I will admit to being a tad curious, yes,” Lena answered. “You don’t have to go into too much detail if you don’t want to; death is a traumatic experience.”

“Death?” Rita laughed. “What do you mean death? I’m not dead.”

“Y-You’re not…?”

“No! I’m still very much alive—unfortunately.”

“Then…is Victor still alive, as well?”

“He’s very much dead.”

“How is he inhabiting a skeleton?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Why wouldn’t he—?”

“Do you want to hear the story or not?”

Lena bowed her head. “Apologies.”

Rita sighed. “I ended up here, like this, because…” She glanced off to the side. “Tolkien Academy doesn’t accept beginners, and they require you to put on a practical demonstration in addition to an interview. Well, you’ve never seen a worse wreck than I was standing up in front of the faculty getting ready to perform a fete I’d been practicing for months. It only takes an instant for all that dedication to turn to dust in front of you.

“My goal was to teleport with such little lag time that I appeared to be in three places at once. Quite an impressive act to do over a relatively small distance, but small distances weren’t going to get me into the academy. I choked and ended up teleporting and transmogrifying instead of teleporting three times. You know how it gets when you’re nervous. Your mind goes blank, you start recalling random things, and… One thing led to another and I was here.”

“Oh…”

“Yeah. And the worst part is that I can’t change myself back because vegetables don’t have…limited arcane abilities, leaving me with only this stupid hat to remind me of my old life.”

“But you’re not—”

“Technically, no. But nature sees me as an enchanted pumpkin, not a human who looks like a pumpkin, so I’m trapped in a slowly rotting pie filling until such time as fate declares it’s finally time for me to die. And even if I was able to transform back, I don’t know nearly enough about the inner workings of the human body to be able to reconstruct one.” Rita sighed. “I’ve been here so long that all I can think of now is death.”

“Suicide is a—”

“Don’t. Just…don’t.”

Lena wasn’t sure how to react to Rita’s story. She’d barely been out of the palace a couple of days and already the world she found herself in was leagues away from her prior normalcy. “Did you perhaps ask one of the others to…help you?”

“August physically can’t, and I got the same spiel you were about to deliver from Victor,” she answered. “I’ve had to live with the embarrassment of my fuck up for—I can’t even remember how long.”

“When did the incident happen?”

“It was, oh, seven hundred and fourteen. Specifically for the upcoming seven fifteen/sixteen academic year.”

“You’ve been here for four hundred years.”

“Fuck…”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” Rita swallowed. “It’s okay. Everyone I know and love is just long dead, never knowing what happened to me, while I’m trapped in this infernal shithole slowly rotting with those two undead cunts! I don’t even know why I ended up here of all places. It’s not as if…” she trailed off as the sweet, smooth sound of a saxophone reverberated through the manor. “The only saving grace,” she said, “is the music we share. It’s the only time when the others, and this whole situation, are at all bearable.”

“What instrument did you play?” Lena asked.

“Cello,” she answered proudly. A wistful smile took her face. “My parents always wanted me to learn the classical style, but I was more interested in plucking away like I was playing the lute. You get a much bassier sound that burrows into your chest. I got so good at dropping a smooth bass line, and it annoyed the hel outta my parents. Now, well…” she wiggled herself to indicate her lack of limbs. “I envy Victor and August.”

Lena could scarcely imagine the misery Rita had experienced over the last four centuries. Everything and everyone she’d known and loved stripped away from her. Unable to practice her passion. Unable to practice anything at all outside of a tolerance for boredom. Consent was a thin line that separated the expanses of liberation and oppression. To some the loss of everything and everyone they knew was a revelation, to others it was a misery.

“What happens if we find someone to turn you back into you?”

“Even if that was remotely possible, it’s been four hundred years,” Rita replied. “You think I can just show up to class tomorrow like it’s nothing? No, no, I think I’m ready to move on.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities out there for a talented musician such as yourself.”

“I don’t think you understand. It’s time for me to make an appointment with Shinubis Hel.”

Lena’s upbringing had always championed suicide as something to be frowned upon and shunned; punching her ticket to the afterlife early was cowardly, disrespectful, and punished with severe prejudice. Once upon a time, when Iperon was embroiled in near-constant warfare, every pair of hands was crucial to the survival of a settlement and any death had better be out of someone’s control or they’d be subjected to several criminal offenses. Those laws had slackened in recent decades—they still existed, just weren’t pursued with such fervour—but suicide still carried one of the widest sets of repercussions: from social ostracization, to being committed, to imprisonment on suicide watch.

That hadn’t stopped Lena contemplating it at multiple points throughout her life, more often as the fist of upbringing closed around her neck. It was wrong. It was evil. Shame poured into her stomach, like molten lead. Another addition to the list of reasons her parents had to be disappointed in her. Societal conditioning implored her to argue that a better future was on the horizon, that giving up was not the answer. That had been true for Lena, but Rita was a pumpkin out of time, trapped in a forgotten manor, and fated to a painfully slow death. Suicide was immoral, they said. And yet Lena came to the conclusion that leaving Rita in this state was worse. What was one more taboo after all she’d done since awakening the previous morning?

“Do, uh… Would you care for me to help you?” she offered.

Rita frowned at her, trying to determine if she was genuine. “Helping someone pass isn’t a decision to be taken lightly.”

“Neither is knowing I left you here to slowly rot alone.”

The pumpkin nodded slowly, a newfound lightness to her aura. “Okay. Yes, please. Thank you.”

“How do you want me to…do it?”

“I don’t know. Just drop me from a moderately high ledge, I guess.”

“Will that work?”

“I’m a pumpkin, not a cannon ball. It’s a miracle I haven’t been accidentally knocked over after all this time.”

“And what about the…?” Lena gestured above her head.

“It’s yours.”

“Mine?”

“Why not? It might need a bit of a clean—or an incinerator—but it’s a perfectly good hat that’s served me well all these centuries.”

Lena lifted the hat onto the floor with the delicacy of an archaeologist handling an ancient book, then looked around. With nothing fitting the bill, and not wanting to head back into the corridor, she turned to the window and pointed to it. Rita gave a nod, so Lena took the pumpkin and carried her over, balancing her between Lena’s tummy and the crumbling wooden ledge. It took a few stiff pulls and a small arcane assist to flip open the rusted latch. Lena peered out into the battering wind and rain. Drenched, moss-covered stone stairs descended to a patio that had almost been swallowed whole by nature below.

The enormity of the situation touched down on Lena’s heart, surging it into a near panic. She was about to take a life. While it wasn’t exactly killing, a life would still end because of her direct involvement. Even knowing that Rita’s life would see a guaranteed improvement in the afterlife didn’t ease the weight.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” she asked, for brevity’s sake.

“Yes.”

“And you don’t want to say goodbye to Victor and August.”

“This doesn’t need to get any messier than the puddle of pumpkin soup I’m about to make on those stairs,” Rita replied without a hint of humour. “It’s time.”

Lena held Rita out the window, then…let go.

Falling, falling, fall—SPLAT!

She looked down at the smear of anaemic orange, vivid under a blink of lightning. A rather undignified—

“Oh, fuck me!”

Lena jerked, cracked her head off the raised window which dropped onto her shoulder, slicing pain into her left side, and closed with a BANG. She whipped her head round. In the centre of the room, hands grasping her head and groaning, clad in an archived Tolkien uniform and a recreation of her hat, was the ghost of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. She slapped her forehead, then swore—then swore some more—and turned to Lena. Her ears bore the half point of a bi-racial child: human and elven. Lena had never seen an elf without some sort of fancy beard or moustache, and it looked utterly uncanny.

“I can’t fuckin’ believe this!” The voice was Rita’s. “Just when I think I’m free, the universe tethers me back here! I’m going to track down Shinubis Hel when I get to the afterlife and punch them!”

“A-Are you at least happy to be free of the pumpkin?” Lena asked.

Rita put a pin in her cursing to admire her new old body; her ambient condensation was a vibrant pink. She stretched her arms out in front of her, running her eyes over them like she’d never seen limbs before, twisting and flexing, clenching and unclenching. Her hands came up to map her face with delicate, thorough movements, pinch her cheeks, and trace the bone structure she’d been without for so long. Tears spilled from her eyes and she mopped them up with the tip of her forefinger, rubbing it together with her thumb and looking at Lena like the moisture was some kind of miracle of the universe. A smile broadened to encapsulate her whole face. She whooped—then again, feet tapping, arms swinging, hips thrusting. She danced all across the room giggling with unabashed glee at the simple pleasure of movement.

Lena jumped up to join in, swept up in the joy. Her own newfound freedom of movement burst forth, and the pair thrashed together like Mafasa Thunder users in a mosh pit.

Lena went down first, the combination of mental and physical fatigue slapping her hard across the back of the head after only a couple of minutes. She slumped down onto her bedroll with heavy eyelids and heaving bosom. The day’s events came upon her, and she had to take a minute. Rita kept going, and based on her spectral status, Lena wasn’t sure there was any bottom to her well of energy. She came down on her own after several more minutes, sitting on Florentine’s bedroll, inside her hat. An attempt to remove it met with frustrated flailing, until Lena took the initiative.

“Thanks,” Rita said, blushing.

Neither had noticed the lack of sax until August burst through the door, Florentine and Victor rushing in behind him, all three armed with makeshift weapons: Florentine a wooden beam, Victor a once gold candlestick holder, and August his ghostly saxophone. They petrified in their tracks, eyes on Rita.

“You fuckin’ killed her.” August’s mouth hung open. “Fuckin’ ‘el!”

“I can’t believe you’d stoop to an action so morally repugnant as that,” Victor proclaimed; his tone took on the righteous condescension her father had often used when scolding her.

Florentine just stared, shocked.

Lena surged back to her feet. “It’s not—”

“Don’t blame, or even think, about judging her,” Rita said. “There’s nothing wrong with what she did, and I’ll tell you right now it was right.”

“But she killed you.” Victor wielded the statement like a trump card. “She enabled your suicide!”

“Because living as an enchanted, glacially degrading pumpkin was a preferable alternative?!” she snapped, staring the skeleton down. “She afforded me the kindness and decency you miserable, stuck-up bastard couldn’t!”

“I believe the bigger question here is”—Lena muscled her way into the exchange—“why Rita is still tied to the manor?”

“What do you remember about the…transition?” August asked.

Rita massaged her temple. “I remember falling then nothing, then an office,” she said. “An office—tiny thing utterly unsuited to how many other people were waiting around. I stood in line for almost six fuckin’ hours before I came face-to-face with Shinubis Hel and—get this—the bastard told me I wasn’t permitted entry to the afterlife!” Her fists clenched, shaking. “They told me I hadn’t yet fulfilled my purpose—what does that even mean? I’ve never heard of anyone else having to find their purpose before getting into the afterlife.”

Victor nodded along.

“Seize your destiny,” August answered with gusto. “Go out there and take the world by storm as the smoothest sax in Iperon, industrial pioneer, philanthropist, revolutionary, poet, and romantic! Hustle and you shall be—”

“Oh, shut up, August—no-one remembers anything you’ve done.”

His face screwed up like a child whose candy had just been snatched away, complete with quivering lip.

“That was a bit much,” Victor said.

“And fuck you, too!” Rita’s speech was full of sweeping gestures. “I’ve had to spend four centuries with you two condescending and bickering and refusing to kill me!” The fight flowed from her all at once, and she dropped onto an invisible chair. “I just thought I could finally escape this place.”

The storm took centre stage as it rushed in to fill the vacuum left by the conversation, reaching its ferocious zenith.

Lena made eye contact with Florentine, and they came to an unspoken understanding.

“Let’s try to find Rita’s purpose,” Florentine said, “so she can move on and we can get some sleep.”

“What’s the point?” Rita and August said in tandem, before the latter continued. “Your purpose—everyone’s purpose—is just to relentlessly delude themselves into believing they mean something.” A rabid desperation struck his face, and he once again asked, “are you sure you’ve never heard of me? Or RENOvations? Or w-what about my legendary sax solo at the six fifty-two Concert de la Fleur? Or my scandalous tryst with the Maiden Bjork of Blueland?”

Lena had no clue which reaction to be kinder: maintain eye contact and subject him to her unshielded ignorance, or take the cowardly route and look away. She ended up doing both, catching the instance he broke before she could bring her sight to bear on the wall off to the left. He looked to Florentine, who apologised.

“No, that’s not possible.” He shook his head. “I was the talk of the town; my legacy reached all across Orbis for all time…” He turned an accusatory glare on his housemates. “You! You put them up to this! It’s all some sick game because you’re both jealous of my success!”

Seeing that nothing his companions could say would douse his flame, Lena instead said, “I’m sorry, August. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but no-one legacy is secure forever.”

August looked as if he was about to snarl at her.

Florentine tensed.

“I’m sure someone out there remembered you until the very end,” she continued. “Can you think of who that may be?”

The ghost relaxed from his coiled state, and he stared out through the window, back through time. “Marcel Smith was my best friend; we’d known each other since nursery.” His eyes became glossy, shimmering in the lightning. “If anyone was going to remember me, it would be him. And I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. Not sure I ever will if I’m stuck here forever.”

“Well then, we really ought to do our best to help you find your purpose,” Lena replied confidently. “We might as well try seeing as we’re here for the night.”

“I think we should start at the obvious place: music,” Florentine deduced. “Victor is adept at the piano, August clearly has some skill with the saxophone, and Rita...?”

“I play the cello,” she replied.

“…plays the cello! Sounds like the making of as jazz band.”

Victor chortled. “You can’t be serious? Music? I refuse to believe it’s that obvious.”

August wielded a similarly sceptical expression. “So, what? Shinubis Hel, deity of the dead and the afterlife, liked each of our musical stylings individually and thought it would be just swell to force us into being roommates until we formed a band? What kind of nutjob logic is that?”

“Florentine’s right,” Lena said. “What other options are there? Do the three of you have any other shared interests?”

The trio looked at each other in turn, disgusted and dismayed at the possibility of an alternative, but ultimately vacant of an answer.

A monocle appeared in Victor’s eye for him to adjust, then disappeared when he’d finished. “Surely they could simply have introduced us in the afterlife?”

“Bold of you to assume I’d want to hang out with either of you willingly.” Rita pouted, crossed her arms.

“If neither of them were here,” Florentine pointed out,” it’s likely we would’ve spent the night without ever knowing you were here.”

“That’s…true. Annoyingly.”

“It’s settled! You’ll come together and put on a musical performance so good that Shinubis Hel will have no choice but to let you into the afterlife!” Lena almost squealed.

“That’s positively asinine,” August remarked. “I hate to admit this, but I agree with Victor. I refuse to believe it’s that obvious.”

“When you introduced yourself,” Florentine said, “you started with the title, albeit self-proclaimed, smoothest sax in Iperon. You bragged about your performance at Concert de la Fleur. And you always seem to place importance on music above all else. Did you enjoy playing the saxophone?”

“Of course! What kind of ridiculous question is that?! You think I spent four-hundred years playing sax and bragging about it because I hate it?”

“In your…incorporeal form, you could conjure up any number of activities to occupy your time, but you chose saxophone repeatedly. What does it mean to you?”

His expression softened. “I, um… I took my saxophone everywhere,” he told them. “It was a constant companion through all the ups and downs of my brief life. In the early years of my career, when nobody knew who I was, playing the saxophone was a way of universal communication with the strangers around me. We connected…” Realisation rippled through his widening eyes. “I remember. I remember how I died. We were sailing back from Mafasa after some event or trip—it’s not really important. The ship got caught in a storm and capsized. We were all down in the hold, trapped, running out of air. Crying all around me. Wind and rain battering the hull until the muffed soundscape of being underwater. I…played for everyone as the room slowly filled up with water, until I physically couldn’t.” He choked. A tear ran down his cheek like a drop of water on a searing hot grill.

“I played as each passenger—all thirty-two—drowned around me. There was an infant in the hold with us, crying and screaming at the end as their grandmother held them above the water while she…” He trailed off, taking a moment to work through the newly reconstructed memories. “Yes, please, let’s play some music together. It doesn’t really matter if it leads to anything or not, I-I just want to play.”

Lena clamped a hand over her mouth to prevent herself from weeping during August’s story.

Florentine remained stoic, but something in her eyes conveyed an intimate understanding of August’s story. She’d told Lena plenty of stories about her upbringing and time in the army, but always carefully skirted around any specific or detailed retellings. She wondered what happened in Florentine’s past to allow for the bridge of understanding to be erected between them.

Rita came up beside August and placed a hand on his shoulder, sharing a spark of connection for the first time since their arrival.

A minute of silence passed.

Florentine looked to Victor. “Will you play?” she asked.

“I still think the whole thing is poppycock,” he said. “But I was never one to turn down a request. The damage to morale would be unacceptable.”

#

They busied themselves tidying a section of the dining room and turning it into an improvised concert venue, constructing a makeshift stage in the corner for the piano using materials of questionable quality they found lying around. Thankful that it only had to support the paltry weight of Victor and the piano. Lamps and candles dotted the area to provide the most even spread of light with their limited sources, and the glow of August and Rita filled in the gaps. Lena grabbed their bedrolls from upstairs and brought them down to make a rug to watch from, while Florentine brewed up a couple of cups of hash teaffee. August and Rita spent the time tuning their instruments. Why ghosts would have to tune conjured instruments, Lena didn’t know. Maybe they didn’t and it acted only as a ritual to calm their nerves.

When all was said and done, Lena and Florentine huddled close with steaming cups clasped in their hands. The trio of unlikely bandmates stood up on stage, professionally isolated from each other. Palpable awkwardness arced between them as they struggled to sync up. Creaking from the stage tensed Florentine. They were about to find out if their hasty workmanship would withstand a set or two.

The weather had eased up over the course of their conversation and subsequent build to a steady rain curving its way to the ground in a gentle breeze, the storm having moved off to ruin someone else’s late night plans.

Inaudible whispers volleyed between the musicians, followed up by a handful of false starts, fumbling, and pointed looks. They took a second to readjust themselves, then August opened the performance. Rita and Victor settled in as spectators for a few minutes.

August perched on a stool that appear behind him, leaning into the saxophone, eyes closed, taken by the mournful melody crafted by his fingertips. Four centuries of supressed trauma flowed into the improvised composition.

Victor’s keystrokes entered the mix next, playing in tandem but not entirely in collaboration with August, creating a mismatched yet fitting accompaniment. He followed in the theme set up by August: a memorial to all he’d lost. Their music went out to a world that had moved on without them.

Rita joined in, and at first her bass line disrupted the smooth understanding between August and Victor. Her harsh plucking betrayed a person out-of-practice, injecting the song with confusion and discomfort, but she leaned into it. Frustration, anger, depression. Questioning herself. Questioning the universe.

Three disparate styles came together into a beautiful miasma of fermented emotion.

Lena sipped her teaffee and shimmied closer to Florentine, the heat from her partners body cutting straight through to her heart. It may not have been Elea Pomiolet backed by the Dawn Stone Symphony Orchestra, but here amongst the ruins of forgotten lives she knew the decision had been right, and any lingering anxiety that may have arose after the initial excitement of their escape had worn off failed to coalesce. Florentine wrapped an arm around Lena’s shoulders, pulling her in tight, she knew they were on the same page.

Sombre memories worked themselves out and the tone gradually took an upbeat turn, bringing the trio on stage into perfect synchronicity. They jammed with smiles on their faces and put their whole bodies into swaying with the music. So too did it raise Lena and Florentine to their feet, and they danced along with each other and the performance. Victor, August, and Rita surged in confidence, throwing newfound expression and style into their playing, and as they did, their forms glowed into vibrant light. Lime green condensation leached from Victor’s bones and formed into the ghostly form of himself, while his skeleton rapidly aged as it fell apart and hit the stage as dust. Their tempo increased. Vigorous and youthful. Building towards a stunning crescendo. Their bodies pulsed and strobed to the beat, throwing gorgeous blues and pinks and greens across the ruined dining hall. Lena and Florentine danced with abandon, experiencing a catharsis of their own, until one final note echoed through the rooms and walls and halls of the manor, melting away to silence.

The stage was empty.

Lena, panting, slid her arms around Florentine’s waist and pulled her in close, resting her head on her partner’s chest. Florentine, in turn, reciprocated, muscular arms creating a bubble of safe warmth around the smaller woman. They slow-danced together for a while longer, remembering three souls that the world had forgotten.