The Dual Cellists, Because music is adhesive

[Bassoon Patch]

Mint and milky lace trailed peacefully across the white marbled floor, Lin stepping lightly from one threshold to the next, a text of rich bearing held loosely between arm and chest. She had trod from the library to the main hall, a smile kept upon her lips in serenity, in pursuit of a comfortable armchair as her hand trailed the railing of the staircase, when the scene afore described played out upon the marble and carpets of the hall. Here the girl gasped, where swiftly she drew near, though hesitated to approach.

The Ambassador passed his daughter, though cognitive, held feebly within his aged arms, Catherine averting . Linaeve dare not speak, yet her gaze had followed the pair, eyes in frightening likeness to her brothers; wide and pleading as his had been, yet hazel and golden, so that they, in their wise color, half demanded in beseeching. Oh, but one glance would assure her of his innocence! Yet neither Catherine nor her father would not give it. No, her eyes were lost, just as his had been, upon what she could not, at the present, understand to be pain.

“Cathal,” she commanded when he entered, voice half faltering with the unfamiliar tone as her sullen eyes beseeched his own. She felt, half there, an anxious anger which had festered since the sight of Catherine in her father’s arms. She had watched that weathered man, gray and staggered, carry his daughter up the stairs with dual curiosity, at once curious to stare at that filial figure who bore his daughter upwards-- alighting every step with a devotion which no pain could alter in consistency-- and to see with inward eyes the likeness of the sight with her father as conductor. Wondrous was both the jealousy (though she was reluctant to own it) and the sentiment the event excited within her, and terrible the brooding thereafter. For half a cruel hour she had sat upon the stair, both worried for Catherine and angry for the selfishness memory had incited. At sight of him, however, she softened slightly– for she, troubled as she was with thought for Catherine, had not forgotten to worry for her brother--and yielded to relief to know that he was safe.

Not a syllable breeched the silence as he examined his dear sister, her gentle frame strewn across the stair-steps as a fallen spring petal upon the ground, earthen locks haloed by the honey sun as he stretched his hazy afternoon rays across the marbled main hall. A book left closed at her mint-slippered feet suggested her recent visit to the library, turn fruitless by turmoil. She had seen Catherine in her father’s arms.

He had learned some of what had past in the stables through Fernan, indeed the stableman whom he who, at sight of his young master, had not words for his displeasure; yet, assessing his physiognomy, he soon found the man as desperate as his counterpart. Thereafter, Fernan detailed something of Catherine’s collapse, of her refusal to rise, and then of that sad scene Fernan painted of her laying still and pained amidst the hay, plait loose and mingling with the golden rods as she suffered to breathe... to comprehend. That Jean-Paul had come had quite astonished him, for the thought of that man, so plagued with strains and headaches, carrying his daughter sketched both wonderment and terror upon his ever adapting visage.

The golden eyes of Linaeve, which had been following him since he had entered, now lowered both in question and defeat, for she felt defeated in the silence he had yet suffered to break.

“I did nothing which might turn your face so white and weighted,” said answered, finally, moving towards his sister, “Come, now. Have a smile upon those ashen lips. You know how I dislike frowns,” brushing chocolate tresses behind one ear, he sat and adjusted his position to hers, where th most sorrowful of smiles traced the familiar lines of melancholy at his lips.

“I am afraid for you, Cathal,”she pushed away the hand with which he now smoothed her hair, “I frown for it...for what you are upsetting... and... and for who you may upset.”

He felt half affronted , half proud for her particular intrusion upon the subject. Where had her civility gone? Where wear those manners? They had been lost to passion, raw and potent, but whom was he to correct her in to natural

“Trust me,” he murmured softly, taking her pallid hand into his own as he set into it the necklace he had found upon the hillside, “to find what has been forgotten. To mend what has been broken...” here a light pause, then a shift in tone of voice and spirit, “I overwhelmed her. She may have fainted. I am not sure, but... I am very fond of her. Fond? I love her, and have courted her freely where it was not my place. Oh, you are right to be afraid Lin! So much reason weights those slender shoulders. Father was the one for justice, you know, always trying to convince me to study law. I would go into the nursery, as repetitive as a parrot for my frustration, wholly convinced I was meant to be the next Magellan. Little did I know you listened.”

Lin began a laugh, eyes glinting with the sentiment he stirred within, “but now you must listen to me.”

“There, I have fixed your smile”

“Cath-“

Kissing the tips of her knuckled, he lifted his frame then, letting her hand slip gently from his own, began to ascend the steps.

“Now I must go to fix the what I am upsetting, and the who I may upset.”

[Arwen]

[[******This is a time skip!******]]



Eventually she had roused herself to move (after reading a somewhat disturbing satire in her chosen book), and painfully drew to a chair nearby the bed where she settled, carefully drawing streams of hay-bedecked hair from the plait until she was nearly positive that most of the rods lay upon the other nearby chair. Then, leaning, she carefully took up the cello laid across the table, then the bow and rosin, which she applied before surrendering to what comfort improvised music had always given her. And then, after a few short notes, he had entered. Had he been waiting for permission--and heard it in a few wavering notes and chords? She tilted her head to indicate that he should enter further, and a flicker of her eyes suggested that the door should be closed again--perhaps to where it had been before, but no words escaped her to further the instruction.

A flutter of dissonant chords pranced across the strings like an awkward newborn foal on the hoof as she began anew, upon a more welcoming theme, head turned as she peered at the book left open upon the bed, frowning for a moment. It was not beyond her to strike up witty, satirical conversation in such a mood, with so few words that the conversation became almost melodramatic, for words were replaced with those ingeniously conversational expressions within empathic eyes... but now was most certainly not the time.

Dissonance faded to melody, and the energy left her in as soft a breath as a few tremulous notes and chords left the instrument, floating delicately away in some aphrodisial strain similar to those of the previous night's playing. Yet this time those familiar chords were weighted down, barely lifting off the ground in her suddenly returned melancholy state; they were a fog, rising ever fragilely above the water, not to be interrupted for fear that they might vanish. But her eyes remained upon him, unmasked and unhidden, at once revealing and enigmatic, whilst delicate fingertips shifted adeptly across the strings. As ever, music and eyes evinced her being--for had they two ever needed more than a glance to reveal each emotion as it lay within the breast? Had smiling mirrors not sufficed, or the furrowed brow? Cathal Matthias and Catherine Legard needed no words; and what could not be expressed by eyes alone had been expressed through the strains of a violin and a cello.

And then, eyes narrowing with emotion not for him, despite that her eyes still locked with his, a wild cadence of rebellion--against what? anguish or despair?--within her breast, she drew the bow across the strings in anger or in desperation--a cacophonous chord. She ceased.

"Play with me."

In retrospect, a delicate whisper barely audible, and she tilted her head, motioning in that minute movement to the table to her right and behind the chair she inhabited, where he had left his own instrument the previous night after that fateful performance at his Masque. Sileas had organized Catherine's own belongings during the earlier part of the day--why not move the violin to her master's quarters? She was a clever girl... perhaps she had suspected that they would play again. And there it was, some symbol of the two. Within the misted mind, the musical energies continued to vibrate about the room; touch, taste, smell, sight, she sensed them, with all but her ears, and the cello pulsated vibrantly beneath her fingertips, the bow drawn to it as iron to a perfect lodestone. Succumbing to nothing visible, she let the bow glide across the strings again in the lower register, awaiting his accompaniment.

[Bassoon Patch]

A cold nod, then the delineation of his compliance as he moved silently towards his instrument, and took the bow into his hand. He rolled the adjuster, then gripped the frog as he rubbed rosin into the newly tightened fibers, staggering the application up and down until he had made a full revolution, then smoothing it with swift, even strokes. Gaze harsh and calculative, he ran two practiced fingers across the bow, powder drifting as a spirit into the shadows as the excess billowed from the bow and, satisfied with the application, checked its sound, one by one, against each basic string. Could he, then, keep so cold and far away?

Footsteps broke his musing, leading him hovered, presiding over her frame as though she were encased, wholly, in a boundary of unseen glass. A songbird, her cello a voice, captured in an encasement so fragile, so affectable, that one whisper might have shattered it, and she might fly away from him. Yet not to free her-- to play outside in his habitat and watch, so captive, so alone in her encasing, Catherine suffer to adapt seemed to him so much more frightening than chance. He stooped, enveloping her frame as he tilted his bow in juxtaposition to hers, and moved to whisper her ear, shattering.

“Stay with me”

Note high and straining, his music spiraled from the idea to instrument, chords terrible and dissonant as he birthed his harmony until it melded, even as his cheek melded against her own, into the melody she had begun. Here vibrato, engaging in its subtle effervescence, penetrated through the flesh; through every earthy layer, as her rub had done, until the very spirit was effected and, trembling, felled the physical form. Then began his delicate instruction, the supple settling of his frame into every angle of her body accompanying as his fingers strained to sustain their harsh compression upon the lower fingerboard. His bow, loose and flexible within the gentle fold of his lengthy fingers, found animation in the playful exchange of strings, or sometimes in the synchronized stroking of a solitary string, trailing until it gave way to hers, where muscles, pressed moderately against her admirable cheek, curved upwards to reveal his pleasure in the coupling of a note– or, moreover, in the coupling of souls.

Then, suddenly, he tensed, shoulders sloping as he bent adamantly into his bow, blank and beautiful as he simply felt until, like a fortress whose walls had been too much repressed, eyes roved, bow slipped and Cathal Matthias so suddenly yet so correctly abandoned all that warmth he had built upon both cello and cellist. He paced as a beast, wild and revelational as he left her to a solo, searching and finding. There, then, was Cathal, the effusive hero he had sought for in the field, face fervent saving a love he had so genially incited. He had found himself in that melody, the harmony, and the gentle chords which had unlocked chambers hidden away in memory. Surrendering to everything unseen, he fell again into music, breath torrid and trembling, plummeting as plumes of passion upon the graceful flow of muscle and tendon over which he hovered. Slivers of silver and gold, light cast though a mirage of dust and sunlight, illuminated the pair, denoting the setting of the sun– a sun which had risen with all the aspiration of fool, and had set with all the determination of a saint.

As fingers motioned, mind forgot, yielding memory to music as tragedy was transformed into song. Dynamics did not exist in abstract understanding alone– crescendos were the lamentations he had been forbidden to give, accents the realizations which had altered him.. Pianissimo his silent praise to God above who, in every form, had gifted him she over which he now presided.

[Arwen]

Cold, cold... so cold. Should they both be so unfeeling? He had never been so calculating. And born within her was a more immediate compulsion to hear him play, and to play together alongside him. Discomposed, even overwrought in the suddenness of the realization, she tensed, then shook, as he stood behind her, unseen, readying his bow. The methodical application of rosin, slow and sedate, aroused impatience within her; the sound of the bow upon each string in turn was further agitation, ravenous as she had suddenly become--that their instruments should resound together, and thus their souls.

She had begun to drag the bow along in agitation, lips parting to demand, this time, that he play, when he swooped down, predator to the songbird, to whisper, enveloping her physically in the aphysical sound of his voice and their music. Stay. She had not told him--and let him discover it on his own. But she too had warmed--not a slow melting, but with the crackle of matter in hot oil. Within the breast brewed a flurry of beating wings, seeking escape through the pulsating throat. Could she leave? He had shattered glass, and yet she remained, wild but tame as the beating wings within her bosom rose with a swell of the music whilst their notes interwove. Their cheeks moulded, as recently, and she did not withdraw--rather, pale lips parted delicately, eyes closed, and fingers and arms moved in his embrace. Embrace? Oh, it was. Dissonance faded to assonance, and bourne upon the wings within murmured a low counter-melody of syncopation--and forthright romance, despite the taughtening stress in her throat. Any moment, she would weep for joy at the freedom he had given her.

But suddenly the new protector was gone, leaving his protectorate alone to solo. Gone where? Anger, again, or desperation arose, and bending to find his own previous placement upon the strings, she let fly suddenly the descant of despair. "Play!" she demanded, voice caught with emotion deep within the pulsing throat. Had the command been comprehensible? He rejoined, whether or not he had comprehended, and her breath relaxed as she bent her head exhaustedly downward, loose copper ringlets dipping over her shoulders. The left hand did not shift, but continued in the upper register with him for a few moments before she released altogether, carefully untwining her arms from his and laying the bow across her lap.

He was no longer so close as he had been and she, having surrendered utterly to him, but silenced by his solo, performed the only action she knew to do. Seeking, down and behind, she stretched her right hand and encountered fabric, twined her fingers therein and pulled purposefully before stretching the fingers once more to lay her hand flat along his thigh, melding to that curve just above the knee. Another tug at the fabric, and another smoothing. Closer. Did he fear? The fingers were cupped behind his knee now, all having done in seconds that, to the woman without his touch, seemed like hours. She would neither content herself nor play again until he himself consented to come nearer once more.

This post has been edited by Arwen on Feb 4 2008, 09:41 AM