[SP-F11] Home Alone

[Telrenya 0]

She softly dragged the hairs of the bow over each of the strings, letting the familiar plain tones reach her ears with another soft smile. Her fingertips pressed down into the hard surface of the violin's neck, applying pressure to the strings in between to vary the pitch of the notes that rang out through the workshop. At first she played a tune that she was familiar with--legato, with a focus on medium and low tones. It wasn't a sad song, per se, but the gentle melody that flowed from her instrument was a calming one, similar in composition to the soothing song that poured from the recording crystal just minutes ago. The song was akin to a sweet lullaby, and as her frame gently swayed with the long strides of the bow, Telrenya wore a warm smile. The lids over her chocolate eyes fell as slender fingers danced a slow waltz over the strings, her muscles easily remembering each placement while her wrist gently wavered for a soft vibrato.

[Telrenya 0]

The tune lasted a few minutes, and when Telrenya's arm extended out to glide the thin bow along the string in the final note, she lifted it carefully away from the instrument and allowed it to hover in the air. The vibration lasted several long seconds, the sound that lingered gradually growing more faint as it faded into the corners of the room. Telrenya's eyes fluttered open as her right arm lowered to her side and she pulled the base of the violin away from her chin. Her heart felt so much more at ease after letting the gentle lullaby fill the space air around her, and she let out a small sigh of contentment before she moved herself back to the bench in front of the piano. She lay the violin and its bow carefully across her lap and her chin turned to the music stand that stood above the monochrome keys.

[Telrenya 0]

Her eyes drifted across each of the staves that stretched across the length of the papers. The top half was filled with written notes, the tune that they would sing easily playing in her mind. As she read over the song that Jomei had been composing, she found herself beginning to softly hum, allowing the work in progress to permeate the room. When she reached the end of the unfinished piece, Telrenya still felt another smile crawl across her lips. "Never ceases to amaze me." She mumbled the half-thought with a light chuckle. Her head turned towards the large glass panes, suddenly realizing how much the light that had earlier flooded the space had shifted into a deep orange hue. She squinted a bit, the setting sun just barely managing to peek through the crevices between the other buildings in Taft. Whether filled to the brim with beautiful music, or overtaken by a still silence, the music room did well to calm Telrenya's heart and mind.

[Telrenya 0]

Though she was tempted to take the pencil that sat at the bottom of the stand in her hand and jot down a few notes that came to mind, she gently shook her head to dismiss the idea. 'Maybe another time.' She took hold of the light wooden frame sitting in her lap again, moving the violin back to its home in the molded stand beside the back wall. Her eyes managed to catch on the recording crystal, nearly blending in with the dark wood of the piano as she remembered about the item and scooped it up to take it with her. She left the crystal idle in her hands, soon opting to deposit the item in her inventory to let her arms fall to her sides as she moved to the living room. She looked to the wall beside the doorway in order to poke at the simple switch and select the option to fill the space with a soft light.

[Telrenya 0]

She once again found herself taking in the emptiness of the room, feeling a bit uneasy with the absence of the home's owner. "You better be okay..." She heard herself say in a whisper while her legs slowly carried her across the room. Her fingertips ran over the back of the couch. Her gaze shifted to the glass of the window, staring at the reflection of the room that now stood brighter than the falling night outside. She lingered in the space for several minutes, but ultimately her feet would carry her back upstairs and into the Irishman's bedroom. She placed herself behind the chair of the simple desk, resting her palms against the corners for a few long moments before she pulled the chair out and allowed herself to sprawl out over the solid surface. She crossed her arms over the desk, leaning forward and resting her temple against her wrist while her dirty blonde hair spilled over her shoulders.

[Telrenya 0]

The life in her eyes was a bit more dull than usual, and an unusual blankness rested on her features as her gaze slowly flickered between various points of interest in her vicinity. She spotted the tall piece of furniture in the corner of the room that served as a perch for Jomei's tawny owl. The corner of her mouth twitched upwards while she remembered her introduction with the familiar. She couldn't hold in a chuckle, Jomei's flustered expression vivid in her mind's eye when he had hurried to remove the avian from her shoulder. Despite her inexplicable nervous nature towards most animals, she had grown rather fond of Adere. Perhaps someday, if her fears managed to subside, she might ask to pet her. Telrenya's gaze shifted closer, passing over the few items sitting on the desk. One thing in particular caught her eye, and as the blonde woman lifted her head to look down at the silver pendant resting near the corner she was surprised that she hadn't taken notice of it sooner.

[Telrenya 0]

She reached out a hand, gently picking up the trinket and turning it over in her fingers. A long silver chain fell from it, indicating that the item was a necklace. With newfound curiosity, she tapped an index finger lightly against the surface, and her inspection was rewarded with a small dialogue window that displayed the decorative item's name--'Hoya of Minos'. The name was familiar to her, but the pendant's appearance looked foreign. A silver hoop with a pattern reminiscent of a wave populating the lower edge, and adorned with a small blue gem near the center. Her head tilted slightly on its own, and her hand slowly reached up to slip an inch or two past the low collar of her sweater. She set Jomei's pendant down, quickly reaching behind her neck to release the clasp that held her own necklace in place. She pulled the item away from her chest, holding hers in one hand and picking Jomei's back up in the other.

[Telrenya 0]

She held the pendants side-by-side, the contrast of the silver-and-blue standing next to the white-and-gold of her pendant in the shape of a shooting star. She couldn't help but think that the two items looked beautiful next to each other, and after a few more moments she carefully set the pendant back down where she had found it. She placed hers beside his against the desk, once again admiring them together before she leaned herself back in the wooden chair. With some space between her torso and the desk's edge, Telrenya's eyes fell upon the bronze handle of a thin drawer hanging beneath the wooden surface. She reached forward, pulling slowly to investigate anything of interest that might be inside, but her inquisitive gaze was only met with a set of basic stationery. She was about to close the drawer when her grip around the small knob seemed to freeze.

[Telrenya 0]

A thought had entered her mind, and as she found herself mulling it over her head swiveled back towards Adere's perch still standing in the corner of the room. A few long seconds passed, the woman just sitting in silence and lost to her thoughts before she reached a hand into the small drawer and pulled out the items it contained. She placed the paper on the flat surface in front of her, sliding the drawer closed and scooting herself closer. She pulled a dark red pen that lay off the side between her fingers and rested the side of her hand against the wooded table. She stared at the blank page in front of her thoughtfully, half admiring the basic filigree border than ran around the edges of the uniform lines that stretched down the length of the paper, and half trying to organize her thoughts and structure the sentences that she wanted to scribe.

[Telrenya 0]

The tip of the pen hovered above the paper for a few long seconds before Telrenya finally lowered her fingers and applied a gentle pressure. She wrote out the things that came to mind, occasionally pausing to gather her thoughts before she continued again. After filling out a few lines, she came to a stop and looked down at her work, straightening her spine with a satisfied smile. She set down her pen, taking the edges of the paper in her hand and carefully folding the corners together, sliding her thumb across the crease to flatten the note. She repeated the process a couple of times until she was left with a neat square of folded paper. She smiled at her handiwork, setting the note aside as another thoughtful look crossed her expression. With a swipe of her hand, Telrenya's menus appeared and she retrieved the small black cube of the recording crystal from her inventory.

[Telrenya 0]

She played the soft melody again, leaning over a fresh piece of paper while the calming tune filled the air. The next note she carefully wrote out was much shorter, but once she was finished she seemed satisfied with its contents all the same. Repeating the process, she spent a moment gazing out of the window in front of her, looking past the reflection of the lit bedroom to the night sky outside. She sat still for a couple of minutes while the soft sounds of the crystal came to an end, fading out before the item silenced itself and dropped a couple of inches to clatter against the desk's surface. The sound jolted Telrenya back to reality, her eyes darting to the source of the noise while her hands reactively jumped to settle the diamond-shaped object from lightly wobbling as it tried to find one of its flat surfaces to settle on.

[Telrenya 0]

Telrenya let out a long, even breath as the rate of her heartbeat slowly normalized and her eyes shifted back to the blank page in front of her. She pulled her hands away from the recording crystal, letting it lay flat on the desk beside her arm as she found the words she wanted to write next. Her bottom lip pursed in thought a couple of times, and she hesitated towards the end before her trailing curiosity translated itself onto the paper. The pen in her hand stopped moving, and she stared at the words, reading them back in her head before a light smile crossed her lips. Once more, she folded the edges together, leaving her with an identical folded note. She stopped herself from releasing it beside the other two, realizing that the squares held no defining features of their own. She pulled it back, instead setting it aside towards the center-front of the desk.

[Telrenya 0]

She reached for what she believed was the last one she wrote before that, peeking at its contents to confirm her assumption before placing the note carefully underneath the weight of the recording crystal. Turning back to the stationery, a new blank page sitting in front of her again, she sat in thought again for a few long moment. Suddenly, a small sound carried itself from her throat: the light humming of the unfinished song that still sat in Jomei's workshop. She reached the end, where the melody stopped abruptly, and a short silence fell over her before she hesitantly continued. The sounds were less sure as she played with the tune, sometimes giving a small shake of her head and repeating a couple of notes in a different pitch. More than a couple of times, Telrenya rewound the song in her mind, starting from the last few notes that she remembered seeing scrawled out on the sheet music and leading into a new set of notes.

[Telrenya 0]

The woman hurriedly leaned over the paper, starting halfway down and dragging the pen across the length of the lined paper as carefully as she could in order to create a couple of staves of her own. She repeated the last iteration of the song with more confidence, scribbling down the notes that followed after Jomei's. It took her a few minutes between starting the melody from the beginning, playing with the pitch and speed of the next few notes at the end, and writing down the result. She had briefly regretted using a pen, sometimes marking a small 'x' over a note she decided against and trying to correct her work so that it was still legible. Eventually, she pulled away from the paper, staring back at three rows of music notes that rested in the bottom half of the paper with another small, satisfied smile on her face.

[Telrenya 0]

She took a few moments before leaning back over the page, her hand shifting to the top of the paper where the first line was still blank. She drew in a breath through her nose, gathering her thoughts again before she wrote one final note. Partway through, a tinge of pink settled itself onto her cheeks, and she seemed to hesitate towards the end. After she had finished, her writing trailed down the length of the open space until only a single line stood between her words and the notes of music. Setting the pen back down at the side of the desk where she had first found it, Telrenya took a sharp breath through her nostrils, finally done with her little project. She held the air in her lungs for a moment before she was overcome with a small giggle. "Ahh, this feels so silly." She laughed to herself before she took the corners of the note in front of her and neatly folded them together.

[Telrenya 0]

With her notes completed, Telrenya's eyes wandered back over to Adere's perch, the corners of her mouth pulling upwards as she reached for the first square of paper sitting at the end of the desk. The chair pushed back slightly behind her as she stood up, and she felt her legs give a small stretch as she did so. She picked up the remaining stationery and placed it neatly back in the shallow drawer, pushing in the simple wooden chair and taking a few strides over to the tall furniture piece in the corner of the room. Her eyes trailed over it a moment before settling on one of the three legs it stood on. She crouched down, very carefully lifting the tall perch just a couple of centimeters so that she could slip the corner of the note beneath it. She lowered it back down, opening her palms towards the arrangement as if asking it to stay in place before she allowed herself to stand back up.

Quote

"It might not seem like it sometimes, but I actually really like Adere! ^-^ I don't know why I've always felt nervous being really close to animals, but I hope she doesn't take it personally. I'd love to hear more stories about her, if you'd like to share. I wonder how you two first met?"

 

[Telrenya 0]

She moved back to the desk, reaching over and pulling the one she had set aside at the front--the third in the order that she wrote them--and walking past the desk to the small sliding door that stood just before she would reach the bed. She eyed the frame for a moment, her plan for this one seemingly less clear than the last. After a couple instances of a hesitant step forward, followed promptly by backing to her original position, Telrenya finally settled on slipping the square halfway through the crack between the door and its frame, until the edge of the paper met the resistance that marked the seal the door provided between the two spaces.

Quote

"In Kyoto I was always so busy studying that I didn't get to enjoy life in the city, but part of me thinks I like places like this better. I'm usually too much of a scaredy-cat to explore on my own, but I've heard of some of the amazing places you can find outside of the cities. Would you like to go exploring sometime? I wonder what the nicest place you've ever been to here was like..."

 

[Telrenya 0]

Once she assured herself that the second note would stay nicely in place, she took a step back and leaned over to reach for the black crystal still resting on the desk's surface and the paper folded beneath it. She took the items in both of her hands and walked back over to the bookcase standing across from the foot of the bed, carefully placing the folded note onto the shelf and returning the recording crystal to its proper place on top of it. Perhaps the simplest of the batch, Telrenya smiled with half a step back from the bookcase, turning to walk back to the desk to retrieve the fourth and final note.

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"This one is definitely my favorite! ♥ I wish I could memorize every song you've made, but this is one I don't want to ever forget. I'd like to listen to it again in the real world someday... Maybe we can play it together?"

 

[Telrenya 0]

For some reason her feet carried her faster than she expected down the staircase, looping her around and crossing the hall to return her to the music room. She gingerly turned the handle with her left hand, while her right held the corner of the last note close to her chest between her thumb and the knuckle of her index finger. The room was bathed in a soft glow of moonlight from the tall stretch of windows along the side of the wall, and as Telrenya slowly crossed the length of it to reach the baby grand piano for the second time that day, she felt her heart beat a bit faster in her chest. The pale light reflected in her eyes as she came to a stop and stared at the unfinished sheet music resting in the same place where she had read it over before. She still clutched the note tightly to her chest, hesitating to extend her arm towards the music stand.

[Telrenya 0]

Another pink hue had colored her cheeks, stretching across the bridge of her nose, and she stood still for a few long seconds, as if working up the courage to leave the note for the one she so deeply cared for.

Quote

"I can't thank you enough for bringing music back into my life here. It feels like I found a piece of myself again, and it means the world to me. Your music is so inspiring, it always infects me and makes me want to play. Back home, I never even tried writing my own songs, but you make it look so easy, I envy you for that~ But here, I wanted to try, so... I hope this works with what you were going for:"

She finally reached over and slid the paper carefully behind the page where his song was left incomplete, allowing the corner of her note to poke out at an angle.