Flashback [Zenobia] How Brooks in Eden Bubbled

[Philomena]

The Lightshow Theatre, Zeltiva
Autumn 77, 504
Late evening
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Minnie always bought the cheap seats. It wasn't that she couldn't afford better, by now. She was a University professor - she had studied some of the very librettos being performed at the Lightshow, including tonight's: "The Diralines", which she had taught in a lecture a few years earlier, in fact, entitled: "And I Shall Sing From a Stone Throat: Death, and its place in the Zeltivan operatic tradition". As a distinguished professor, she'd once been offered the opportunity to give an introductory lecture on a more inaccessible piece of opera before a show, and was offered a quiet seat in the stage-side box in return. She had given the lecture, but taken a gallery seat. The box... she had tried it a few times. And hated it.

Minnie had first attended the opera as a child by sneaking in, smashed up against the pit with the smell of the footlights and the tiny taps and plunkings of the instrumentation audible, so close that though the action was above her head and wild and confusing, she could heard the clatter of the wood-soled costume-shoes, she could feel the rustling wind off a skirt when the actress made a violent turn. The gallery was crowded, and never entirely still, and the wealthy of the city disdained it. Minnie remained, throughout the changes in her fortunes, a devotee of it - it made her feel less like she was attending the theater and more... as if she were a part of it, some pulley in the curtain ropes, or some chain on the machinery.

She was older, now, and her miniscule height made it difficult for her to follow the action from behind the pit, but she hardly minded - the great operas she had listened to, read, studied, and she knew them so well, it was as if the ghosts of the actors performed within her own skull, as she murmured softly the words beneath her breath.

Minnie did not understand the opera, per se. She had never developed any musical talent, aside from the wheezing lullabies she had wheezed once to... but that story, she would not think of it, now, not now, not... not when the Diraline descended from teh sky, on the wings of her aria, dressed in a vivid black, blacker in the footlights than, perhaps, any mortal dress could be. But, she loved it, not only for the librettos, which she studied with the passion of a devotee of Qalaya, but for the whirl and wonder and overwhelming beauty of it all. Tonight, after being ailing for two nights, the great Agnes Fotheringhay was singing the role of Mnasius, the doomed worshipper of Dira, who has lost her heart to man who was then changed into a Nuit. It was a strange role for Fotheringhay, most well known for her thrilling coloratura soprano, for the great aria of The Diralines was a low, mournful alto, dipping almost into contralto. Minnie had, to be honest, even wondered if the woman would pull it off, and she watched now, her breath broken and still as the woman fell slowly on a thin rope from the ceiling, her words pouring from her throat like the keening sorrow of a boneshaker.

"Amaryllis...
Oh beloved, how empty you have left this heart,
My lover turned to cold arithmetics of hate.
Amaryllis..."

Her voice ran dipped morunfully through the low F, with a thrilling, preternatural intensity. Minnie felt her eyes, of a sudden, the power of the note rushing her soul into her own body for that instant, she felt herself crying, the sting of the salt on her cheeks.

"A child has two hearts to which she has been stitched:
A husband and a mother.
Amaryllis...
You have ripped these threads between us,
And left me unhinged.
I turn then to my mother, who remains,
True, sweet, and loyal Dira.
Take me into thee,
Beloved mother,
And let, in sleep, my mind be made an empty page."

The boxes stood politely and applauded as the lights fell. But noone paid attention to them. The galleries were, as in so many things, the true thermometer of success - the boxes clapped politely for the worst failures, and only sniped at them behind their hands. The gallery, though, was honest - they would throw rotten kelp. They would catcall.

But here, there was nothing to worry about. The gallery poured forward, stamping feet, hooting, crying for an encore. The lights came up, now, the stageboys clambering back and forth to pull their shades back, and leave the strange, rosey glow of the footlight fires on the diva's face. Minnie was pressed hard against the pit barrier, by three enthusiastic students, but even this, even the mild pain of someone else's exuberance felt real, honest, felt appropriate. Seh could see beads of sweat forming on the diva's shaking, ecstatic face, see them run from her hairline to melt invisibly into the powder on her forehead. Minnie clutched her bag to her chest simply out of habit, and wept volubly, unattractively, sincerely. The crowd, slowly began to disperse, animated conversations pouring between sailors, students, all the humble apparatus of the lower bourgeoisie. Minnie stayed just where she was, ineffectually smearing tears off her face, taking her spetacles off to polish them, closing her eyes. Basking.

[Zenobia]

It had been a beautiful performance, one of the better ones she had seen in a while. A friend of her father's had leant them his alcove and they had had a perfect view of the performance. There was nothing quite like opera for arousing a hundred and one different emotions, almost simultaneously, and thrill the senses. Zenobia was so glad that Agnes Fotheringhay was able to sing the part, for she knew that it was lower than people believed she could sing. She sang it beautifully and Zenobia felt her admiration for the woman heighten intensely as the performance wore on. How could one woman be so powerful? When she grew up, she would be just like her. The atmosphere of the lightshow theatre was electric too. Very different to all the other, more traditional theatres, in Zeltiva with their curtains and proscenium stages. As the performance ended, Zenobia clapped. She clapped so much that her hands were sore and red. Her mother frowned at her and reminded her that it was not elegant or ladylike to exert oneself so much, and contented to clapping demurely with all four of her hands. Underneath her calm exterior, though, Zenobia knew that she was as impressed as she herself was... and heard her murmur to her Father that Miss Fotheringhay should be invited to their next party. Her Father smiled lightly at this and turned to Zenobia. "Come on." he offered his hand, "You look exhausted. You can wait for tomorrow to meet Miss Fotheringhay. I've already arranged it with the director." Zenobia nodded at this, accepting the offer. She was admittedly very sleepy, but kept awake by the adrenaline of the performance she had just seen. "Your new dress looked very well. Golden Yellow is definitely your colour, though maybe we should buy a red silk dress next, or velvet. It will be winter soon." added Zenobia's mother, taking her by her other free hand, "I am very proud of you and I felt quite sure everyone was jealous of me for having such a pretty daughter. Thank goodness you seem to have started growing out of your tomboy stage." Zenobia smiled again, and although she did not say it, she heartily agreed with her mother. She was really rather pretty and she knew that, in spite of her relatively young thirteen years, many people around were taking note. The idea of it meant that she couldn't stop smiling. Decidedly, she realised now, it was better to be admired in a lovely dress, than gain respect from the other children because she could climb fastest to the top of a difficult tree. They were almost out of the theatre and into their ornamented carriage when Zenobia realised she'd forgotten her coat. Apologising to her parents, who laughed kindly at what they considered the sort of thing she did too often and promised they'd wait for her, she ran back into the theatre. She turned around a corner and, much to her surprise, bounded into a little woman, not much taller than she herself was. Slightly dazed, she stepped back and tripped backwards down a couple of steps which led to the slightly raised landing. "Oh. Um. I'm sorry. Oh!"

[Philomena]

Any accident with running into Minnie is as easy to blame on Minnie as on the other participant - after the opera that was particularly true. Minnie hummed (not entirely tunefully) the opera's aria, her tiny frame standing high on her clumsy feet like a dancer. She hit (sort of) a high note, and whirled dreamily as she did - colliding in the process with a beautiful, foreign-looking girl, with an interestingly impeccable accent. Her breath caught in her throat, and she lurched forward as the girl tripped down a few steps, reaching to grab her hand, concerned she'll knock her over.

Minnie's own hands are not beautiful hands, but they are practical ones. Her skin has the rough texture of harsh lye soap, and her nails are uneven - the eye for beauty might discern that she chews them, and one sharp-nibbled corner of her thumbnail catches at the girl's tender inner-wrist. The fingertips are strong - an odd contrast to her arms themselves, which are certainly nothing to write home about in the force department - and stained a deep blue-black with the ink of a scholar. The bones in her hands stood out beneath her thin, rosy skin, the sinews of her hands pulling visibly against them.

"Oh... I..." all the carefree and ecstatic of the whirling, awkward singer melted away now, visibly, into a sort of habitual smallness of self, the identity receding into just the corner of almost a cringe, "I... I'm sorry... I... are you alright?"

The hands, forgotten, stay gripped until the girl pulls hers away.