get to know: melpomene ‘mel’ muse.
melpomene’s earliest memory is filled with screaming. she sits up in her bed, alone, clutching a stuffed mermaid toy that she never strayed too far from. in the hall just outside her room she can hear her parents yelling, the topic changes depending on the day but the fighting remains no matter what. she crawls out of bed one night, and peeks through the crack of her open door and is met with faces of pure rage and disgust. seeing her mother’s eyes filled with tears as she points and waves her arms, and her father’s face twisted from a smile to a frown is enough to make her close the door and run back to her bed.
towards the end of her parents relationship it becomes more and more apparent that they’re on the verge of something. she’s unsure at the time what exactly that is, but it’s there, hanging in the air like some dark storm cloud. she tries her best to bring light to their home, offering yellow rays of light to combat their thundering grey. It starts as sharing artwork, sloppy drawings of happy families holding hands in fields of sunflowers, hoping they get the message. when that doesn’t work, it becomes slipping into pretty white dresses and singing daddy’s favorite songs, or hoisting herself up at the piano and performing her shaky rendition of twinkle twinkle little star again. it’s futile, like expecting flowers to bloom in the harshest of winters.
daddy eventually leaves, and she thinks she’s not too surprised. It was inevitable. her mother is more closed off now, there’s less time for bedtime stories and jump rope, now only room for isolation and fending for herself. she’s too young to understand that what takes her mother over is depression, but she knows she hears her cry at night and on most days it doesn’t seem like her mother is going to get out of bed at all, yet alone to help her get ready for school.
melpomene joins her school’s choir, because it, like piano and violin had been, is what her father wants her to do. the choir director sticks her in the soprano section, going out of her way to compliment her light tone and the way it flutters over every syllable. daddy couldn’t be more proud, she thinks, for a second that’s all that really matters.
mom can’t stand to hear her daughter sing or play the many instruments she begins to pick up for her father’s approval. she tells mel that, while her voice is very pretty, she doesn’t want to hear it, reminds her too much of her father. melpomene is instructed to practice elsewhere. she wants to argue that she shouldn’t have to practice somewhere else, she lives here too! but, she remembers the storms of yesterday and thinks again. “ok mama,” she nods, offering a polite well rehearsed smile in the cloud of her mother’s cigarette smoke before packing up her sheet music and going to her room.
it’s not lost on mel that her father moved on pretty quickly. clio is only three years younger than her, and whatever unpleasant feelings her mother has towards her father still linger. her mother refuses, at first, to be anywhere near clio and her mother and even if melpomene wanted to refuse as well, she couldn’t. so, she does what she does best: smile politely and do what her father would want of her. she never voices that it makes her feel strangely that he had another child so soon, as if, she was to be replaced. and being around clio, and subsequently, teri is just a fast reminder that her father’s life would move on without her mother. he would live and he would love, and there would be more muse children for him to carry in his heart so she better just get used to sharing it with more than just calli. that strange feeling, she learns later, is resentment. she buries that too.
she’s only thirteen when she discovers a love for shakespeare. she comes across a book of epic tragedies in the library, and finds herself immersed in every word (so she has to ask the librarian what a lot of it means, but she loves it still). she takes the book home and locks herself in her room, trying on the voices of people not herself and living through their words.
fitting, that she would love tragedies, because her life becomes even more of one when her mother passes away. it’s sudden and she hardly has a second to learn the information, yet alone come to terms with it. she’s fifteen when she loses her mother and moves in with her father and teri. she finds that there’s hardly any room to cry publicly, uncomfortable with the way people smile sadly and stare, so she waits until she’s alone and lets it all out then.
mel’s contribution to the band is production and composition. calli is the writer, clio the best singer and teri the dancer -- and while mel is good at all of these things, she does not stand out amongst the girls for any of these reasons. she doesn’t stand out at all, actually, and she’s ok with that too. or so she claims. mel is more interested in setting the tone of their music, and she’s got an arsenal of instruments to do it. she prefers music that sounds dark and gloomy or, on a good day, swelling and romantic -- drama, she just wants drama. she’ll fill their music with strings and guitar riffs and fluttering piano scales if you let her, she just wants it to be a moment on it’s own. she wants the audience to feel before they even sing a note.
melpomene finds that being in the group is nice, but, in her down time she sneaks off to the local theatre to watch the stage productions. She feels right at home as amaetuer actors tackle ophelia and cressida, and something small and quiet in her feels a sense of longing.
doesn’t like confrontation if that isn’t already clear, so she will swallow her feelings until she convinces herself she likes the taste of it. she’s going to grow tired of it soon, and she’s afraid of what that inevitable burst will be like. she’s melpomene, so i can only promise it’s going to be drama.
WANTED CONNECTIONS.
muse of tragedy right so like...let’s get messy and sad. angsty breakups or former friends plots??
someone who knows about her love of theatre, mayhaps even a fellow drama nerd
she’s so quiet and peaceful (and sad) a ray of sunshine friend would be nice!!!
the usual stuff y’all know i’m bad at these lol
