Same Time, Different Rhythms
Header, Mondes, and Daseos belong to @byrdstrolls
Another day, another street corner. Mondes is playing top 40s hits again, cycling through crowd pleasers in a way that shows his desperation. The melodic chords of riptide echo through the early morning dew, dead worms on the sidewalk and a perpetual slight dampness marked the storm that had passed through here the previous night. Daseos and him had arrived too late for there still to be dinner, or beds at the public shelter.
He had lent her his coat. In fact, the girl was still wrapped in it. The act was missing its MC, as she sat nearby on the bench in a little ball, clothes halfway dried by the wind. He was trying to give her space. He knew the events of the last night had shaken her, and not just metaphorically. The girl hadn’t brought clothes suited for such a storm, and most of the time had passed through a perpetual half sleep, drifting in and out of consciousness as he was clung to by the shivering little girl, holed up under a bridge. He was a little off kilter himself. Mondes had survived many such nights alone, dancing with hypothermia but he was only a troll. His tempo this morning was on occasion to fast, there may have even been moments where he was a half note off.
His not up to usual cello performance was made all the more frustrating by how badly he needed the money. He needed to get them to a laundromat to wash each of the two outfits the trolls had respectively. He was almost due for his 24 hour fitness membership, and most importantly, they needed very much to eat. Fiddling for your dinner, fiddling for his life- or hers, I wish I could say it made the music better. But art is not immune to the creeping cheap decay of human tiredness and pain. It can be ruined.
Walking through the misty aftermath of yesterday’s storm feels like a scene from a dream at first glance but like a dream the illusion is easy to break if you know where to look. Taraka is no stranger to these streets, she knows where the dry spots are around the city but finds them empty this morning, looks like everyone she knows made it to a shelter in time last night. She takes a moment to be grateful, it hasn’t been long that she has managed to support herself, even if the living conditions aren’t actually great, and the motel is kind of a waste of money… it’s not like she’s suddenly able to just buy a house. For now she’s able to do what she loves with only a little worrying, and that’s what she needs.
The bank’s office she steps into is so… Lifeless. Every wall must be painted beige, or the dreaded “eggshell” white, almost blinding in their blandness. There’s no paintings on the walls or any signs that real living people work here, just photographs of nameless locations bought from a company that specializes in the kind of sanitized beauty you’re allowed to display in these. “Formal” environments. The flowers aren’t even real. Why can the flowers never just be real? She needs to get her money and get out of here, fast.
She escapes the white walled hell not soon enough, almost able to smell the residual “fresh carpet” air freshener on her still, but money is in hand and she is safe from the soulless husk of a building for at least a week. She’s in such a hurry to cleanse herself of the cleanliness of the bank that she almost doesn’t hear the instrument playing just down the street, but maybe the musician in her registers it first. It’s not an instrument she’s heard around the city before, and judging by the shakiness of the tempo, they are not playing for the love of it this morning. Don’t do it Taraka, she tries to warn herself, but it is too late. She is already in front of the masked source of music, before she can change her mind.
It takes Mondes a second to notice she’s there. He had gotten caught up in the playing, absorbed in the motions, difficult to focus on more than one thing at once. When his eyes finally do catch hers, he doesn't seem as relieved as maybe she hoped he’d be. In fact, appraising Taraka on a quick glance, he thinks she probably doesn't have a whole lot to be handing out. Why couldn’t today be one of those days a benevolent highblood was walking around, who could give money without thinking. He’d even take a tiktoker or a youtuber at this point. Being filmed was humiliating, but they usually let you keep the 100$ they handed you in their “I gave 100$ to a homeless man????” Vlogs. The song comes to an average conclusion, and he pauses, glancing back at where Daseos is sitting nearby.
“Anything helps” He says simply, not having the younger girl’s crowd skills.
By all means Mondes is right, Taraka is not exactly in a position to give much away but little does much to stop her as she justifies it in her own mind- she could feed herself for a week with the money, two if she’s smart. She can attend some free events- she’s able to dress nice enough to get in without questions, that could make it three weeks, if a little strained… She looks back at the bundled teenager, and then forward to the man in a mask… How is she supposed to not see herself in these two? If she just- buys generic instead, a jar of peanut butter and jelly? You can make that last the whole month can’t you Taraka?
Mondes is about to say something else, she’s been staring rather intensely at the two homeless troubadours when she finally makes up her mind, opens up her bag, and places three hundred dollars in the open cello case.
“That’s all I can do,” and for the first time, Mondes believes that when someone says it.