@lu-eleanor /// music practice rooms /// before descending to the hall of spring
half-a-heart-beat in difference, notes not quite meeting the pitch, dance too made of frippery and they could feel the extra missing beat, 3/4 instead of 2/4 and that gap ached like a missing tooth. minimal beat but the unfinished phrase lingered in their head and the drums needed something more feral and sun-baked.
eleanor had played something after the coronation, touches of the blood-splattered stairs, of the cracked and broken crown in their music. not quite ottoman, not quite home, but it was a concept that they’d long learned to shed.
still, the refrains drummed in their fingers, war music begging to spill from their throat once again. part preparation, readiness for what they knew was coming, part a desire to go back home.
it was driving them mad
that rhythm pulled them forwards, after-thoughts of melodies ghostly memories down the corridors.
so sayf followed, footsteps near-silent drums on stone floors, before stopping infront of the music practice rooms. mostly eleanor’s haunt, and not one that they’d ever had cause to visit before. but here they were, and the silence itself seemed to play music in their ears.
impatience dripping from tense muscles before they concede, something like sticky indulgence causing the corner of their mouth to curl as they step inside, close sound-proof doors behind them.
it takes at least an hour for them to warm up, to remember lyrics and open their lungs and polish off the rust to their voice. another half hour is spent with their eyes closed and the memory of chants, of steel, of drums, for the taste of sand, of dirt, of blood of sweat, and their voice is harsh like ripping steel strings and they are swearing war on this place for all that it stayed the same.