Fluffcember Day 3 - Humming
Fluffcember Prompt list! :3
WIP: Like Dragons of Old Characters: Timbre, Selandri POV: Selandri 1749 words. Rest and Tags below the cut! :3
In which Selandri and Timbre explore the Observatory, find beautiful books, and Timbre starts humming, which opens up so many new possibilities—
The fourth floor held storybooks.
Selandri’s eyes widened as she saw them—there were more tables in here, more comfy areas to sit, too. Some of the books had pages filled with nothing but beautifully rendered illustrations. Some had more text and less images. Selandri was entranced from the beginning—the pictures seemed to be alive, and they were beautiful.
After she’d stared for lengths at the cover of one of these books she suddenly felt Timbre standing directly behind her, looking over her shoulder, her head so close that Selandri inadvertently held her breath before realizing how stupid that was.
“Can you teach me how to read them?”, Timbre asked quietly.
Selandri hesitated. “I— I could try”, she said uncertainly. “But I’m… not really very good at it. Like. At all?—But I will try!” Her heart was suddenly beating a lot faster than it had before, and she wasn’t entirely sure why, so she tried to distract herself by staring at the book cover in front of them. It was beautiful, made from dark leather and adorned with the finely drawn head of a stag, looking at them with bright, knowing eyes. Underneath it was the title, written in a far more flowing version of the script her parents had tried their best to teach her… except suddenly, none of the symbols seemed familiar in the least. Both the title and the drawing were done in golden ink, and the drawing was so much more appealing than the writing. Except that Timbre wanted to know.
So Selandri took a deep breath and tried to make her thoughts stop spinning around her in circles. “Uhm, do you see this symbol? It—it means…” She couldn’t even remember the name of the stupid thing. “…I’m sorry. I… didn’t really spend much time trying to learn it, you know? It kind of… nah. Just not my type of thing.” She looked off to the side, feeling something she couldn’t even properly name, like a knot in her stomach, only fluttery. And weird. “Now I kind of wish I had, though. Because then I could teach you…”
Timbre smiled. “It’s fine”, she said. Her voice was so gentle! “I… I think I’ll just ask the Observer.”
For a while they just stood there, each lost to their own thoughts. Selandri felt herself staring at the art again and again, and after a while the strange knot left, replaced by something that could only be yearning. One day I will draw like that, she promised herself, and Timbre can write the text. We will make the best team!
And then Timbre started to make a strange sound, and the world… changed.
The air was suddenly alight with colours, shifting, pulsing, dancing around them in the most beautiful patterns, and Selandri inadvertently found herself holding her breath, transfixed.
The words were out before she could really stop herself: “What are you doing?” Timbre stopped. The colours went out.
It felt as if all the weights in the world had been lifted for a moment, only to come crashing down again, converging on her. She realized that she’d tilted her head back, even lifted her hands as if to grab for the colours, only now it felt childish and stupid.
“Uhh, humming?”, she heard Timbre ask, her voice careful, a bit confused, coming as if through a fog. “It’s a song my guardians—my parents—used to sing to me when I was small…” And then Selandri noticed the tears in Timbre’s eyes, and the fog left, and then she was already hugging the other girl, even as Timbre continued to speak, slowly, painfully. “They— they sang it for me when … when everything changed, too…”
After a moment, Timbre finally hugged her back, and when they finally broke apart, they were both a bit flustered, and Timbre eyed her in a curiously skittish way, with an uncertain smile on her lips, looking away when Selandri met her eyes. It should’ve been awkward, but it wasn’t even that. Selandri couldn’t even say what it was, exactly. Through some kind of forbidden magic, though, she did hear herself speak, though, even if everything else about this situation felt both exhilarating and weird at the same time.
“Can you… can you sing it to me? The song? Like… now? I … I don’t think I’ve—” She broke off, feeling strangely off-kilter, weird in her own skin. Uncertain. “I think… I think I’ve never heard music before. And— there were—” She broke off again, but then her eyes found Timbre’s.
“There were?”, Timbre repeated. There was something wild about her eyes, something that made Selandri’s heart race.
“Colours”, she whispered. “Colours, Timbre. I saw colours when you were humming. But how… I must have noticed them before, right? Or maybe they were so diffuse… no-one ever makes music here. No-one ever sings. Can you sing for me?”
Timbre hesitated, looking away. Selandri suddenly felt very self-conscious. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask, if your parents…”
“No, it’s not that… it’s just. The song… it’s not in our language? It’s the Cinnrié… a healing song. To help you calm down, to help you sleep, to heal your fears and nightmares… I— I’m afraid of speaking it here? I don’t know the costs. Or the… what they’d do to me if they heard.” She looked around nervously.
Selandri felt strangely disappointed, and she couldn’t even say why. She really wanted to ask what exactly Timbre was talking about, but at the same time it felt like something private. So she just sighed, wistfully.
“I get it… but maybe you can sing it without lyrics? I just— it was so beautiful…”
Timbre brightened. “I can do that! I think the magic is in the words, not in the song itself.”
And then she sat down on the ground, cross-legged, with Selandri following her, and when Timbre started humming, the colours returned, brighter and more beautiful than the last time, building and building until Timbre was singing, but without words. Her voice was so pure and beautiful that Selandri wanted to start crying, but then she would’ve heard less, so she forced the sobs down and just let the colours and the sounds wash over her.
She didn’t notice when she started describing them out loud, their positions and brightness and beauty.
When Timbre finally stopped, she had to use her sleeve to wipe off her tears before being able to see her. Her friend looked pale and shaky and somehow other, but she was smiling, a smile so wide and sad and sweet that it made Selandri’s heart ache.
“That— we have to do that again”, Timbre whispered after a moment, her voice rough with emotions Selandri couldn’t even place.
She nodded. “Yes, we do…”, she said, and her voice was almost as shaky as Timbre’s.
“I— I could feel them”, Timbre said. “I can’t really remember them… but… sort of? We have to find out if the same sound always connects to the same colour, and how the brightness and everything changes. But… I think…”
Selandri grinned, sniffing. Her eyes felt puffy and raw and she’d never been happier in her entire life. “I… if I can somehow help you with this… you sing so beautifully. Everything—so beautiful.” She looked at her in admiration. “How do you do it?”, she asked.
“What? Sing? I… open my mouth, and then sounds come out.” Timbre grinned at her, but there was something fragile about that grin, about her eyes, something Selandri couldn’t place. Still, she laughed. “No”, she said, echoing Timbre’s grin, “I mean, like… how do you make it so the sounds work? I— I bet I could learn to sing, too. But… I don’t know if I could do it that perfectly. That they fit together like a puzzle, with that… precision?”
Timbre looked away. When she finally spoke again she sounded sad, and Selandri wanted to take back every word instantly, only it was too late. “I—I don’t even know how I can remember. Maybe because it’s seared into my mind, because I replayed it over and over again so I would never forget, back in the woods? I was supposed to become Cintu. Like my… my parents. A Singer.”
Oh. Capital S Singer. Suddenly things clicked into place. Magic. Cinnrié… songs. Singing. She’d learned about them before, about the people who could weave magic with their voices by paying a terrible price. Selandri felt herself growing very still. “You— you were… oh…”
“My ancestors… they were very good with sounds. With recreating them perfectly. My family, specifically. It’s been so long but I still remember their tales as if it were yesterday. My guardians, they were a Singer and a Speaker. My, uh, father played the violin to accompany my … mother?—my mother, when she was singing. Her voice was incredible. But— you need a voice like that, to become a Singer. It’s the first thing I ever remember. Their music. Her singing. They… I don’t know if they, uh, healed my body after I’d gotten born so I could do it, too, or if it would have been natural anyways. Cintu are— were chosen at birth.”
Selandri just stared at her, at the back of her head, the soft small leaves, the stitched-together back of her tunic. The wings. Timbre refused to turn, refused to look.
“I—I am sorry”, Selandri finally said. “I’m sorry that this… that we don’t let you use the Cinnrié. That my—that everyone hates it so much.”
Timbre laughed, and finally turned back around. It was a small, sad laugh. “It’s not your fault. And they’re right. Without the Cinnrié, my people would still… but no. They wouldn’t still be alive. They would’ve died anyways. Just differently. But I would be dead, too. With my parents. Without the Aunae, every living thing back there would be dead. The trees and plants, too.”
They stared at each other wordlessly, neither knowing how to break this suddenly heavy silence.
“Let’s go see the other floors”, Selandri finally said, speaking the first thing that came to her mind.
Timbre nodded courtly, and then they left the beautiful book behind. Only now did Selandri notice that Timbre hadn’t even been able to see those colours.
But maybe one day I can sing, too. Then I can sing to her how the colours would look. Then we could sing colours together.
And that thought finally brought her smile back.
~~
@dramaticvoiceover @asttralhell @authordai @thereisnothingwrongwithbeingmad @wilde-writing @madmoonink @prismalicht @romenna @fynniana @sincerestaffect @random-stuff-thrown-into-a-pot @raiswanson @zekethegm @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword @stephrawlingwrites @kittensartswriting @annelaurant-writing @lady-redshield-writes @wolfdancer333 @bmariewinter @thedrowningtsarevna @corishadowfang @dogwrites @pinespittinink