To Sing for the Trees

[Dorian]

((Closed))

It is pleasant out.

Dorian Ionos's thoughts took on no particular form as he strolled under the boughs of Concordia forest. The weeks of his life had all seemed to meld together recently, one flowing into another without distinction or clarity. He'd gotten tenure, he'd seen a graduating class come and go, and now, in the lazy days between one term and the next, he had chosen to visit Concordia.

"Chosen" might be too strong a word. Rarely did Dorian choose things; life more chose him. He'd feel like doing something, and do it, and before long he'd be done with it and move to something else. It had become his life, and it was a good one, insofar as surviving from day to day was a good life. He felt somewhere inside that things were missing. His meeting with Brock Rundgren still gnawed at him. The last he'd heard of the faux-musician with the lovely voice, rugged good looks, and wasted talent had been reading a newspaper article about some sort of debacle at an orphanage. I wonder what happened to him? He was so handsome... But he couldn't moon over what was lost. He hadn't produced a new work in a while, and the Dean of Glissando was beginning to breathe down his neck. He needed to premiere something new, and he had to have it ready by the end of the day if he wanted time to prepare it for next week's. Sadly, though, he had written nothing. What was worse, he had nobody to perform something even if he did get it written. At least I have tenure...he can't fire me that quickly!

His thoughts turned to a new subject when he saw an old tree down the path. Its appearance seemed fortuitous, as if to remind him of something, and remind him it did. His mother would walk him down this same path when he was growing up, then they would sit under that tree, and she would read to him. He smiled fondly at the memory, and walked towards the tree. He couldn't resist sitting down underneath its canopy, taking solace in something he'd almost forgotten. He pulled out a piece of staved paper, and jotted a few notes on it.

The spot was like magic. Even as he recalled the way his mother would sometimes lay aside her book and sing to him, notes and meters sprung unbidden to the page. It was a fascinating Phrygian line, flowing nicely from a lightly lyric second section into a more obtuse, but still pleasing, second movement. Dorian pulled out his Songstone and played a little bit of it aloud. He frowned...the notes had come unbidden, had almost flown from his head to the page, but something felt...missing. It felt more like he had written a countermelody to another song than that he had written his own work. He put aside the piece and stuck his stone back in his pocket.

Leaning back against the tree, he closed his eyes. He could almost hear his mother's voice, singing sweetly among the trees.

[Christina Bredith]

Concordia was the first stop on Christina’s journey to Radasanth. She had decided to go there after leaving her uncle’s estate – the man had graciously offered her a home there after she lost her parents in battle, but as it happened, it was all under the false pretense of obtaining a strange sword she found in the attic of her house, which he named Rosebite. Being a merchant such as he was, it was likely that he wanted to sell the blade, but for some strange reason, the weapon would not allow itself to leave Christina for long. It burned her cousin Bianca’s hand when she stole it from her in battle, and then slid back across the floor to Christina, whom it had “chosen.” The woman unlocked a special power, then, by commanding the sword to scream and unleashing a blast of concussive energy on her unsuspecting aggressors, who were blown away by it. Her welcome was clearly worn out, so Christina decided to take her leave.

Even though her uncle’s house was closer to Radasanth than her family’s smaller estate was, it was still a long journey: an hour by carriage, and thus several by foot, for she had not the luxury of the former. She passed by the lovely Concordia on the way, and decided that it would be as good a place as any for a rest. The forest was such a peaceful place, filled with the sounds of songbirds and the sights of young lovers ducking between the trees to remain hidden. Those filled Christina with little joy, however. With each pair of lovers she saw, her heart ached even more and she had to avert her gaze to find a means of distraction. Love had torn her life apart and she put no stake in it anymore. First Jeremy, then her parents, and finally her uncle and cousin, who she thought might have been willing to give her a second chance at life… all of them left her one way or another. There was only one person Christina Bredith trusted now: herself.

Presently, the woman was sitting on a tree stump a few minutes away from the town of Underwood. Rosebite was spread across her lap, its gemstones glittering in the sunlight that fell upon the clearing from above. It was as though she was wreathed in golden light. One gem, a silver one near the blade’s tip, actually seemed to be glowing rather than just glittering; there was a strange, illegible rune carved into it more cleanly than mortal hands could possibly manage. Christina polished the blade with gentle, attentive strokes, taking care of it as well as anyone would do for a treasured heirloom. Her voice had long since broken out in a soft song that filtered through the trees into the forest around her. It was obvious that she was untrained, but her voice was pleasant just the same, possessing that natural beauty that some people are just gifted with.

The song was a sad, haunting melody which spoke of a man and a woman who loved each other very deeply. However, a vengeful goddess who envied the woman’s love and her beauty cursed her: her lover was hidden, so that she could only hear his whispers at night. Every dawn, she cried and sang to the sun, begging it to sleep early so that she wouldn't be alone any longer. The ending of the song, too, was bittersweet. Eventually the sun itself could no longer bear the weight of her suffering, and in order to ease it, turned her into the night wind so that she could whisper with her lover. Never again would they be together, but forever would they touch each other’s hearts with their voices.

It was hauntingly appropriate for the way Christina felt deep inside: betrayed by love, given just a taste of it and then having it torn away from her again. No tears fell from her face, however; she was well past mourning. Her heart was now encased in ice and it catered only to her. No one else would ever darken her life in such a manner ever again.

[Dorian]

Dorian heard his mother's voice whispering through the trees, almost as if she was right there. He had read somewhere that a location could conjure up amazingly realistic memories, and he was certain that this was one of those precious moments. He listened to the sound, lulled by both it and by the soft breezes flowing through the trees, here on the outskirts of Concordia forest.

The greenery around him was luscious. He could feel the thick bark of the tree on his back, the cool, damp earth through the seat of his breeches. He scooped up a handful of it, letting it flow through his fingers back to the ground. A worm wriggled where he had broken the earth, as if protesting the unwarranted disturbance. And then he snapped out of it.

He had been in a rare mood, lulled by the scenery and his memories, but now it was passed, and he heard the voice with a new clarity. It wasn't in his mind, a mere passing fancy of time and the mind, but the voice was very clearly in the air about him, coming from somewhere else entirely. And what was more, he heard the melody with a new ear. Here was something amazing! Quickly snatching up the piece he had laid aside moments ago, he scribbled furiously. It wasn't the Phrygian he had wanted at all...it was the Mixolydian!

He quickly transposed the melodies, rearranging the harmonies and the scales to suit his new choice of modal composition. In a few moments he was done. Maybe it was a bit rough around the edges, but it would serve for now. Maybe now the Dean would get off his back!

I do need someone to sing it, though. What's a piece without a performer? And then he remembered the voice, that sweet and solid voice that had tricked his mind and befuddled his senses. Where there is a voice, there is a body, and whoever was singing had to have been in the forest somewhere. The sound had trailed off by now, but Dorian had enough wits to guess that the singer was on the path nearby. No sound could travel well for long distances in Concordia.

Gathering himself up from the ground, shaking dirt and bugs off the seat of his breeches, he rolled up the paper and stashed it in a breast pocket. Setting off down the path, it wasn't long before he rounded a corner and emerged into a clearing. In the middle of it sat a pretty girl, resting for a moment. Approaching her, he cried, "My dear lady, are you the angel I heard not moments before?"

[Christina Bredith]

Christina didn’t really consider herself much of a singer. She took after her mother in that she had a pretty voice, but lacked any sort of formal training, and was thus rough and unpolished. That was the least of her worries, though. Singing was far from being Christina’s top priority, as now she had the nagging trifle of survival looming over her. She had to get to Radasanth, find some work that suited her talents, and put some bread on the proverbial table. I should have swiped more from Uncle Henry, she thought idly to herself as she continued to polish Rosebite. The bastard deserved it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the voice and the presence of a handsome man about her age. Christina only looked up briefly when he approached, and it was enough to see that he was quite messy, as though he had fallen asleep in the dirt or something. At his question, the woman looked up again, paused, and then resumed her treatment of Rosebite’s steel blade. “Not likely,” came her answer. It wasn’t dripping with false modesty, but rather sounded quite honest, if a bit distant. She really didn’t see how she could possibly be the one he was talking about.

Her father often told her that she had a nice voice, and he pressured her into taking singing lessons when she was younger. It was what all proper young girls should do, he said. Christina wasn’t really interested in that, though. At first, singing lessons would simply have interfered with her active social life – it was hard to hang out with your friends and get hit on by cute boys when you were busy getting lectured by some dried up old vocal teacher. Eventually, though, the thing that the singing lessons would have been replacing was her secret sword training, not her social life. Singing, she knew, was not going to get the love of her life back. Only proving herself to be a worthy soldier would do that – and her parents would have none of it.

Bah. Stop thinking about that stuff, she willed herself. Her past was actually a very happy one until recently. However, losing her parents and the man she still loved tended to shatter any rose-coloured glasses through which she might have viewed her life. Every moment she had spent with Jeremy seemed to be wrought with sadness now that he was gone. The same went for her parents. Those were thoughts she needed to force from her mind if she was to have any chance of forging her own path through the world. By necessity, doing so required her to leave the past where it was – behind her.

As Christina looked up again, she noticed that Dalton was still standing there. Apparently he hadn’t been convinced. Maybe she was the woman he was looking for after all. I guess there aren’t all that many people singing at the moment. But still, an angel? Apparently Dalton had rose-tinted eardrums, because that wasn’t at all how Christina would describe herself. She halted her methodical polishing and fixed her silver eyes on the man. “Can I help you?”

[Dorian]

As he spoke, the girl but glanced at him. Her response was terse and to the point; he wondered, for a moment, if he should just turn around and go back the way he came. But there was something in the way she sat on the stump, bent to her work, that arrested him in a way no woman had done for a long time. He was half tempted to go towards her and woo her as he had many girls during the years of his study, but only half tempted. He had passed that time of his life, literally and figuratively.

But she looked stunningly like his mother, a woman he admired and wished were still alive. She had died during his fourth year in Glissando, and he had recovered from the loss with grace and poise, as he had done with everything else in his life. But some part of him still wanted to talk to her again...and hear her voice. He had written a song for her last rites, but the dead could not perform their own funerals.

She spoke to him again, and he was forced to respond, "Allow me to introduce myself." He bowed slightly. "I am Dr. Dorian Ionos, I teach voice and composition at Glissando Conservatory in Radasanth. I was in a bit of a creative bind, so I came out here to try to clear my head and write some music. I heard singing out here in the forest, and it inspired me to write this."

Digging around in his breast pocket, he pulled out the rolled scroll. "It's loosely based off what I was hearing, more a musing on a theme than anything else...but I you were the voice singing, I would like to know the name of the song. It would only be right to name the original song in the introduction to the piece. And while you're at it, why not give me your name as well?" He smiled, making sure to flash his dazzling white teeth.

As he spoke, he moved forward, and saw a bit more clearly what was on the blade she polished so diligently. It can't be! But he didn't say anything about it.