Sonata, Fidelis
30 June 2018 | G | 1,380 words A snapshot of a typical night for the Asphodel siblings. Set sometime before Phoenix's narrative, he's about 10-11 here.
Aquila craned his head back as the music demanded: luxuriate. Chords flowed like links in a daisy chain, fresh and bold, reverberating through his ribs and down his spine. With the proper ministrations, a humble piano became much more than a simple instrument of wood and ivory. Aquila believed that notion with no greater conviction than when listening to his younger brother, Phoenix, play.
“Superb,” he whispered as the last note faded. He settled his breathing, blinked the mist out of his eyes, and gingerly pushed himself from his spot against the piano room's marble wall toward Phoenix. Moonlight flashed from the window across his back, and the object he held behind him glinted. “Come another decade, and our theatres may be hearing a renaissance.”
Phoenix snorted and sneered over his shoulder at Aquila. “The tripe they play would necessitate it. Those dire, dressed-up baboons and their abysmal cacophonies.”
“Ahah. You could start it now, if you wanted. Aspirational librettists aren't any rarity. Some are quite promising, even.”
“Ah, yes,” Phoenix spat, and repositioned himself on the stool's velvet cushion to better face Aquila, “so, which poet best licked your boots this week?”
“Lord Forsyth's son has been shining them rather well, actually,” Aquila glanced quaintly down, imagining the poet in question prostrate at his feet, then smiled shamelessly at Phoenix. “So now that you mention it, I might introduce him to a composer.”
Phoenix grimaced. Aquila chuckled to himself. “An established composer, that is. No, I had more compelling works in mind, though if my support makes their integrity questionable, you'll have to judge them with your own reading.” Aquila shrugged. “I could get the manuscripts for you.”
“Yes. Do that.” Phoenix absent-mindedly went to close the piano's fallboard while Aquila assented with an exaggerated bow. As he did, he swept out his arm, and the glass coating of the small, tubular recording device in his hand shone again – the glare caught Phoenix in the eye, Phoenix flinched, and the fallboard plummeted.
Aquila lunged forward and caught the fallboard before it could close on Phoenix's fingers. While he'd revealed the recorder as intended, his angle had obviously been off. He silently apologized for the slip, eased the fallboard safely down, and refocused to Phoenix just in time to catch the tail-end of a string of insults: “—incorrigible dolt!”
Aquila smiled. “What were the chances?”
“Zero, had you not gaudily flaunted that–that—is that a recorder? You were recording?” Phoenix kneaded the feathered ruff of his overcoat. “Again?”
“I do like to hear you play. In my own time, sometimes. Though, if you'd rather I didn't...” Aquila calmly presented the recorder in his open palm, so that Phoenix could take it.
As anticipated, Phoenix did not.
“Idiot. That you would hear my music is obviously not an issue.”
“Then, the contention?”
“Is that a simpleton like you would misplace it.” Phoenix nodded. “Into the hands of thieves, or the ears of insipid courtiers.”
“Aha. Well, I've documented myself insulting those insipid courtiers, here.” Aquila closed his hand and flicked a switch to kill the recording. Once the device's dim neon glow faded, he pocketed it and fancifully waved his empty hands. “So I must bury this in a very deep corner of my room where no one will find it, perhaps in my safe, with the others.”
“No one is to know of it,” Phoenix warned.
“No one will. I promise that.” And he meant it.
Like a photo album, cataloguing memories. Though the underhandedness of recording without Phoenix's knowledge grated faintly at his eroded sensibilities, Aquila would surely thank himself in ten years' time for doing it.
Life passed. Memories faded. Safeguarding his most treasured moments, while they still lasted, was paramount.
As was proliferating them, thought Aquila when Phoenix announced his leave. So after humming his own goodnight, once Phoenix turned his back and strode for the door, Aquila slid his arms around Phoenix's torso, picked him up, and to Phoenix's indignant squawk of, “Aquila!”, span.
Aquila's feet moved with grace honed first on the battlefield, second in the ballroom. The tail of his coat lifted off the ground, mirroring how Phoenix's arms dangled against the air. Spinning and spinning and spinning, feeling Phoenix struggling but feeling too joyful to care, until Aquila crashed the two of them purposefully into a nearby settee.
They landed softly on cushions, Phoenix safely on top. He reared up, and while hastily fixing his dishevelled hair, repeated, “Aquila! You—you nonce! What in heaven was that about?”
“Ah, sorry, I tripped.”
“Clearly! Ugh,” Phoenix huffed – but the second Aquila craned his head up to assess the sourness of Phoenix's mood, an ornamental pillow biffed him in the face. A peal of high-pitched, satisfied cackling followed. Curses. Outfoxed. But however scandalized Aquila tried to look, his grin refused to leave, even when he cast aside the pillow to behold his fate: Phoenix, holding another pillow aloft, primed for a follow-up assault.
Phoenix dove, into Aquila's arms. Giving no time for the trap's detection, Aquila's hands found Phoenix's back and pulled him firmly into a hug.
It was meant with only good intentions, love, affection, warmth, and all other nice things, though Phoenix seemed not to agree. Reasonable, since the embrace pinned his face flat against Aquila's chest. His only hope for liberation was to flail; the pillow beat Aquila's head once (“ack!”), twice (“ack!!”), struck the settee's arm, and flew out of Phoenix's hand. The loss of his weapon signalled his surrender, and Aquila eased his grip enough that Phoenix could at least look up.
“You are amazing,” Aquila said to Phoenix, only inches apart. “Anything I can do for you, I will.”
“Then unhand me.”
Aquila did. Phoenix shuffled back into proper sitting position beside Aquila on the small settee, allowing Aquila to bask in the novel feeling of Phoenix glaring down at him, rather than up. But just when Phoenix took a breath to speak, a knock came at the door.
Aquila immediately sat up. With one hand he smoothed his hair and clothes, and with the other he quickly righted one of the misplaced cushions – Phoenix, though startled, got the other. Within a few seconds they were posed as formally as they looked in their portraits, and Aquila announced: “Enter.”
“Hey,” drawled the visitor. Though the voice was enough to identify him, the visual completed it: a handsome, well-dressed young man who held himself with carelessness unbefitting of the gilded hall around him. One of Aquila's intimates since youth, the infamous Mason Whitewood.
He leaned against the door, elbow jutting into a delicate floral relief. “Courtesy call, Your Highness. Duchess just got in the city, figure it fifteen, twenty minutes 'fore—” then came moment Mason stopped fiddling with his nails and registered the scene: “Hell.”
Spoken with the same contempt usually reserved for cockroaches.
“Yes, Mason?” asked Aquila.
“...Hell, you're looking professional,” he muttered, dragging his gaze away from Phoenix.
Aquila smiled, satisfied enough with Mason's recovery. Still, given how Phoenix now gazed mutely at the floor, prudence demanded Mason's removal. Aquila rose fluidly from the settee, tilted his chin up and lightly trailed his fingers down his neck. Click, click, click, went his heels against the floor. “Professional? Am I? Decorum comes so naturally to me I'm afraid that I simply don't notice it.” Mason rolled his eyes. “Now, the Duchess?”
“Yeah. Fifteen minutes 'fore she's on you. Valet's picking outfits, wants you quick.”
“I see. Then—” a flash of white zipped though Aquila's vision, up from the settee behind him, down and out the door. “Ah, Phoenix,” Aquila called, and again into the hallway, “Phoenix!”
“Goodnight!” echoed the hall, punctuated with the slam of a door. Though both Aquila and Mason glanced over the hallway, Phoenix was already gone.
Mason shrugged when Aquila turned back to him. To his credit, he refrained any comment.
Was fifteen minutes enough time to track down Phoenix, console him, and make the appointment?
Factoring in a trip to his room to deposit the recording, no. It wasn't.
“...Then.”
Next time, when and if that came.
He exited the room and gestured Mason to his side. After one last look over his shoulder, he departed, down the opposite hall.