I took my love, took it down.

[digyourman]

The twilight was painted in soft strokes across a tumble of low-slung clouds, pinks and purples distilled from the glitter of the infinite sky to spill over neatly-clipped lawns and gently burbling fountains. Perched upon one of the retaining walls in the English garden, Larry was bent over a guitar propped up by one braced knee, evening shadows chasing across his face as he strummed out a familiar melody with calloused fingers.

A year he'd been in this place; a year of quiet living and silently-borne restitution, a year that felt simultaneously endless and a blink, a year that had fostered introspection and little else. Good things still left him skittish, afraid of what followed, and despite it all the very nature of that feeling seemed another failure.

Frannie had been gone a month, and he still wasn't certain why he hadn't seen it coming.

The back edge of the guitar rested against his chest, each note humming through the thin cotton of his t-shirt and under his skin. He needed a haircut, dark curls sliding across his downturned eyes as began to softly sing.

Even children get older, and I'm getting older, too.

Comments

[nebaritralk]

Chiana had been listening in silence for a while, trying to decide what to think of the music. He had a decent voice, she supposed, this Earth man. She didn't even entertain the fact that he might be Sebacean; they'd never sing something like this.

When the song came to an end, she took a few steps forward, until she came into view, a creature of the twilight in her shades of grey. "Is that what Earth music is like?" she asked curiously. It was very... soft, and mellow. She really wasn't sure what to make of it.

[digyourman]

Larry had seen her before. She was a difficult one to miss, a buoyant ghost of whites and greys amidst the hotel's sea of decidedly human figures. It was a little surprising, he thought, that somebody like her was so rare in a place like this. Just now, she reminded him of the clouds, the soft, pastel colors of the sky lovely on her pale skin and hair.

He plucked out a few more chords and then laid his hand to rest across the guitar strings as he smiled gently up at her.

"Some of it," he answered.

[nebaritralk]

Chiana leaned against the wall a few feet from him, and nodded at the instrument in his hands. "What's that called?"

She didn't really know anything about music, no matter where it came from, beyond whether she could dance to it or not. She had seen instruments like this one, on one world or another, but she didn't think she'd ever seen this one, exactly.

[digyourman]

"This is a guitar," Larry answered, and strummed once across the strings. "There are different kinds that sound different, but this one is acoustic. No electricity."

Still watching her, he strummed out the brisk intro to 'My Sweet Lord' and then stopped again, head tilted so that his too-long hair swept across his forehead.

"What planet are you from?"

[nebaritralk]

"Nebari Prime," Chiana answered, and came a couple of feet closer. "You wouldn't like it there," she added, tilting her head to the side with a humorless chuckle, her upper body mostly following the gesture, "they don't really do music." 'They', not 'we'. She'd never felt like a proper citizen of the Establishment.

[digyourman]

"Probably not, then," Larry agreed, still smiling but obviously bemused. "You seem like you like it well enough, though," he pointed out with a lift of his eyebrows. "Enough to ask questions, anyway."

Music had always felt so intrinsic to him, not just natural, but part of nature itself. Humans had been making music since the first caveman could bang two sticks together, and denying that part of him would be like denying his own divinity.

[nebaritralk]

"I didn't like it there," Chiana explained with a sharp grin, as if there was anything funny about it, and leaped onto the wall he was sitting on, still a little way from him. "Play something else?" she requested as she settled down into an easy crouch, watching him with curious black eyes.

[digyourman]

There was a world of nuance and mystery in that smile, but Larry didn't ask for explanation. Some secrets were better kept, and God knew he had plenty of his own. It was pretty regardless, even with the sharpness, and he hitched his own mouth briefly up in reply.

Looking down to his guitar, he took a moment to roll over musical options in his mind and then burst into the bright opening strum of 'Tin Man.' Hair falling across his eyes, he began to sing in an easy, clear voice and then glanced up to his audience as he continued.

[nebaritralk]

Chiana had settled down on the wall, one leg dangling off of it and the other folded against her chest so she could wrap her arms very loosely around it and rest her chin on her knee. She was watching the human closely as she listened; the melody was so foreign to her, the simplicity and warmth of the instrument and his voice. She didn't understand half of the lyrics, though, or what they were referring to, so a small frown appeared between her brows as she tried to figure out what the song was about, really.

[digyourman]

For someone who hailed from some far-flung planet, Larry supposed just about any song he could choose would be at least a little confusing. The songs he favored tended to skew toward cliche: Pop culture references and catchy melodies masquerading as depth of meaning. Still, he guessed everything was relative.

Finishing, he settled his hand against the strings to quiet them. "Where I come from, there's a story about a girl who is carried away by a tornado to a magical world," he explained. "There's a tin man who helps her along the way, and all he wants in the world is a heart. They go on a long journey, and have to kill a witch– Anyway, at the end, the wizard in charge gives the tin man an honorary heart. But the point of the story is he didn't really need a real heart, because he had heart all along. You know, like figuratively." He tilted his head in consideration and huffed out a soft laugh. "It's actually kind of a crazy story now I think of it, but I loved it as a kid."

[nebaritralk]

"It sounds crazy," Chiana agreed, lifting her head up from her knee and giving him a quick, sharp smile. "Good thing I like crazy. Why'd they have to kill the witch?"

[legendthatwas]

Martha'd gone for a walk after she had something to eat, but hadn't quite expected to run into anyone else, and certainly not anyone playing a guitar. The song was familiar, through vague wisps of childhood memory from her parents' divorce crossed with a country-style track that had been popular on Radio One for a bit when she was in secondary school; enough that she could follow where the melody was going, if not the words, and even if she wasn't used to a male voice singing it.

It took her a moment to realise it was Larry singing, and she blinked, wasn't sure if she should interrupt--something in the tone of his voice told her to wait. So she did, half-perched on a nearby wall. "You're really quite good, Mr Underwood," she said, with a faint smile, the kind that said you can tell me to get lost.

((the player would like to note hir favourite version is this one.))

[digyourman]

"You been stuck in this place too long," Larry answered with a wry tilt of his mouth. He was pretty sure the opposite was true even if Martha had never said as much out loud, but the self-deprecating response was instinctual. Somehow, in that long trek from Callie to Brooklyn and almost all the way back again, he'd gone from taking compliments too easily to not being able to take them at all.

Fingers stilled against the guitar strings now, he nodded Martha's way. "How've you been?"

[legendthatwas]

"Maybe so," said Martha, with a raised brow and a smirk to indicate that she recognised the reaction and was giving him some gentle grief over it, "or maybe music in my day's utter rubbish, so I'm easily impressed? Take your pick."

She stretched out her legs in front of her and considered her toes along with Larry's question, the capri pants she'd bought in the shop just right for the late summer evening temperature. Not too hot for a Londoner's taste, like the hotel had been for most of August, but not cool out yet.

Looking up, Martha clearly came to a conclusion regarding the level of truth and exposure she was interested in, and said, "I'm getting by. Feeling unsettled, to be honest, but that's how things have been for me for..."

It was always confusing, trying to figure out how long things had actually been. "For a year or two, now. Like there's something I should be doing but I can't figure out what it is. And you?"

[digyourman]

The words rose to Larry's lips, instinctual: I'm fine. And he supposed that from a certain sort of perspective–One he'd be better off trying to see from more often–he was exactly that. Fine. Not great, not even good, but with nothing in the world he could reasonably complain about. He was here, wasn't he? He was alive, he was well fed, his worries were distant and nebulous.

He hesitated, though, and then huffed out a quiet, resigned breath.

"Not too far from that same feeling, myself," he admitted, and found that as he said it, he was glad he had, glad that Martha was someone who could relate in some small way. "Feel a lot like I'm spinning my wheels." Pausing, he scratched at the back of his neck and then peered back up at Martha through the mop of his hair. "Frannie's been gone a few weeks now. Pretty sure she's not coming back."

[legendthatwas]

Martha watched Larry hesitate, and shifted a little on the concrete of the wall to try and find a more comfortable position. The grit of the material caught just a little against the denim of her trousers, making a soft sandy crunch that was almost more palpable than audible. It reminded her a bit of sitting outside school as a kid, a sense memory that was there and gone in an instant.

She didn't feel like a kid otherwise though. Adult worries, hell, bigger than adult worries, now that she knew just how precarious the universe could be, and how easy things could slip away. Like, it seemed, Frannie.

"Oh shit," she murmured, looking back at Larry. "I'm really sorry. I know that doesn't do a lot of good, but...I hear you. Just when you think things are figured out and that everything's fallen into place, to move on from where you were at, life has to throw a bloody loss at you." Her lips twisted. "Just to keep things balanced, yeah?"

[digyourman]

"I don't think I'm ever gonna have things figured out," Larry admitted. "There are people come in and out of here everyday, walking through like they know exactly where they are and why. I used to think maybe I just wasn't capable of understanding why I'm here; now I think maybe I'm just not meant to." And wasn't that a bitch.

"I feel like she musta gone back home, though," he abruptly continued, sitting up straighter like the physical effort could force a silver lining. "So that's good. That's where she belongs anyhow. Not here always wondering if there was anything else."

[legendthatwas]

"I have yet to figure out the trick, exactly, myself," said Martha with a wry twist to her mouth, in reference to their compatriots who did come and go at will. "It'd be useful, that--but I do find I tend to land here when I need to be anywhere but home." And maybe that was it, that that touch of uncertainty in her life did her a hell of a lot of good; that she needed to have some bit of adventure alongside day to day life or she'd go mad.

She cleared her throat, pushed a stray strand of hair back against her scalp. "Maybe you're where you need to be, and maybe Frannie is where she needs to be. It's a pretty damn rubbish theory, but it's one at least; though that never stops me from keeping on asking why, anyway. Maybe you're the same."