/Author's Note: I did not intend to take a 2-year hiatus after the last chapter (how does time even pass by that quickly? How?!), but there you have it! Sorry about that, especially leaving on a cliffhanger. If there's a special section of Hell roped off for writers and authors, I think I m ay have just committed one of the deadliest sins I kinda lost interest in this story, but with a bit of prompting and some rediscovered inspiration, I finally churned this chapter out. Enjoy! End Author's Note/

- Chapter 7 -
The Pearl Moon

Nerves attacked Lumina like summer-born mosquitoes, her feet moving mechanically as she plodded out onto the stage of the empty concert hall. No amount of Relaxation Tea was able to actually relax her, even though Sebastian had packed her a spare flask to bring with her for this particular excursion to the city. The excursion that might just change her life.

"Lumina Wyndham?" a voice asked from the seats. Lumina could barely make out the owner, for the stage lights blotted out much of her vision.

"Yes, that would b-be me."

"A pianist, correct?" the seemingly omnipresent voice asked, "Our piano is to the left. Well, your right." Stage right.

The Orchestra's piano was old, upright and wooden, a veritable behemoth when compared to the sleek and elegant black Bösendorfer grand piano Lumina's fingers were accustomed to. It couldn't be helped, for bringing her instrument all the way from Forget-Me-Not was completely unrealistic – but still, as Lumina took her seat and raised her arms to the keys, the unfamiliarity of the beast in front of her became all too pronounced.

"Pianists are prisoners of their instruments," Romana had once told her, using her wisest tones, "All we can do is make ourselves comfortable and be sure to bring a song to our trial."

"And you'll be playing?"

"Semiletov's Ode to Albireo, Piano Suite."

There was a murmur of interest. "Unconventional."

Then silence.

The keys were heavy under her fingers, and each took a little more strain to push than they usually did. Her fingers didn't fly across the board as they usually did, but seemed to hover languidly. The timbre of the instrument offered a greater range of dynamics, which she attempted to use to her advantage, but in the end the song she had chosen was too complex for her fingers to execute on such a foreign instrument.

Lumina did adequately.

Rising from the unfamiliar seat, Lumina was bathed in the oppressive light once more, ears eagerly awaiting a reaction while her eyes saw nothing beyond the white.
"Thank you, we'll be getting back to you by November." Lumina was used to the cold and professional disposition of the auditions, and gave her thanks to disembodied voice before taking her leave.

As soon as she was no longer under the harsh lighting of the hall, Lumina felt the knot in her stomach momentarily undo itself, only to be redone with a hundred times as much as force as hindsight kicked in. All the measures she had screwed up in, all the flat notes she squeaked out, all the instances she had fallen out of time with the piece - every instance came back to her in the dim lighting of the hallway.

"You sounded lovely." Sebastian's obligatory glorification began, "Semiletov could not have played it better herself."

Lumina nodded her thanks and took her bag from his hand. "Let us catch the next boat, the city air is getting to me," she told him before heading down the hallway herself.

Unsatisfied by the response, Sebastian caught up and asked, "Well, how do you think you did?"

Looking back at him with eyes forcing neutrality, she said, "I suppose we'll just have to wait and see."

And so she had waited, reliving the audition in her head a thousand more times to the point where she wasn't sure what had really happened and what had just been a product of her imagination. Every mistake she had made was etched violently into her memory, like a prisoner's mad carvings on the wall of his cell. The months went by with constant attempts to justify them or to reassure herself that no one had noticed. It may have been manic, but auditions had a tendency to do this to people; not all people, of course, but to people who wanted to win. Lumina was no exception. Once all was said and done, all it came down to was a simple answer of either Yes… or No.

Thus, that November, Lumina stood at 73 Chord, breathing the oppressive city air, her heart caught in her throat as she read the letter in her hands.

It was a resounding No.

# # #

"You'll love this place. Think of it as less of a bar, more of a clinic with a liquid bandage for any kind of ailment: physical, mental, or emotional!"

Emotional. That didn't even begin to describe her at the moment. She was mental, that was for sure. Why did she pick the Semiletov piece? Everyone knows you never audition with a favourite; you choose something nuanced but easy to play, something boring but safe that you could play with your eyes closed. Why hadn't she practiced more? Why had she worn that plain dress to the audition? Why had she drunk so much Relaxation Tea when clearly the caffeine had marred her technique? Why hadn't she spoken louder, instilled her voice with confidence, shown them she was really and truly ready to be part of the esteemed Grace Orchestra?

These factors and more were bearing down on the defeated girl as she followed Muffy listlessly through the city. The last of the wintery sunlight was fleeing , almost before their eyes; it was as eager to leave as Lumina was.

We regret to inform you –

No. Stop thinking about it.

- Not currently accepting pianists of your level –

Words. They're just words. Powerless!

- Only consider a select minority out of the hundreds that audition –

You are not about to let a piece of paper get the best of your emotional state.

- Encouraged to attempt again at a later date –

No no no. Words! Nothing but!

- Best of luck in your future endeavors.

No, she was foolish to underestimate the power of words. People often did, taking words to be nothing but little catalysts used to trigger harmless, intangible ideas in our minds. To think that words were capable only of intangible results was erroneous; to think they were harmless was flat-out laughable. There was nothing intangible about the pain in her stomach, a pain that could have been caused just as effectively by a punch to the gut. To make her body react in such a way, to make her pain physically tangible – it was foolish to think that words were any less dangerous than any weapon.

Words. Nothing but.

# # #

The city stretched out in all directions, like a vast sea beneath them. The streets glowed almost phosphorescently with the streaks of light darting through them, cars speeding along, coruscating. The two girls stood from their glass watchtower, like two birds perched on an oil rig overlooking this sea and its murky depths.

"I'm going to get anoth'r… drink," Muffy stated in a voice far too proud than it should have been, "C'n I get ya somethin', too?"

Lumina turned her eyes to Muffy's, the mulch-green eyes that too, reminded her of the sea. Tinges of red were creeping into the white of her eyes as inebriation set in.

"That's alright, Muffy."

"Naw, dolly! S'my job! Lemme go mix y'something."

"You don't work here."

"You don't work here!"

"… No, No I don't."

With an unwarranted look of triumph shot in Lumina's direction - as if Muffy had somehow won that argument - the blonde attempted to master her legs again and stalked off in the direction of the bar.

This was entirely her element, Lumina realized. Muffy had brought the two of them back to an old favourite of hers, from her days living in the city. A relatively upscale lounge belonging to a well-off hotel, the 'Pearl Moon', as it was called, was on the seventh floor of the towering building. The interior decorator had apparently gone into the project with the words 'black' and 'sleek' in mind, as everything from the seating to the walls were a shade of red or purple, and the lighting so violently dark that one might forget colour existed at all. All the surfaces were made of cold glass, save for the white marble of the countertops at the bar – such a stark contrast, they almost seemed to glow, like they had been hewn from slabs of the moon itself.

The entire far side of the wall was paneled with glass windows, overlooking the city. It had made Lumina nauseous at first – or, it would have, if she still had a stomach that hadn't dropped out of her and into nonexistence since opening the letter.

Before alcohol had rendered her incapable of intelligent conversation, Muffy had explained that she had spent a brief stint working in this very bar, moving from a Pearl Moon patron to a regular and then to an employee – yet she got noticeably murkier about the details when it came to the point in the story where she regressed from employee to patron.

The bar had attracted mainly businesspeople and often those of neighboring cities, appearing in their white button-ups and their charcoal-coloured suits, and Lumina had a hard time imagining the vivacious Muffy entertaining a group of stony-faced highbrows. There was no one here who would sing along with her like Gustafa, who would demand drinking contests like Rock, or whose laugh would shake the very earth around them like Vesta's. No, somehow the quiet burg of Forget-Me-Not seemed to contain more life in its veins than this aggregation of the elite, and it became shockingly clear that, try as she might, Muffy was out of place.

The words 'Muffy' and 'out of place' were still lingering in Lumina's mind when she heard a girlish shriek and the sound of shattering glass. She left her train of thought for the moment and squeezed her way in between tables and suited bodies before appearing at the scene.

Sprawled on the ground with a look of utter shock on her face was Muffy, surrounded by tiny shards of glass that were only visible in the glow of the countertops. She had tried to force her way behind the bar, from the looks of it.

The current barmaid, a busty blonde herself, wore a look of faint irritation, subdued by what seemed like a familiarity for the situation before her. She had pearly white skin and, though a blonde herself, her hair seemed to err on the whiter side of blonde, as opposed to the yellow tone Muffy's had. In fact, sitting in the gaze of this other woman, Muffy's hair looked like running mustard.

"What happened?" Lumina knelt down to pick her friend up, careful to avoid the specks of broken glass.

"Was just gettin' us a drink, Lumi. Y'didn't have to get up! Go si' down!"

The barmaid gave Muffy an exasperated shake of the head and turned on her heels, her platinum ponytail swinging behind her as a male bartender appeared with a broom.

"I think you're supposed to order those, dear." Lumina told her gently, helping her to her feet. The girl who was so poised in her heels earlier that day could now barely put one foot ahead of the other.

"Believe me, thass' not how it used t'be, Lumes. Back – Back then y'didn't have to order nuffin', just waltz in an' – an' help y'rshelf. Times change. Everythin' changes. Everythin' stinks."

"Yes, Muffy, but in those times of yore, you actually worked here." Lumina said patiently, following Muffy back to their corner, "That makes a slight difference, I think."

"Who cares! Everythin' stinks now!"

Muffy's loud, drunken tirade drew the ire of numerous patrons as they passed. Lumina offered them fleeting looks of apology, noting once again how different the Pearl Moon was from the preferred pub of the Forget-Me-Not hamlet. Being loud, boisterous, and insatiably drunk was not only welcome at the Blue Bar – it was encouraged. Here, where the noise barely grew above a faint hum, Muffy may as well have been a stampeding elephant let loose.

A woman with a sharp nose and bags under her eyes pursed her thin lips into nonexistence, and her friend gave a mighty eyeroll. Three businessmen sat around a table, the haze from their discarded cigarette butts hanging over the centered ash tray; they looked up at Muffy, their thick eyebrows raising slightly, the tiniest of lumps appearing in their throats as they looked her over. Lumina scowled at them, and they returned their gazes to their bottles, guiltily staring into them as if they had been caught by their own wives. One man in particular was especially flustered – his eyes clenching shut nervously behind his thick, square glasses, and his head of black, shiny hair bowed low.

"At least they have the decency to be ashamed," huffed Lumina as she and Muffy retook their seats by the towering glass pane of the window, "Not like Rock back home, right?" She tittered, thinking of the blonde player's usual antics.

"Shitty– City p-people are like that. All puttin' up fronts an' hidin' an' k-keepin' secrets." Even while complaining, there was a part of Muffy's tirade that sounded wistful and romantic. It was not unlike the tone of voice she often used when speaking of her less-than-respectful lovers.

"What kind of secrets?" Lumina thought she might as well humor the girl.

"I dunno…" Muffy held her head in concentration, brushing her locks out of her eyes, "Everyone's keepin' secrets. Y'never know what someone 'round here wants. Who they want."'

The city acted like a shield: a bastion for those who guarded risky secrets. Lumina placed her hand gently over Muffy's, and Muffy lifted her head only to reveal sparkling eyes, reflecting the cityscape from beyond the window.

Her makeup sparkled up and down her face, golden bursts of stardust against milky skin, and in moments it looked like the entire cosmos had been transcribed on her gentle features.

# # #

Horses raced across the staticky screen, the great beasts galloping with might to the ends of their respective lanes. A loud and obnoxious announcer called out names and positions and numbers and a crowd of predominantly male voices cried out either in cheer or in chagrin, none could tell.

Muffy and Lumina lay under the twisted covers of the hotel bed, their upper bodies pressed together by the shoulders, their respective hairbands abandoned and their hair set loose and free. They sought comfort in each others' closeness, something that Lumina was absolutely foreign to, but did not reject. Her sleepovers were Mary were certainly nothing like this.

"The city's not so bad, is it?" Muffy asked, staring ahead, a slight quaver in her voice. The question seemed almost rhetorical, but she replied anyway.

"It's lovely."

Muffy relaxed, the obvious tension in her shoulders dissipating. "I know."

Lumina was beginning to suspect that Muffy's ceaseless accolades for the city may have been an attempt at convincing herself, and not the friend she had dragged into its depths.

"Drink some more tea," Lumina suggested, pleased with the effects of the Relaxation Tea thus far – it was a known anti-intoxicant, as Sebastian had once told her with a bemused chuckle. Muffy obliged and took a sip from Lumina's flask.

"It's so warm," she said, holding it tightly with both hands like a child.

The races were coming to an end as the 11 o'clock news began to air. Global news, economics, politics, and local stories all began to run, and Lumina felt like each story ended before it truly began. It was almost overwhelming, the amount of information packed into these short segments, and it served to remind her just how much of the world there was beyond Forget-Me-Not. Everyone back in the Valley, however, couldn't be bothered with matters outside of their own personal affairs. It was one of the charms of living in a mostly secluded commune, deep in the countryside, cut off from most of the modern world…

"You're crying," Muffy remarked unabashedly, her eyes no longer on the TV.

"Homesick. Or something." Lumina replied automatically, touching her fingers to her face, surprised to find that Muffy was right. She had hardly felt them.

"Bull," The blonde lifted herself up, adjusting her nightgown as she did so, and turned to face the younger girl fully. "You haven't said a word since you opened the letter. If it was bad news, you should at least talk about it."

"I don't want to –"

"- Bother me?" Muffy challenged, "Listen, lady: How many times have I come to you with boy problems? How many times have you lent me an ear, and let me talk it right off? This is just how things work between us, 'kay?

Lumina couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt, thinking of all the times she had tuned the talkative barmaid out or offered some half-hearted advice to satiate her. "Muffy, it wasn't exactly boy troubles," she said honestly – for if nothing else, Muffy deserved honesty in exchange for her loyalty, Lumina decided.

"It… wasn't?" scratching her cheek, Muffy seemed genuinely dumbfounded. "What is it then, that's got you more sour than one of Griffin's Stone Oils?"

The words burned like bile in the back of Lumina's throat, and so she spat them out as quickly as possible. "I auditioned for a place in the Grace Orchestra, set my heart on it, worked tirelessly towards that one goal, only to fail. They rejected me, and that's what was in the letter."

'It gives me something to live for,' she could hear herself saying, only days ago, face pressed against the counter at the Blue Bar.

That made a lot more sense to the young woman. "…I'm sorry, sugar. I really, really am." There was a sincerity in her voice that Lumina had not expected – a small part of her hadn't expected Muffy to understand at all. And maybe she didn't, entirely, but if there was something Muffy did understand, it was human emotions. She had a rare and special knack for empathy.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not particularly."

"Babe, you're not doing yourself any favours by bottling it up like that."

"I'm… not bottling anything," The brunette shifted, uncomfortable in the barmaid's unflinching gaze, "There's just not much I can do."

"You could cry." Muffy reached over for the box of tissues on the end table and plopped it in front of Lumina.

"I've got that covered, apparently," she responded with a wry smile, gesturing to her soaked cheeks.

"I mean really cry. Let it out. Own your emotions." The older girl furrowed her eyebrows, looking deadly serious. "You've gotta, every once in a while, you know? It's not a bad thing, Lumi."

Lumina was silent for several moments, still avoiding Muffy's gaze. "There's always next year. I just… I need to practice more. I'll ask Sebastian to find me a proper tutor, or maybe sign up for lessons in the city. That's what I should be focusing on. Crying won't help me, as a pianist."

"But it will help you as an effin' human being, which is sorta important too." She rolled her eyes – prettily, somehow – and inched closer to Lumina. "You wouldn't even touch a single drink downstairs! If I wasn't going to get emotions out of you that way, I'll pull them out now. Like teeth, if I have to."

She slumped lower into the bed, staring wistfully at the television set without taking in any of the information flashing across it (something about a car accident on some street that looked grey and dismal on the screen). "Aunty always said that crying was a waste of fluids and of time. Time that could be spent bettering yourself." As the words came out, so too did more tears.

Muffy rolled her eyes again, but Lumina did not catch her this time. "My mama always said… that even if crying made you weak, it was important to have someone to be weak with. If you can't avoid those moments of weakness, be with someone who makes you feel stronger. If you can really cry with someone… isn't that the most special thing?" Her words, her memories, and her lingering inebriation made her eyes glassy with tears, too.

"I suppose that's… what a mother would say." Lumina said under her breath.

Sitting up again, back straight against the headboard, Muffy flattened out the blanket over her lap, and pat it several times enthusiastically. "C'mon, chickadee."

Lumina looked at her inquisitively.

"Put your head down. … Now, dammit!"

The younger girl did as she was told. "… S'warm."

"Now let it all out."

"…Excuse me?"

Muffy answered with a light stroke of Lumina's hair, curling the brown strands behind her small ears. "Let it all out. Cry for me. Let me be your Mama."

"Muffy, that's ridiculous—" But Lumina's body was more interested in listening to Muffy than her mind was, and her eyes betrayed her. They sat in silence, the television set buzzing with indistinguishable noise, as tears cascaded down her cheeks and into Muffy's lap.

"There's a good girl. C'mon. Don't stop now." Muffy continued to croon, her warm hands raking her hair.

Lumina could hear her aunt's disapproval ringing through her head, and she urged herself mentally to stop. But something – her heart, perhaps – tugged in the other direction, only making her heave and shake with emotion.

"That's right, that's right…"

"Muffy," Lumina sniffed loudly, her throat scratchy and dry and her eyes heavy, "…Sing for me."

"Shh, alright, chickadee, alright. Just let it all out. Mama's here for you."