Music is my anti-drug

@"Der Lampman"

Iliril of the Chant

Iliril was actually off campus for once. He was still trying to decide how exactly he felt about that but his sentiments seemed to be overwhelmingly in favor of being frozen in a deep state of shock and fear. He was already regretting everything done that day but there was just no helping it. A teacher that he had met early while lingering around the music department (one with blue hair? The man had been unusually short, too, to the point where Iliril had mistaken him for a young child) had told him to 'dress like a normal person for once,' which he had taken to mean 'take off the damn horns you idiot.' It was in his closet, so he had just opted to wear the academy's standard uniform. It was less work. It was also kind of itchy and he was trying not to fiddle with the cloth too much.

Then the teacher had brought him all the way out to the downtown area before simply leaving him there. For his own good, the Chants mage had been told. He would be picked up in a few hours, if he didn't manage to make his way back on his own.

A few hours. A few hours surrounded by technology. Iliril was still convinced that was a weird way of saying magic that people didn't consider magic for some reason.

There did seem to be a few music shops around where he had been left, at least. That teacher had made good on that promise. He still felt terrified, though, like he didn't belong. But looking through the windows, he could see so many instruments. Iliril sulked in the shadows for who knew how long, viciously debating with himself. On one hand, he didn't really want to be there. On the other hand, music.

That was his ultimate weak point, really, so after maybe a half an hour of pointless struggling, he gave up and zeroed in on a smaller shop that seemed more tucked away than the rest. Nervously, he pushed the door open and went inside.

Iliril of the Chant

The sound of an unfamiliar instrument filled his ears the moment he stepped inside the shop. It wasn't woodwinds, that was for certain, but it also didn't sound too much like the stringed instruments he was used to. Frowning slightly in thought as he tried to place it with the usual instruments at Sard, Iliril kept to the walls, well away from the other people.

There was a girl playing some sort of large instrument with a shiny black exterior. The way she played it reminded the mage of zithers but as he approached carefully, there wasn't a single string to be seen. Her fingers kept hitting a row of black and white rectangles. A hammered dulcimer, then? It seemed about right but it was definitely the largest one Iliril had ever seen.

He was staring. There were some other people who were, too, but it seemed like she had been playing long enough that people were mostly listening in to fill the time before moving on to other things. The shop had other instruments, of course, but Iliril really wanted to know how this one worked.

It looked like there were levers to help the sound come across? He watched the girl's feet until he figured it out. One of the levers seemed to make vibrato and the other created a staccato effect. He still had absolutely no idea what the third one did, however. The actual strings were probably inside. By the shape of the instrument, Iliril guessed that it was kind of shaped like a harp, if somebody were to lie it down. Maybe this was just this world's version of a harp? But when he glanced to the side, he could see that there were plenty of normal harps around, too.

He edged a bit closer as people started to depart. It seemed like part of the instrument could be lifted up to see what was inside. Doing so while somebody was playing, however, was simply rude. He would just have to wait, however long it took. Only a deaf person, however, wouldn't have recognized just what kind of song was being played. It was a lonely sort of sound, the kind not often made for communal chants.

Really, Iliril could relate.

Without meaning to at all, he found himself next to one of the harps. It wasn't his instrument of choice but it was close enough to a zither that he had already studied it to some extent. Running a fingernail lightly over the strings, he first determined which strings were which notes. Then, with that done, he began to pluck out an accompaniment. It was almost an absent action, born out of months of not having really had an opportunity to produce anything at all.

Iliril of the Chant

The strings felt strange under Iliril's fingers. It wasn't just the material which was alien to him, it was also the fact that he hadn't seriously touched a harp in quite some time. But it was soothing to be able to hear something familiar again, something that was completely unrelated to magic, which he could simply enjoy. These days, it seemed like everything that defined him could be traced back to the World of the Diamond. Just not this, thankfully. This was something that Iliril, for once, could do on his own.

He was choosing not to, however. The desire to accompany somebody else's music was instinctive to him and as a Chants mage, he had never been used to the idea of trying to overpower another part. All of the different instruments in an ensemble were supposed to harmonize and since this was not his own score, Iliril only filled in the holes that he felt the other player leave behind, the ones that were naturally created by a solitary person.

There was a question in the other player's melody that made him purposely falter in answer. I'm intruding, I know, the mage was saying, through a quiet crescendo. But I'm not trying to steal this music from you. How could he? It violated all basic orchestral etiquette, being one of the most underhanded things a musician could do. In the group, no one person should outshine the others unless it was planned from the start. Maybe not everybody would start together but they would surely end together and this was the sort of pack mentality that Iliril subscribed to.

He was good at following. He didn't need to be the dominant part of the score. He just wanted to be part of it. That was all.

Iliril of the Chant

He settled into the changes as best as he could. The way that the girl was playing, flowing from one side of the emotional spectrum to the next, wasn't much in the way of what he was used to. Chants had much more of a uniform undercurrent running through them, a baseline that he could expect to hear the ghosts of as the music went on. Maybe there was a baseline here, too, but he was so unused to it that he stuck more closely to the main melody than usual, touching back to it every time it seemed like the accompaniment might gain too much independence.

The music that spilled out between the two of them was not some smooth, glided score. It was an uneven piece but not the sounds itself were never coarse, always a fair sign of the emotion put into the mere act of playing. Iliril appreciated the emotion, simply because he was usually overly emotional and people who were like this tended not to judge each other. One of the hardest things to pull off, in his opinion, was to pair an emotional player with a technical player. Something had to give for that to be possible. But as he followed along this path that somebody else had carved out, there came a quiet space where, at last, he finally met the person at the end.

Iliril jerked a little at the vocal word, taken off guard. The surprise on his face from having actually been acknowledged quickly turned into an expression which clearly showed he had no idea how to respond. Glancing around uneasily, he answered back, "H-hell-lo?" And cringed at the same of his own timid stutter. That was the most frustrating part. Given an instrument, Iliril was perfectly eloquent. Take the instrument away and. And this was what he produced.

Iliril of the Chant

The pause that followed his greeting was an awful void that seemed to stretch on for eternity. For that entire time, all that he could think of was how utterly stupid he seemed and how he should have just kept his mouth shut and pretended to be mute. In Iliril's mind, he had just broken something rare and wonderful. It was completely his fault. He always ruined things like that. He should have known better than to step out of line.

But as the mage stared nervously at that other person, the he saw her unexpectedly smile. Was there even a trace of mockery there? He thought there wasn't but his paranoia made him think that perhaps he had seen wrong, guessed wrong. Who even knew? People better than him, certainly.

It was a relief when the music started up again. Iliril took after the new melody with fevered haste, using it as a shield against his anxieties. The turn that the music had taken wasn't one that seemed particularly natural to either of them, he thought, but he was grateful for it all the same. Each staccato nudged off more and more clips of worry.

I'm really rather boring. For a little while, he wrestled with the beat, dragging it down into something abysmally bland and generic. Easy to play, easy to listen to. But absolutely worthless in terms of creativity, whether or not the quality was any good. A few measures passed and Iliril played a cascade of notes ascending back up to the lively pace that had been previously set. Decent at music, at least, I hope? Even if he viewed that with some uncertainty, it really was something that he had relative confidence in. Of course, there would always be better out there but for who he was, Iliril thought that would be all right.

He sighed to himself quietly as the other musician began to hum. For the other questions he found in the music, how else could he convey his answers? The mage thought for a few moments before hesitantly beginning a butchered chant. The language was an ancient one from back on the World of the Diamond, ceremonial but beautiful. Since he stuttered initial consonants, Iliril left them out, or slid them to the end of syllables instead.

Softly, he began, "al mal il um uest an o-"