[PRP] Duet (Lala x Borr)

[Rejam]

It's a bit of a cliche anywhere to say that a bar regular is like a ghost, but it's especially cliche here, where some of them literally are, in a sense, ghosts.

Still, if anyone ever haunted a bar, it was Kallistrate. She was not the model of a tavern regular--petite and straight-backed, a military bearing and a doll-like face, her hair always in some elaborate coiffed confection that must have taken hours to achieve and stood in stark and strange contrast to the drab and unflattering utility of her clothing. But she stood her own with any of them, and had a reputation for drinking others under the table. She'd even taken a few bets of that nature, not with any kind of jovial fellow-feeling but with an iron jaw and her habitual quiet that said that this was not a friendly competition to her but a point of unreasonable proof of character.

It was running late, inasmuch as the concept of late existed in a place like Borr's, and save for a few dwindling dozers sleeping off his finest (or at least most powerful) ale, the few signs of life were from him and from her; the one supplying drink and the latter morosely and silently putting it away. This was a familiar routine by now. She was not one to be drawn into conversation, but she was also rarely one to entirely lose her bearing, and she was beginning to slump a bit over the bar, and even more uncharacteristically to look a bit disheveled, some strands of hair escaping her meticulous braids from where she rested her head on the hand not occupied with a glass. There were days like this, where she drank more than others. She didn't cause problems and rarely put herself in a position where there was a need to finish them, and she always, always paid her tab, and thus expected it to go unremarked if she put away, perhaps, more than her usual.

iloveyoudie

 

[iloveyouDIE]

Borr wouldn't ask the quiet ones why they came or why they drank. He didn't really need to. Those who felt like chatting would get his listening ear eagerly but those who didn't were left alone. Kallistrate was hardly a stranger to him at this point and while he would always offer a smile, he would never impose any more than was welcome.

He would always encourage the betting though. He would always encourage challengers to her. Mostly for entertainment and even if she was solemn and steely, a bit of competition in the mead hall was never a bad thing.

With this evening being a late one and most already long gone, Borr had left the growler beside her to pour for herself and he instead took up a stool nearby and had produced his lute which he'd spent an inordinate amount of time tuning before he began to pluck at it. She did get a glance, to make sure it wasn't a bother, before the strings were once more gently tested.

rejam

 

[Rejam]

iloveyouDIE

At the sound of the strings being plucked she stirred a bit, scrubbing a hand over her face in the manner of someone debating returning to reality but subsiding almost immediately and refilling her glass as if to make it abundantly clear that she had no plans on going anywhere.

She spoke, rarely. She spoke now, her voice hard and carrying.

"If you must play, play well," she said.  

[iloveyouDIE]

rejam

Borr's lips quirked and made his beard twitch in mild amusement, "Wasn't wanting ta bother you.."

But with permission he began to play more fully, a soft indistinguishable melody that simply filled the air and hung. It wasn't a dominating tune and thus seemed incomplete as it was.  

[Rejam]

iloveyouDIE

It was the only sound for a while, soft chords hanging and barely punctuated by the sound of her glass being replaced on the bar after a drink, the ringing of the bells in her hair when she moved.

After a while she sorted the thread of a melody--not quite, but almost--from the skein of sounds. Not quite the chords of a song she knew, but close enough that she could bend words around it, and for a while she merely played those words in her head: a song familiar to her, close and kept, and hard to avoid thinking of. The song she sings alone in the mountains, braiding her hair as she'd been taught to do to keep her focus on her prayer.

She found herself humming, and it was more than anything embarrassment at being caught so off guard as to hum to herself that led her to lift her voice: a sort of feline, defiant "I meant to do that, of course" that would have fooled no one and especially not her.

And this was no drunken bellow, no inebriated shrill. Kallistrate, quiet and stern and as rigid as a broadsword, lifted a voice of no common beauty into and above the sounds of the lute, a tuneful wail.

There was no mistaking it despite the way she bent it to fit the notes he was playing: a lilting dirge of thuribles and swords clashing, equal parts mournful and triumphant. It's a song sung at the funerals of priestesses after their cores are shattered, celebrating and wailing as they pass through the largest and grandest sacrifice to Death itself.  

[iloveyouDIE]

As the song rose it plucked deeply in his chest, something painful and old, but strong at the same time. He knew the song, how could he not? And as she bent it to his playing, his plucking shifted similarly closer to the tune they all knew.

Borr held a sorrow on his back despite his smiles, in his shoulders, and it seemed to drip down now to his fingers to play for those who had fallen. They were not nameless for the Death clan and in their sorrow and loss there would always be bolstering strength.

Borr watched her sing, carried away by it and barely conscious of his own playing along, too lost in the song itself and Kallistrate's moving voice. He likely would still be strumming softly, even after that particular melody was supposed to be finished.

rejam