The Wanderin’ Wanderlust + the real Wanderlust
1016, Mainly
Peach has fallen asleep on the desk in Esmund’s study. She had gotten a good rhythm to the bullet-making process, but eventually the ticking of the clock and a lack of conversation from Esmund’s end had lulled Peach to sleep.
She dreams of a memory. It feels true, even if some of it might be colored by Peach’s innate tendency toward storytelling.
Peach is on shift at the Wanderlust, but she is letting her mind drift back to earlier in the day.
There had been a test. It hadn’t been important - Gilgain had told them as much, that no matter their results or scores they’d review and attempt the material again. He wanted to see how much they could “glean from the text” before starting something new. Then there had been a whole page of reading. One of those hard texts, without story to it, no dialogue to break it up or to picture properly while she read. It had taken Peach ages, and then she hadn’t known what to do with it. The questions were about things she was supposed to have figured from the reading, but Peach didn’t see how she could have found that information. It wasn’t there. How was she supposed to figure what the result of the experiment may have been if the variables were different, if the people were different…that wasn’t the information they’d been given in the text.
Peach had re-read, but then it had seemed even more confusing.
In the end, she was the last to finish, and she had been so aware of it - Esmund had finished first, then Ava, but then even Kaisi had been done and so Peach knew she had to turn her paper in with dash - to make sure everyone knew she’d been slow on purpose, to be funny.
Peach finished her last line of response - not writing anything that particularly addressed the question, but enough to fill in the space with large bubbled letters. She’d handed the finished test to Gilgain with a sheepish grin. “What can I say,” she’d said, “I just couldn’t stop writin’!”
She’d been embarrassed, but she’d laughed it off. And it would be fine, she knew that. Gilgain was a good teacher, and he never just did things the one way, so Peach knew she wouldn’t really fall behind, but watching it click for the others while the pieces in her head stayed in place had been…
“…’somethin’ else,” she says, aloud, under her breath.
The patron seated at the bar in front of her snorts and Peach’s attention is pulled back to the Wanderlust.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” says Peach, eyes wide, smile on, “I was a million miles away. I mean to say can I get you somethin’ else?”
The patron - a rough-chinned half-orc - asks for a refill and a Fisherman’s pie.
“The Shepherd’s pie is better,” Peach chirps, the banter automatic, “You can get fish anywhere out there, but this is the best spiced lamb you’ll find on this side of the sea.”
The patron smiles, showing a mouth of cracked tusks, and agrees to the suggestion, doubling the size of the order and adding a side of fried potatoes at Peach’s further suggestion. Peach grins, “Good choice,” she says, dropping a wink.
It was the only choice, really - the Wanderlust was out of Fisherman’s pie - but this way, the patron felt like he’d made the decision, and instead of being let down he’d enjoy what was, in all current honesty, the better pie, in that some pie is better than none.
By the time Peach returns with the order, the main room of the Wanderlust is starting to fill with the murmur of a small crowd and the unmistakable notes of a tuning harp. Peach smiles the patron away with his tray laden down with Shepherd’s Pie and turns her attention to the small stage at the front of the room.
Cheralie Morel is sitting, perched elegantly on the edge of one of the Wanderlust’s barstools, allowing her harp to rest against her knee. The harp was beautiful in itself - a gorgeous sweeping instrument with carved details - dark and rich at the edges of the harp, smoothed and brightened, burnished slightly, where the instrument rested against the musician. Cheralie’s dress showed a small amount of shine, too, and Peach noticed it like she noticed the calluses on Cheralie’s fingertips - beautiful because they had been made by the making of music.
While Cheralie is playing, Peach falls into a dance that is familiar to her feet - she’s used to moving around the Wanderlust, navigating through the different tables and knots of patrons. When there’s a proper performance (and Peach isn’t trying to entertain folks herself) she tries to move quickly and and quietly - still doing the necessary serving and bussing but careful not to distract from the music.
Because Peach is listening, too.
Not just with her ears, keen though they are, but with her skin. With some sixth sense that just helps Peach keep balance and keep time. She can feel the way the harpstrings move the air around them - sending ripples of sound like spice through broth, infusing the room with deep, thrumming resonating flavor that Peach can’t help but keep dipping back into with a nod of her head and the shift of a hip, sliding into dance without losing her step around the room.
The rest of Cheralie’s set flows into a combination of familiar favorites and a few specific requests - Cheralie obliges, picking out a sharp staccato shanty for the crowd of sailors who asked for a whaling tune, and even allowing a red-faced dwarf with an accordion to join her for a few rousing reels of a cyclical mining song, which the dwarf further accompanied with a round of half-remembered-half-hiccupped lyrics that sent him wheeling happily back to his seat.
It’s late in the evening as Cheralie finishes her last few songs. Peach watches, listening, enchanted until the last note rings through the air - the harpstring thrumming, the cord vibrating so quickly that it seemed to be several strings at once overlapping yet invisible.
After the set, Cheralie stays - graciously accepting a few drinks, and talking softly with Miranda while Cheralie’s husband, Emauve, moves gracefully behind the stage - in one fluid motion lifting his wife’s harp into one hand, the stool into the other, and clearing from the room, allowing the women to continue talking undisturbed for a few moments more. Miranda smiles at Emauve’s back, and then turns her attention to Cheralie.
Peach tries not to listen, but she listens anyway - not following the content of the conversation, only the rhythm of it - waiting for her cue. The beat. The break in conversation when Miranda would nod and Peach would come and refresh the patron’s drink and take over the table. A practiced turn in a dance she and her mother did a dozen times a night.
Peach is mid-step, half turned away from the table when Cheralie stops her. Just a gentle pat to Peach’s hand, but it breaks Peach from her table-clearing dance and makes her realize Cheralie is talking to her - No, not talking to her, but singing along, scatting a quick harmony to a version of her own earlier harp melody, to a song Peach hadn’t even noticed she was singing.
Peach feels heat rising into her face, spreading color across her cheeks and ears, and she laughs at herself to break away from the moment. “I’m sorry,” she says to Cheralie, “I wasn’t makin’ fun or anything. I didn’t even realize I was doin’ it.”
“Don’t apologize,” says Cheralie, and her speaking voice is just as rich as her singing - a deep flowing contralto that reminds Peach of the thick syrups they sometimes used to flavor desserts and cocktails behind the bar. “What were the lyrics you were singing? Did you write them up yourself?”
“Oh, it’s nothin’. Just about my day. Sometimes I think things over and put ‘em to whatever song I’ve got in my head and it helps me remember it all better, or work around some problem I’m figurin’.” Peah smiles, “My mom calls ‘em kitchen songs.”
“Well what’s today’s song, sugar?”
Peach tries to deflect with another joke, but Cheralie catches Peach’s hand and holds it in her own - softly, and with no pressure at all, and Peach stops, and decides instead to answer honestly.
“I’m a little lost at school, I guess,” she says. “I’m not doin’ great when we’ve gotta focus, really study the words that are written and remember how they’re written up.” She looks past Cheralie and toward the stage beyond. “It’s different when someone’s speakin’, or singing. Moving, you know? Something I can track with my eyes and ears and all of everythin’ instead of just figuring out from the readin’.”
Cheralie turns Peach’s hand over in hers, and hums a few low notes. In a moment, Peach can feel Cheralie’s voice resonating up through her hand, into Peach’s own fingertips, and sending goosebumps along the girl’s arm, making her hair stand on end. Peach laughs, pulling her hand away, and Cheralie smiles. “You know, a good musician can feel music like that - it’s a part of what helps you have a good ear - why you can follow along with what you hear and add to it.”
“You think I could be a good musician?”
Cheralie raises her brows, and looks sideways at Peach. “I think you are a good musician, Peach, honey. Your mom is right. You’ve got a lot of talent for someone your age.”
“Wait…My mom?”
Cheralie laughs, kindly, “Yes! And you’ve got good lyrical sense, too - those kitchen songs of yours make me want to dive more into songwriting, myself.”
“Ah, I’m not songwritin’,” says Peach.
“You are, though. You’ve got excellent words and your voice is strong and clear. Because it’s not only the lyrics, is it? It isn’t only words - you also have to understand the cadence and the tempo, you have to be able to anticipate what the other musicians are going to do, where they might take their own performances…and you know, that’s all something you can learn to put to paper, too, like when you have to write in school.” Cheralie pulls a small scroll case from under the table - taking a moment to unfurl the papers and show them to Peach.
Peach had never seen music written this way before. She’d written her own songs, her own lyrics, or taken something Kaisi or Salinger had written and then made up a tune to go with it, but she’d never known there was a way to write down the music itself.
Cheralie brings Peach’s attention to the opening bars of the piece, “You see, this is the song I was playing earlier, the one you were singing just now,” she indicates half-shaded ovals, and an area where the ovals have been cut further into quarters, and sometimes x’d out altogether. “These are beats - rests - but you can do a percussive aspect here, too, depending on your instrument. The harp isn’t as complicated as it seems - the notes move up and down like your own vocal scale, and you can see that here,” Cheralie indicates a series of overlapping notes, tripping in sixteenths down the lines of the page. “And you can play with all of this, once you know the structure,” Cheralie continues, “because writing the music in this way means you’ll be able to repeat it, to replay the song so you can share it again, and so that you can show someone else how to play it, too.” She smiles, “Even once you’re gone, years and years later, someone could play your song again, you just have to write down how to.”
“Would you teach me to do that? How to write it?” Peach asks.
Cheralie laughs, the sound deep and resonant like her singing voice. “Sure,” she says, “But first we’ll have to teach you how to properly take notes.”
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