The club that hosted the pre-festival party was only small, and the festival organisers appeared to have booked it for the night. The music was decidedly heavier than normal nightclub fare, and featured more than one of the artists currently circulating, mingling with friends and fans. Austin clutched his drink, and stuck to the wall like glue. Everyone was so friendly but it was all a little overwhelming, and the jet lag had him a little loopy. There were just so many familiar faces, faces he’d seen on album covers and in music videos that he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself, other than hide and drink to calm his jangling nerves. 

It was in one dark corner that they found him, two hulking great men with beards that would make a viking proud and faces familiar in a vague but unplaceable sort of way. Austin looked up at them, and guessed muso. They didn’t look like fans. The grin the larger one flashed him was almost predatory, almost as if he was baring just a few too many teeth. The other throttled a beer bottle in one massive hand and lounged casually against the wall.

“You look lost, little one.” The larger one rumbled, his voice carrying even above the music, though he didn’t seem to struggle to be heard and he certainly wasn’t shouting. Austin would have bridled at that - he wasn’t exactly short himself - but both men towered over him. “We’d be happy to help you find whatever you’re looking for,” the big man purred. 

“You’ll go find yourself another bottle, Garth, and leave the talent alone.”

The bigger man flinched then, folding in on himself as if he’d been unexpectedly stabbed in the back, and quickly shuffled out of the way. His sudden exodus revealed the figure that was standing behind him, one hand on hip and a single finger extended where she had prodded the oversized brute. Austin’s mind, already starting to slur with free booze, took a moment to catch up with his eyes. She was tiny, particularly in comparison to the two giants who now flanked her. They seemed to defer immediately, and dropped back, the smaller one muttering darkly as they melted into the crowd. The little figure frowned with black-painted lips, and then sighed. Only then did she turn her attention to Austin where he stood, dumbstruck.

Something’s not quite right. 

There was a sudden disconnect between what his eyes were telling him and what his ears were. Because he knew this woman, with her dark-smudged eyes and flower crown. And he also knew that voice. But they shouldn’t have belonged to the same person. 

“Drunk wankers.”

“Jim?!”

She paused for a moment, and then grinned up at him. Austin spluttered, and almost dropped his drink on his foot. 

“Hullo, Red.”

It was a good thing that the wall was there, because Austin suddenly had to lean on it for support, lest he fall over. He hadn’t expected to have this meeting until at least tomorrow, and he was unprepared and caught off guard. 

“You can sing?”

Jim laughed, and her ears went an attractive shade of pink as she ducked her chin and broke eye contact shyly. Suddenly all the presence she had commanded in the face of the two giant techno vikings disappeared like smoke. 

“I mean, I guess?”

It wasn’t so much that she could sing. It was just the sheer bloody shock of looking at her, and recognising her goddamn face that rocked him back on his heels. Her nails were painted black, and they twisted nervously in the hem of her skirt as her shoulders hunched in embarrassment. In his wildest dreams he’d never thought Jim would look like this. Hoped maybe, that her voice matched the rest of her, which was cute and bouncy. But even in his most vivid imaginings of their first encounter, he’d never planned for this. 

“You recognise me then?” 

Austin had the sudden, desperate urge to reach out and touch her. His hand got halfway across the space between them before he snatched it back and stuffed it behind his back. 

“You’re kidding, right? Of course I recognise you. I just never knew-”

She shrugged a shoulder awkwardly and peeked up at him with a tiny smile. 

“It was embarrassing, y’know? I should have told you sooner, but we’d already talked for ages when I found out what you did for a living, and that you’d heard our stuff. It got awkward. I couldn’t just go, ‘oh yeah hey, you know that lady? That’s me,’ could I? I’m sorry, man.”

Austin’s throat went dry. It made sense. He desperately wished she’d told him sooner, but he understood a little. He’d always found it uncomfortable to talk to people he knew were fans of what he did. If he hadn’t been drunk he might have been upset, but the booze smoothed outrage down to simple shock.

“What should I call you?” He finally managed. His voice must have come out closer to a whisper than he intended, because she leaned into him then, and smiled.

“Whatever you want, I guess.” 

“Noct.” Austin had to cough before he could continue. “It’s really nice to finally meet you.”

Noct - Jim’s - smile was radiant then, and before he knew it she’d thrown her arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to crush him into a hug. She was surprisingly strong for her size, and Austin felt giddy, standing with her suddenly so close that he could smell the fresh flowers she’d braided through her hair. 

“Its fucking wonderful to finally meet you too.” Noct’s breath tickled his ear. It was a good thing he was still against the wall, because his legs nearly gave out when she planted a kiss on his cheek before bouncing back with a wide smile. 

It was so strange to look at her, humming and bouncing on the balls of her feet in massive black boots. Jim had always been a bubbly, carefree presence online, but it was hard to square that away with what he knew about Vilification, and Noct as a frontwoman. The only footage he’d ever seen of her was from music videos, or one-take vocal performances on NoiseTV. She didn’t give interviews. Noct was an enigma, a strange mix of dark and light influences that married perfectly with her sound. Some of the outfits Vilification came out with were terrifying, and their videos tended to be brutally and unexpectedly violent. Despite that, Noct almost always had flowers in her hair, beautiful, delicate daisies or strange and vibrant Australian natives. 

Her voice was the same. Most of Vilification’s early fame came on the heels of a one-take vocal that Noct had done, one that showcased the stunning, deep quality of her cleans in its intro section, before she opened up to her full range of skills throughout the course of the song. It was probably one of the tracks that best showcased just how broad a technician she was, with an impressive kit of black metal shrieks and deep, gurgling death metal vocals paired with almost cutesy, singsong sections of speak-singing. The ‘reaction’ videos that popped up on the internet in response to the track were a great mix of hilarious and informational, with a number of voice teachers - Dai included - picking apart just what and how Noct did what she did.   

Austin had never really thought of Noct as bubbly. 

A heavy hand landed on the small woman’s shoulder. It did not seem to startle her, though there would have been no way Noct could have heard the man approach over the music. Instead of turning, she tipped back her head and smiled up at Dai who grinned down at the little woman bearishly. 

“You two got acquainted quick,” Dai rumbled. He had a pleasantly deep bass voice, care of a broad chest and a neck that would have made the most sludgy of grind vocalists proud. Austin had heard Dai sing, though he was more coach these days than performer himself, and his voice was exactly what you would expect to look at him. It had taken Austin a long time and a lot of practice to achieve the low false chords that Dai pulled off easily, fighting his own natural anatomy to finally drop down to a place he was satisfied with. 

Dai stepped up beside Noct, and she balanced against his arm to reach up to kiss him on the cheek as well. Her lipstick left a tiny, perfect black imprint on his whiskery cheek and Austin had to stamp down on the flutter in his chest when he thought about the fact that his own cheek most likely bore its twin. 

“We’ve been talking for yonks online, just not as,” Noct swept her hand up and down in front of herself. “Oh! Which reminds me,” there was a tiny black bag at her hip, one that was almost lost against the inky cloth of her dress, save for the delicate silver chain it hung from. Noct paused to rummage in it, and for a quiet moment Austin got to inspect her properly. She was much shorter than most of the women here, with masses of hair so dark that he assumed it was dyed but couldn’t be sure. Her eyes were - surprisingly - normal, a dark brown. Noct often wore contacts on stage, to complement and emphasise Vilification’s eerie ‘look’. Everything she wore was black, the dress a delicate mix of lace and velvet with sheer arms and a high, sheer collared neck, legs daintily clad in black tights that disappeared into massive black boots. The only colour on her was the tattoos visible through the lace that covered her from shoulder to wrist, and the paleness of her skin. 

Noct finally found what she was hunting for, and whipped something out of her bag with a flourish. A bracelet sat on her upturned palm, as perfectly black as the rest of her. It was braided with what looked like a mix of fabrics, many textures pressed up against one another, with a delicate line of silver twisted through. It was hitched with a clasp made of tiny dragons’ heads, wrought in silver that kissed at the hinge that kept the bracelet closed. 

“For you,” She held it out to Austin, once again suddenly shy. She coloured easily, he was noticing, as the rims of her ears started to turn pink. Austin accepted it gratefully. His fingers tingled pleasantly when he first touched it, and it seemed to fit his wrist perfectly. Dai nodded appreciatively as he held it up to inspect it, and Noct looked delighted. 

“Awesome. Fabulous. Okay, good. Now that’s done, come introduce me to your gremlins, Austin.” She spun with a flourish, and almost immediately seemed to be swallowed up by the crowd, which seemed to part around her so she did not have to shoulder her way through. Dai fell into step beside Austin as they trailed after her.

“Make sure you don’t take that off,” Dai nodded to the bracelet that hugged Austin’s wrist. “I think she’d be sad if you did."