“Oh, Nikase? What a lovely surprise!” said Bahar Araullo, without a doubt surprised to see Nikase standing in her foyer. “What can I do for you?”

“I hope I’m not intruding,” said Nikase, jumping straight into explaining her spontaneous appearance. “I just happened to be on a walk when I remembered my dream from last night. There was a song playing in the background—one you played on the piano repeatedly when we were kids—and I don’t remember the name of it. I would like to transcribe it for the harp.”

“Oh, hm, did it go?” She waved her over to the sitting area’s entryway, “Come, we’ll figure it out together.”

Nikase had grown up in the Case d’reh Falo, and she’d had many core memories of her siblings and Bahar running through the magnificent hallways, designed for the last King of Dofev. She’d lived a majority of her life, knowing little of her family’s importance in the Dofec government. It wasn’t until she had first visited Bahar that she became aware of their differences in upbringing. 

And Bahar’s family did not live humbly by any means. Nikase knew for a fact that the Araullo’s were significantly important.

Still, the halls were so empty and quiet here. No wonder Bahar spent so much time at the Case d’reh Falo as a kid. 

“It’s nothing by Davero, Sonare, Bross or any of the popular composers. Nor is it a concerto, I believe.” Nikase said, stepping into the sitting area. “I can probably play you a part of the melody on the piano.”

“That’s perfect, I was playing for Rienar anyway.” 

Bahar’s sister was sitting between a window and the pianoforte in her wheelchair. She had been in an accident a few years ago and as a result was not very mobile. She was older than both Bahar and Nikase, and was absolutely stunning. Her face was slimmer than her sister’s, but Bahar was growing into a young woman of a similar aura. 

“Good morning, Rienar,” Nikase greeted. “Sorry to intrude on your afternoon. I’ll try to be quick.”

“Oh nonsense, you know Rienar gets sick of having only my company. You’re welcome here anytime.” Bahar sat at the piano. Hers an ornate black antique worth twice Nikase’s harp, La Retgza Delilah, and that had been custom-made. 

The piano was a family heirloom previously called Gli Miragivaza, which Bahar had reworked into ‘Gli Miragivaza Emilia’, which was Old Dofec for ‘the miracle Emilia’.  She’d once told Nikase that she’d named her after a character in a book. These were the sort of things you only told other musicians in confidence because personifying an inanimate object sounds ridiculous to anyone who doesn’t know of the kinship between an artist and their instrument. 

Nikase didn’t sit down, she stood on the side of the piano with the higher register and pressed her finger down on G, trying to find the correct key of the melody in her mind before she lost it. 

“It had a part that went like this,” she played a riff and hummed the harmony. 

“Hm.” Thoughtfully, Bahar worked off the melody and reverse engineered the rest of the main theme. “Is it, The Baron of Farlowe? Here, this is it from the beginning.”

She hardly struggled to get into the depths of the song. The second her foot found the sustain pedal, the muscle memory pulled her through the song like a breeze moving and shaping clouds, molding them into a parade of dancing creatures. Leaping, reaching, rising and falling with the left hand of the song. 

The lighter keys induced a trance. Nikase, mentally, was flailing, panicking, and falling into the widening hole in her heart. She tried to swim away from the bottom, but wave after crushing wave kept crashing down on her, pushing her further into the hole. 

Bahar stopped playing abruptly, and Nikase omitted a light gasp that sounded like a hiccup.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“Y-yes, I believe so.” She swiftly wiped the tears on her cheeks with her sleeves and nodded. “Sorry, how embarrassing.” 

Her friend grinned, “If anything, you flatter me with your tears. If there is anything music should do, it is elicit emotion.”

Yet, Nikase hadn’t been able to do so in so long. 

“You said it was called The Baron of Farlow.” 

Bahar’s eye lit up, and she rose from the piano. “You would’ve never found it on your own, it was a small opera commissioned by Yamil the 4th, from Hymn Mertins. It was a horrible little play but the music was fantastic. I stumbled upon the music by chance.” She lifted the bench’s seat and riffled through its contents until she found the specific thin booklet she was looking for. “Here, I have tweaked the way I play it a bit. The dynamics and such. If it’d help, I can record it for you. I don’t have the equipment for it, but I know where I can borrow it.”

Nikase took the booklet, and flipped through the music. “Don’t worry about recording it, you’re so busy. Thank you though, this is already an immense help.” 

Bahar was on Dofev’s Long Table, a position on the governing council she inherited from her father after he died without male heirs. She was currently the only women on the Table so she was fighting an uphill battle on the daily. Nikase had witnessed firsthand how horrible she was treated, and Bahar always handled those interactions with grace. 

The irony of all of it, was that the Long Table had at one point been made up of mostly women. 

“Oh, it’d be no inconvenience to me. I love that sort of thing.” She clasped her hands together. “Besides, I know how limited the repertoire is for the harp. I look forward to hearing your arraignment.” 

That was true, the harp had been invented after many of the great composers had passed. The instrument, as a result, borrowed from other instruments or previous iterations of the harp. 

A bell rang off in the foyer. 

“I’m sorry, are you expecting someone?” Nikase asked, preparing to excuse herself. 

She shook her head, “Not at all, please take a seat. I’ll be right back.”

The harpist nodded, and took a seat in a chair next to Reinar. 

The incident that limited her mobility also limited her speech. She was unable to form long sentences anymore, and would get by primarily by nodding and such. Visitors, old friends, all found this awkward to be around, and Nikase often got secondhand embarrassment from the way they babied her. 

Nikase hadn’t known Reinar incredibly well, but she knew that were she in her position, she would want to be treated like a normal person. As such, Nikase would always talk to her like any other person. She got the impression Reinar appreciated it. She’d even spoken a few times around her. 

“It’s been very hard for me to play the harp lately, so it’s nice to be excited about something music related again,” she smiled at Reinar. 

She flipped through the booklet in her hands, scanning though the numbers until she found the one that she’d inquired about. It was a long piece, fortunately with no chromatic scales and little staccato. 

“It’s ambitious of me, for sure. Few pieces written for piano work well for the harp, but the few that are, can even sound better than the instrument they were created for. Don’t tell Bahar I said that.” Nikase winked. 

“I remember that song,” Reinar said with a distant look in her dark eyes. “It’s nice to hear it again.”

“It is.” 

A crystal clear image of a young Bahar, Onixe, and Nikome sitting at the upright piano, in their theater camp’s storage room, formed in that space above Nikase’s head. The instrument, old, a little broken, with a few keys out of tune. Reinar walking in with the desserts she’d snuck in from the kitchen. 

Their laughter at the realization that they’d accidentally missed their lunch period, and their delight in sharing the pastries. A snapshot she’d store away for future reference. 

From the hallway, she caught the sound of her sister, Onixe’s voice. “Did your new friend tell you that?” She was doing that passive thing she would do when she was pretending to be cool with something that obviously bothered her.  “You know, you can’t keep her Baha, she’ll likely leave with her employer.”

It wasn’t surprising that Onixe would visit Bahar. They’d been close growing up, closer than Nikase and Bahar, as the two were the same age, and Nikase was 2 years younger. Onixe was protective of her friend, so Nikase watched from afar, hoping to one day find that friendship in someone. 

It wasn’t until she was older that Nikase realized that was she was seeing and longing for was something deeper than a friendship. 

“You are incredibly concerned with her, Onixe. That is for her and I to worry about,” Bahar’s voice was calm, it always was. Like she was used to deescalating her surroundings. 

Nikase could hear her sister’s pacing.

“If you were married, you could do whatever you’d like with her.” 

Bahar sighed, “There’s more to life than sleeping with your friends, Nix.”

“What are you trying to say, Baha?”

“Nothing.”

Nikase glanced at Reinar, and wondered how many of the same sort of conversation Reinar had witnessed silently. She felt bad for eavesdropping, but it couldn’t be helped at this point. 

“Do you think you’re better than the rest of us because you haven’t married? You’re the only one that thinks so. Just marry my brother already.” Onixe was angry. She’d talk the same way to Nikome when she was losing an argument. 

“I don’t think I’m better than you, nor do I think I’m better than your brother. If anything, he can do better than an old maid like me.”

“But he likes you.”

“And I respect him enough to not take advantage of the fact.” 

“Urgh, why are you so passive about it?” exclaimed Onixe. “ Just admit that you’re mad about the other night. I didn’t force you to dance.” 

“I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“You don’t like that I flirt with you in public. It wasn’t public, it was Nikase.”

They were talking about the Green Capped Messenger situation. It was interesting that Onixe would say that about Nikase, seeing as the younger was sure that if she knew Nikase was present for this conversation, she’d lose her marbles.

Bahar’s voice quieted, “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s that you know how I’ve felt about you in the past, and yet you continue to do it. I know you don’t mean it, but it reminds me of a time when I thought you might.” 

“I’ve always meant it.” Onixe was too emotional to lower her voice. “What do you mean ‘in the past’? You spend a few weeks with some visitor and what? You’re done with me?”

“No. This was far before that. Nothing has changed in the last few weeks.”

Onixe’s pacing stopped. “Baha, this would be so easy if you got married. I don’t know why you fight it. You live in this pretend make believe world, where you think you can change the rules. It was a nice gesture at first, but when are you going to see that it's a huge waste of time? What do you have to lose? We could be together.”

None of this was new news to Nikase. Bahar looked at Onixe a certain way a whole life. The same way her brother looked at Bahar. But Nikase didn’t know if Onixe looked at Bahar that way, or if she only liked the attention. Her sister was closed off emotionally, and was overall a hard character to read. 

“Me avoiding marriage isn’t about us. There are other things, important things, things that affect other people, that I have to do.” 

“I’m not important… I see. Goodbye.” The clicking of her heels marked her exit. 

“Onixe—” The door slammed.

Bahar remained in the foyer for a minute, collecting herself or processing what had just happened. After the minute passed, she joined Nikase in the sitting area. 

“I apologize that you had to hear that,” she said with a cool, fragmented smile. “I was going to tell you that you were here, but I didn’t expect the tangent the conversation took.” 

“If anything, I’m sorry for intruding.” Nikase shut the book in her hand and added thoughtfully, “You know, you’re not the unreasonable one here. Onixe has a bit blind spot when it comes to certain things.” 

“You are right, my friend.” She tucked her long black hair behind her ears. “Can I call you my friend? I know growing up we were not close, but I feel like we’ve become kindred spirits over the last year and half.”

Nikase nodded, “In truth, I’d always admired your friendship with my sister. But for her sake, I made space between us. You know how quick she is to envy.”

“I know how quick she is to envy.” She smiled, wholly this time. “Your sister has a hard time letting people into her bubble, and when she does, it makes it harder for her to leave her bubble and see the world outside it. Sometimes I have to remind her that things exist outside of it, that is all. But I’m tired of living in the bubble, so now I will call you my friend. Please, visit often. Reinar likes you, and she hardly likes anyone.”

Nikase’s eyes fell on her fingers. Suddenly she felt the shared sentiment, she was tired of protecting the bubble, and in truth, she really needed a friend.