Log Date: 10/27/98 Log Cast: Aidon Semmes, Cassie, Shenneret Veery, Pallando, Shizznet, Dak, Jali Log Intro: Across the two months or so she's been on Caspar thus far, Shen has managed to run into several colorful individuals, but among those who have repeatedly seized her attention, one of them is significantly more low-key than the assorted Jedi, ambassadors, Marines, and suchlike who have come in and out of the young musician's acquaintance: Aidon Semmes, former soldier. The man's been an enigma to Shenner thus far. His claiming to know a man with her last name in CSA space _still_ troubles her, and his apparent habit of commenting upon her beauty has troubled her too. But Semmes seems, like many of Shenner's acquaintances, to be developing a knack for showing up and provoking her in new and unexpected fashions, and especially when she isn't looking for him.... ---------- Hideaway Beach - Plaxton City Surging whitecaps paint themselves onto the powderlike, white sands of this sliver of beachfront, tucked between the two massive bluffs that encircle Plaxton City. The waves have eaten into several places on the shore, forming rocky outcroppings and small coves, but one long strip is laden with pristine, whispy sand. A few Pula trees jut out, throwing their branches toward the tides. A few hundred meters from shore, a jagged pebble of an island stands defiantly in the surf, holding up an old, unused lighthouse. The afternoon sky above is cloudy obscuring it from sight. -=-=-=-=-=<>=-=-=-=-=- ast leads to West Blake St. - Plaxton City. Aidon arrives from the street. Aidon has arrived. Aidon strolls down from the street. He's carrying a bag with the oblong shapes of several small boxes in it. Cassie leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city. Cassie has left. The beach is fairly deserted, despite the fact that it's not raining. This is exactly how Shenner likes it -- but still, wary of unexpected audiences trying to grab her instrument out of her hands, the redheaded musician has stashed herself comparatively out of the way from the main beach, putting a stand of pula trees between her and the wide stretch of sand. Today, her instrument of choice is flute, her silver one, the tones carrying clear and pure and soft from her practicing place. Pallando arrives from the street. Pallando has arrived. Pallando leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city. Pallando has left. Aidon walks through the dry sand down into that intermediate place where the waves aren't reaching right now, but the sand is still wet. He turns and walks the line for a stretch, and then pauses. The sounds of the flute must just have reached him. He glances toward the stand of trees, and then makes his way to a boulder within easy earshot. The flute keeps up its song, neither slow nor particularly fast, the tones being produced dipping and rising again, lithely and lightly. There's a glimpse of Shenner's russet hair as she bobs her head once, unconsciously, in the midst of her melody. For a few more minutes she plays, volume building, the flute's voice ranging higher into its register, piercingly sweet, till at last it wings its way back down again to a low and earthy note that vibrates in the air for a measure or two before subsiding down into silence. After a long moment, the sound of applause from a single pair of hands may be heard, if anyone is paying enough attention to hear it over the sound of the surf. _Wha...?_ The girl's head snaps up, and around, green eyes seeking out the source of the response to her music. Silver flute still held in her fingers, Shenner straightens where she sits, though she doesn't yet get up. After a suitable time, the applause ends. All that remains is the shinn-shin of the water against the sand and the further-away roar of the waves breaking. Aidon sits silent on his boulder, back erect, waiting for whatever happens next. _Him. Er._ Shenner's green gaze falls upon the man on the boulder, and after a moment, she calls up coolly, "Thank you." Then she drops her attention to her instrument, reaching for a cloth resting on the tote bag beside her. He hadn't been looking precisely at her, but rather out over the water. He looks over to her when she calls, and then nods in that way that's more than half bow. "You're welcome," he calls back. Then he goes back to watching the waves. Shizznet arrives from the street. Shizznet has arrived. Shizznet leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city. Shizznet has left. Shenner is not entirely certain how to take this. She peers up at the figure on the boulder, then returns her attention to her flute, running the cloth through it a few times, then pulling it free again. It takes her a moment or two before she lifts the instrument up to her lips again; perhaps she's a little self-conscious now that she knows there's an audience there. But if she is, it doesn't stop her from beginning to play again, this time something a bit more sprightly of tempo, albeit in a minor key. The man removes his glasses, cleans them, and puts them back on while he listens. Then he is as still as stone. He learned is somewhere, perhaps, in his past. No matter. It's clear that every speck of his attention is focused on the surf and the music. Her back to her listener, Shenner sits ramrod-straight now, her shoulders squared; only her arms show no sign of tension, her slender fingers too absorbed in the making of music to show the same stiffening displayed by her spine. But perhaps the girl's music does it for her, as the melody begins to lay down a complicated stream of eighth and sixteenth notes, interspersed with breathy long tones at the end of musical phrases. He stirs, and then glances towards the stand of trees. Aidon frowns slightly, and then returns his attention to the water. The complex stream of tones, clearly a variation on the usual theme, was what caught his attention. But he stays, and lets the music wash over him like an accusation. As she plays, eventually, the girl's stiff carriage relaxes... some. Venting her sentiments into her music? Shenner doesn't say, but the flute speaks rather loudly for her. Minutes pass as she carries this melody along.... until it climbs higher and higher, seemingly bent on vanishing into its upper registers like the last fleeting sight of a launching starship. Every note may be expression of some annoyance, some stress, some furious exression of Shenner's soul, but Aidon just absorbs it like a sponge absorbs water. As the music takes itself into more and more ethereal realms, his eyes narrow. Perhaps he's concentrating on it, perhaps he's thinking, perhaps the combination fo sun on the waves and bright music are just too blinding for him. And at last, once more, there is silence. Shenner's flute comes down again, slowly, tentatively, and her head turns slightly towards the listener she knows is back there. And once again, the listener applauds as the music deserves. This time he looks towards her at the end, eyes still narrowed. Aidon smiles very slightly. "Thanks," Shenner calls gruffly. "You're welcome," Aidon calls back. There doesn't seem to be any mockery in his voice at the moment. There is a pause, and then he asks, "What do you call that?" Whether it's the question itself or the tone in which it's delivered, Shenner shifts around, looking up. There's bemusement in her face, though she says readily, "It... doesn't really have a name. I haven't thought about it yet." He nods, apparently unsurprised at the answer. "I like it," Aidon answers. He doesn't offer names, though he could have. He doesn't comment further. He just smiles, and then looks back out over the water. This seems to startle her again. She stares up consideringly at the man, the former soldier, the fixer of ladies' comlinks, and then turns her gaze down to her instrument again with a gruffly pronounced, "It ain't really done yet. I gotta fix some bits of it." "What parts?" Aidon asks. He looks back at her, and it seems that he's really interested in the answer. "I don't like the runs in the middle, heading up into the third octave," says the girl, her tone critical, thoughtful. She's still looking down at the instrument, her fingers fidgeting soundlessly as she holds it. "I have to hear it with the harmony to be sure, and I can't play that right now by myself, but well hey." Dak arrives from the street. Dak has arrived. Dak looks around, then turns to leave. Dak leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city. Dak has left. His silence goes on for a little longer than one might have expected. Finally he says, "What's wrong with them?" Aidon probably doesn't know much about msic, but he can ask a vaguely intelligent question when he tries. Startled again -- perhaps she didn't expect the question. Shenner turns around once more, brows knitted over her dark green eyes. "You can't tell without the harmony," she answers after a moment, readily enough. "But I want a few different chords there, and I'll have to either change the flute part or the harp.. I'm still thinkin' about what needs to be there." He nods once, accepting that. "You can hear both parts in your head?" Aidon asks. "Without working at it?" The redhead shrugs a little, glancing off at the trees nearby, either casual and indifferent or trying to pretend she is. "Mostly. I can get an idea of it." He starts to say something, and then stops, tired of shouting across an empty stretch of beach. He picks up his parcel, stands up, and goes closer. Aidon stops and sits on another boulder long before he reaches Shenner's circle of influence. Perhaps as close as the front row in a bar that has music as well. "Do you write your music down?" he asks. She shows no sign of objection to Aidon's movement, at least not at the moment. Shen's head stays bowed, her gaze down on the flute, an incongruously shy posture given that her tone is steady and unhesitant. "Yeah. The stuff I play with the band, anyway." A sudden change in the breeze sends a shivering ripple through the nearby tree fronds. Aidon's eyes flicker once, quickly, and then remain on Shenner. "And the rest of it?" he asks quietly. "What you play just for yourself?" That passing breeze riffles through Shenner's russet hair, too, and across the shirt that covers her slender back. "Sometimes." Her gaze lifts, but it heads out to the ocean rather than the man who's approached her. "Depends on the song." His eyes flicker again, to the red hair first, and then the shirt. Soon enough they're back to her eyes, though. Aidon says, "Those of us who can't make songs as easily as we talk would like it if you wrote them down." No question about it, _that_ one definitely startled the girl. Shenner looks up sharply, eyes widened in that youthful face of hers, something fragile flickering across her expression for a moment before it vanishes behind a veil of cautious neutrality. "Thanks, but... I got plenty of stuff written down already," she argues. Defensively? Perhaps. "Assuming anybody gives a karkin' damn if I should happen to bite it, there'll be enough of a record of my stuff, if that's what you're getting at." With a sudden briskness to her movements, she reaches over to her tote bag for the cleaning cloth again, and the slender silver pole she uses with it to clean the inside of the flute. A stillness overtakes him, the sort that might precede either a biting comeback or the full attack of a squad of well-trained soldiers. It's quickly replaced. By compassion, maybe, but that's replaced just as quickly. "I," Aidon says, "am no musician. I would actually prefer it if you recorded the music instead, so that I could listen to it." "Rekkie has our stuff recorded at the Sandbar every so often," says Shenner, her tone roughening again as she works at cleaning her flute, her gaze on her hands and what they're doing as she slips the cloth through the tiny hole at one end of the cleaning pole and then slides both cloth and pole into the flute. "I can prob'ly get you a disc if you want to give it a listen." Are her words a bit fast as she utters them? He nods, eyes following her flute-cleaning as if it were a young soldier's first cleaning of a complex weapon. "I'd like that," he says. His hands are resting on his knees, and with his straight back, he looks for all the world as if he's still a soldier. "You got any musical preferences?" Shenner asks. She casts a sidelong glance at Aidon, going on brusquely before he has a chance to answer, "You don't strike me like the type who'd go for stuff like 'Kessel Run' and such." The cleaning pole and cloth are slid up and down for a bit inside the silver flute, before Shen takes the cloth away from the pole and starts delicately cleaning the flute's fingerholes. He takes a breath, and again resists the temptation to rise to the bait. "I like the old dance tunes," Aidon says. "Sometimes I listen to the classics. I don't listen to the things the youngsters listen to these days all that much." Shenner's mouth quirks for a moment; a smile, maybe, in acknowledgement that she is one of those youngsters. "Okay, well," she says in that same slightly over-swift, brusque tone, "sometimes the band does instrumentals. That might be more your speed. I'll see what Rekkie's already got on disc." "A recording would be wonderful." Aidon pauses for a moment, and then says, "A recording of -your- music would be better." The young musician goes very still, and finally, with apparent deliberate care, folds up the cleaning cloth and reaches for the black suede bag which serves as the case for the silver flute. "Well, some of the stuff I've done'll probably be on there," she hedges. "Rekkie likes it. We all take turns adding to the band's collection of songs, so." He shakes his head. "That'll be nice," Aidon says, belying the head-shake. "But I want a recording of you. I like -your- music, not the band's." Shenner doesn't answer that, not immediately. Finally, as she slips the fute into its case, she turns around again to flash her companion a small, polite smile. "Er, well, thanks," she says, sounding a bit brighter, though a trifle odd. "I'll put some of my solo stuff on the disc then." Aidon nods. "I'd appreciate that," he says. He pulls out a small card that likely carries the address of his workplace and holds it out. "If you want to send it, this is where. Or you could bring it up." The girl looks at the card, and then at its offerer, and then nods. Once slowly, and then swiftly, and reaches for the offered item. "Ah...okay, sure." He purses his lips, and then smiles. He doesn't laugh at her (perhaps surprisingly), nor does he sneer (perhaps even more surprisingly). It's just a genuine, open, warm smile. She's probably never seen one from him before. "Thank you," he says. No, indeed, Shenner has not seen a smile upon the visage of Aidon Semmes, and that seems to confuse her just as much as anything else in this odd conversation has done. She stares at him oddly, that hint of uncomfortable fragility lurking once more in her own countenance, and then snaps her attention back around to her belongings on the sand beside her, stuffing the flute into the tote bag. "You got any instrument preferences?" she asks, voice even gruffer. "I play flute, guitar, drum, ocarina, and a bit of namdhi-harp." That was more instruments than Aidon expected, but after a quirked eyebrow he answers. The hints of that smile still remain. "You choose," he says. "Surprise me. Pick the things that -you- like." Slender shoulders toss of a bit of a shrug. "I like every instrument I've learned so far," she says after a moment. A bit less gruffly, too. "I just can't play 'em all at once." Jali arrives from the street. Jali has arrived. Aidon grins. "Then pick the songs you like best and give me an interesting mix of the instruments." "Okay," mutters the redheaded girl. She ferrets through her tote bag, though doesn't appear to come up with anything in particular; nor does she look at the man beside her. The repairer of ladies' comlinks just watches for a long moment. Then he glances up and watches the newcomer walk along the beach. "Do you --" he stops and a muscle jumps in his jaw. "When do those new classes of yours start? Or have they already?" "Winter term," Shenner says, looking up as Aidon rises. "Why?" Aidon raises a shoulder in a half shrug. "Curiosity," he says quietly. "I'm interested to see what your learning does to the complexity of your music." He starts to lay a hand on Shenner's shoulder, but then stops. "I've got to meet the shuttle," he says instead. "I enjoyed our afternoon together, youngster." This last was said warmly, not in the mocking tone he might have used before. Or that Shenner might have thought he was using. The redheaded musician stares long and searchingly at Aidon, and then says, her voice returning to those gruff tones she'd used before, "Uh... thanks. I'll... see what I can do about that disc." Aidon nods. "Good afternoon to you, then." he says. And then he walks off with his packages without looking back. Aidon leaves the beach behind and heads back into the city. Aidon has left. [End log.]