21st Ashan 718
Vega was playing the fiddle, pleased with how things were coming on. She had been playing it a lot in the twenty odd trials they had been on the Wanderlust, not least because she had very little else that she could do. With one shattered knee and a broken femur, her mobility was limited. But less so each trial and, just two trials ago, she had stood for the first time since the end of Cylus. Over twenty trials and it had been terrifying. Her movements were getting more and more confident with the bow, stretching the long notes and playing the short ones without squeaking as she did so. Vega was playing scales, practising the movement of her fingers on the neck of the fiddle, feeling the pressure needed for each string, less for the finest, highest pitched and more for the thicker, lowest one.
The practice of scales meant that she was building up her repertoire of movement in her fingers and that was vital to the kind of music she wanted to play. Vega knew the sound she wanted to create although, as yet, she could not do so. But it would take time that was all. Time and patience and she had a lot of the first and was developing the second through necessity. Sitting, her left knee in a brace and her right leg in a splint, Vega looked down and her playing stopped for a moment. Placing the fiddle on the bed beside her, she lifted up her skirt and looked at her legs. Really looked at them. Pale, weak and scarred was what she saw, but then she remembered in a sudden flash of clarity the wave of nausea which had burst in the pit of her stomach as her knee had snapped sideways, like a twig. How, drenched in sweat and pain and fear, she had thought that there, right in that moment, she understood pain in the trill before the strongest bone in her body, the femur, had been carelessly, thoughtlessly, effortlessly snapped.
It hadn't stopped there, of course, and she looked down at her miracle legs and she remembered the feeling of being pulled forcibly through the earth, of dirt and rocks invading her nose, her mouth and how, when she knew that she was about to die and uncaring of the legs or the hundred thousand cuts and rips on her skin, all she could feel was the desperate need to breathe, she had gulped in air in a single, beautiful, breath.
Her legs, so pale and wasted, they had survived all that and what had come after. When all that was left of her was charred bones and melted flesh, these bones had been broken. And yet now? Vega looked down at them as memory after memory fell in on her and a grin lifted her lips. "Yeah, well, colour me well 'ard an' up yours. These bad boys, all of me, we're doin' alrigh', I'd say. Whatcha reckon, Bert?" The last she asked the small stuffed bear who had been her companion since her earliest memories.
The practice of scales meant that she was building up her repertoire of movement in her fingers and that was vital to the kind of music she wanted to play. Vega knew the sound she wanted to create although, as yet, she could not do so. But it would take time that was all. Time and patience and she had a lot of the first and was developing the second through necessity. Sitting, her left knee in a brace and her right leg in a splint, Vega looked down and her playing stopped for a moment. Placing the fiddle on the bed beside her, she lifted up her skirt and looked at her legs. Really looked at them. Pale, weak and scarred was what she saw, but then she remembered in a sudden flash of clarity the wave of nausea which had burst in the pit of her stomach as her knee had snapped sideways, like a twig. How, drenched in sweat and pain and fear, she had thought that there, right in that moment, she understood pain in the trill before the strongest bone in her body, the femur, had been carelessly, thoughtlessly, effortlessly snapped.
It hadn't stopped there, of course, and she looked down at her miracle legs and she remembered the feeling of being pulled forcibly through the earth, of dirt and rocks invading her nose, her mouth and how, when she knew that she was about to die and uncaring of the legs or the hundred thousand cuts and rips on her skin, all she could feel was the desperate need to breathe, she had gulped in air in a single, beautiful, breath.
Her legs, so pale and wasted, they had survived all that and what had come after. When all that was left of her was charred bones and melted flesh, these bones had been broken. And yet now? Vega looked down at them as memory after memory fell in on her and a grin lifted her lips. "Yeah, well, colour me well 'ard an' up yours. These bad boys, all of me, we're doin' alrigh', I'd say. Whatcha reckon, Bert?" The last she asked the small stuffed bear who had been her companion since her earliest memories.
518 words
Musical Instrument: Fiddle: Pressure is different depending on the string
Musical Instrument: Fiddle: Playing scales
Musical Instrument: Fiddle: Pressure is different depending on the string
Musical Instrument: Fiddle: Playing scales
