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“Merry Music, my dear cousin!” A woman boomed at another woman. Their bodices had music notes intricately embroidered into them, each note was three and three fourths centimeters apart exactly. Their hoop skirts consisted of black and white; assumedly to symbolize piano keys. Oversized feathers stuck out from their hats, fluttering in the breeze caused by their flapping fans. A strong, nauseating smell of cider and popcorn hung in the air, and a myriad of instruments all played inharmoniously together. He almost missed the stink of the Pole, where the cold would take away your sense of smell.
Thorn had spontaneously thrown himself into the middle of the Festival of Musical Instruments, in search of Ophelia, whom he had briefly seen getting dragged towards by her mother. His disguise of a mustache and a pink suit coat was hastily thrown together, and far too warm for Anima’s September climate. Too thick of a jacket, too thick of pants, and the damned mustache became irritating not long after it was put on, he had to refrain from scowling each time it began to tickle.
The hustling mass of body heat did not help either. Children with incorrigible instruments that screeched when played, clumsy men and women imbibed with cider—it reminded him of Ophelia. He hoped she steered clear of any alcohol; the thought of her drunkenly stumbling around was of great concern to him. Her veritable clumsiness was a hazard, with how many scheming stairways and ordinary objects may stand in her path.
The gramophone had skipped exactly five times now. He counted, and the next skip should occur in approximately sixty-seven seconds. With every skip, Thorn wanted to disappear more into the shadows behind him, fearing they might draw attention to his booth. The passersby's glanced his way every time the music stuttered, their eyes catching on him as if he were some spectacle. Thorn felt he couldn’t shrink enough.
The place was overcrowded, there was an endless symphony of Merry Music’s, and enough shouting to cause hearing damage. But despite the music, clamor, skips, heat, and drunkards, there was one thing which had stayed at the forefront of his mind,
Where was Ophelia?
His eyes scanned the sea of auburn hair methodically, picking out anyone appearing to have brown hair, before dismissing them all with an impatient snort. The distinctive brunette plait was not amongst them, only redheads sneaking looks to the only blond with a broken gramophone. He felt more agitated with every side-long gawk, and more shame with every second closer to another skip in the vinyl. His claws bristled all around him.
The sea of animists parted for only a moment, and that’s when he saw her, sixty feet away—leaning on the counter after having handed out kettle corn, looking glumly at her gloved hands. Her matted curls hung in her face, and for a second, the storm in his head vanished.
God could take the appearance of anyone in these crowds.
He could take the appearance of one particular person.
Thorn didn’t let Ophelia out of his sight, he’d let his eyes dry out, if need be. Unless, of course, his eyes met hers.
It came to him with a shock, his heart racing. Her expression was vague, with her shy mouth, and those shadows under her eyes—she didn’t seem to recognize him in the slightest, or, rather, could she not see him clearly from there? His previously wan complexion suddenly became a deep red. It only took one blink for her to be gone, shadowed by a quite large and unsteady woman. The dame smelled strongly of cider, teetering on her heels before using his stand to keep herself up-right. Her makeup was obnoxiously colorful, and settled into the lines of her face like a cracked wall.
“My, sir, who might you be?” The woman giggled out, her face contorting into what Thorn assumed was a sultry smile. “Not one of my cousins, I’m sure.”
She waited for no response from Thorn, before she leaned her torso over the table that held the gramophone. She slurred out more questions, her Animist accent too thick and fast for Thorn to follow. The woman's attempted flattery felt only as though Thorn was watching a one-sided game of seduction—but she didn’t quicken his pulse. He, instead, quickly found himself becoming violently uncomfortable, and the woman stubbornly emboldened. She commented on his height, his clothes, his hair, and the gramophone.
“Well, sir? Will you say anything?” Her tone didn’t betray any annoyance, as Thorn tried his best to subtly turn the volume of the gramophone up to drown her out. Her voice rose as the singer’s did, became faster and more insistent the more disinterested he got. Before long, the woman’s half-yelled flirting ceased with a scoff, and the woman had then trodden off.
Frantically searching the crowd again for the modest little popcorn stall, he found that Ophelia was no longer there. No one was, in fact. The interaction with the woman only lasted one-hundred and fourty-five seconds, where could she have gone off to in such a short time? He leant his elbows on the stall, rested his chin on his fists, and contemplated the empty booth with a pounding heart. The loud music and Ophelia's absence gave Thorn a pang of anguish.
His hand stalked to the gramophones knob, turning it down. His panicked thoughts grew louder and ever more insistent in his head, forcefully throwing him back to all the times Ophelia had run off without his knowing, and nearly got herself killed. A series of senseless romance songs pulled him from his travels through his memories, the gramophone catching at increasingly smaller intervals (now exactly every fourteen seconds), it turning itself louder uncontrollably. He could hardly understand the repeating lyrics under the grain of age, and from what he could make out, though, he knew none of the songs that garbled out of the horn.
Animists whipped their heads towards the sound, staring curiously at the stall. The gramophone trumpeted the same lyric over and over, a mockery of Thorn’s panic blasting for all to hear. From the horn came the distorted,
I didn’t want to tell you…
A grainy quietness, then the record’s screech, repeated. More and more people stopped to look at this stranger, fumbling around with a broken and animated gramophone, and laugh their drunken laughs.
His great wader’s legs trembled, an overwhelming urge to escape washing over him. He fled from the back of the stall through a curtain. Immediately, his bad leg had given out on him and he crashed into a person sporting a tie that played music. He stumbled back, ignoring the vicious looks they gave him, and regained his balance. The music seemed to double in volume, and he felt a migraine coming on as he marched through the crowd.
The ocean of people hardly made way for him, all bumping and ramming into one another like toddlers. Thorn struggled to move forward, and found it a miracle how Ophelia must’ve got through. She avoided every crowd in the Pole, and hid away every time she was forced into one. How could she have blended in so seamlessly now, of all times?
Thorn stopped in his tracks, a metallic clamor sending everyone’s head turning. Cider spilled, and Thorn shuffled backwards to avoid the mess. Before him—only five feet and eight inches away—was Ophelia, a dented pair of cymbals in her gloved hands, and an inebriated man in a suit four sizes too big for him. The man squawled, pointing his hands accusingly at Ophelia and his cymbals. Her glasses darkened, hands outstretched to give the man back the instrument with her mouth opening to apologize, only for the man to start up new complaints over the minor damages.
He had gotten too close.
Using the man’s outburst, Thorn forced himself back into the crowd, and away from the scene as fast as his leg would allow. He hadn’t scrambled very far before the thing sent him to the ground of the plaza, again left with the snickering and tipsy Animists to watch as this foreigner hauled himself back up.