Amerist Posted April 14, 2005 Report Share Posted April 14, 2005 Symphony of the Flowers © 2005 Kyt Dotson Being the daughter of a world famous violinist can be an interesting experience; especially when she’s dead, and your father won’t speak of it. Such is the life of Alyx Vesper, who has followed in her mother’s musical footsteps, much to her father’s chagrin, but nothing would be that strange if it simply ended there. Junior year at Saint Ignatius Loyola Academy should have brought Alyx to the Junior prom, the Honor Roll, and if she was lucky the first seat violin at the yearly Loyola Academy Symphony Orchestra…but life is rarely so simple, especially when you’re the daughter of a world famous violinist. An unexpected visit from a feathery apparition, breaking into orchestra practice sets into motion a series of events that leads Alyx on a wild chase of discovery. A mother who might not be dead and a life denied from the day her father started sheltering her from it… On her journey Alyx discovers another world of magic, music, friendship and a chance to recover her mother, whom she feared already lost forever. x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x This is a work of fiction that I have started working on. It may take me a while to produce installments for it as I've been under a lot of writer's block recently, but I figure that I need some sort of creative outlet. The board seems like a good place to do so. x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x This post will be edited as an index of links to the various chapters to allow quick jumping to each section. Unfortunately, I cannot display it in a very pretty manner because DetGoth won't let me use center tags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amerist Posted April 14, 2005 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2005 BOOK ONE: MEMORY “The mayor wants us to propose a budget for the new sewer system and there are several contractors who have already bid on the project. Though, I don’t know where any of this is going to go because Councilman Andrerson has been attempting to block this proposal since the beginning…” Her father was going about his day at work but Alyx didn’t really hear him. They ate together like this every Friday evening at six P.M. “It’s our family time, a time to catch up about our busy week together,” he had called it. A time to talk, but talk they didn’t. Oh, words were exchanged, a few anecdotes and experiences, but the bulk of her life she couldn’t even bring up at the dinner table without inviting a fight. Instead of talking a about her actual life, Alyx would try to recall the dry and boring substance of her lectures and classes at school instead. That information at least was pretty neutral. Today, though, she hadn’t offered a word. Instead she speared her peas and let them bleed clear fluid onto her plate. She hadn’t even touched her steak and beans. He had cooked it himself. But it wasn’t the meal that was bothering her stomach. It was the company. “Aren’t you hungry, dear? You haven’t eaten a thing.” It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation. As if Alyx’s refusal to eat the dinner he had cooked was a personal insult she had to apologize for. Well, today the ‘I’m sorry’ was going to be his to give. She had been waiting for a question; an accusation pretending to be a question would do. Alyx reached into an open folder inside of her backpack and placed a Xerox blued document on the table. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” It was a very official looking document, with a seal, signatures, and all the other trappings of bureaucracy. At the top it read, “BURCKHARDT HOSPITAL ADMITTANCE,” in thick, Gothic letters. Underneath that, clearly stamped by a typewriter, it read: “Mr. A Vesper and City of Arbordale vs. Mrs. M Vesper.” Her father swallowed what he was just eating and his fork paused in midair. “Where did you get that?” “They’re public records, you know.” Her father set his fork down on his plate gently with a clank of metal against porcelain. “Your mother was a very sick woman.” “Sick?” Alyx snatched the papers from the table and shook them with such violence that it should have shredded them. “Burckhardt Hospital is an insane asylum! These aren’t admission papers to a hospital, they’re commitment papers! That’s your signature and mother’s name!” Her father’s serene expression simply served to fuel her anger. Why didn’t he react? Didn’t he care? He had committed his own wife, her mother, to an asylum and he had never told her about this. Instead, he regarded the commitment papers with a calm gaze, his eyes hidden by the glare of the kitchen light in his glasses. “I am your father, I know what’s best for you,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. Alyx hitched up her shoulders. “You mean ‘best for you,’” she spat. “You were a lawyer back then, it shouldn’t have been hard for you to shuffle her away someplace she would never be seen or heard from again.” “You wouldn’t understand… I knew you wouldn’t, that’s why I didn’t tell you. She was a very sick woman. She was becoming a danger to you and she knew it.” Oh no you don’t, Alyx thought angrily, you’re not getting off that easily. “You committed my mother to an insane asylum! What else don’t I know because you haven’t told me?” “She was my wife! You don’t understand, Alyx, she asked me to commit her.” “Liar!” she stood up so hard and so fast that she knocked her chair over. “How can I believe you? You have hidden everything about my mother from me. Then I found out this? How can I believe anything you say about her? You hated her! I hate you!” That caught his attention. Her father’s eyes were wide and surprised, set like watery saucers against the stretched skin of his face. He must have realized that he had raised his voice because now he set his jaw and put on his ‘I’m your father’ tone. “Pick up your chair and sit back down, Alyxandra,” he commanded. “This is our family dinner and I will not have you ruin it.” “Screw you.” Alyx grabbed her backpack, zipped it shut, and slung it over her shoulder. “Don’t you dare turn your back on me young lady.” He must have been getting really mad. He never pulled out ‘young lady’ unless he was furious. Alyx smiled. Good, maybe he could take a taste of his own medicine. “You come back here this instant,” he commanded as she ran to the stairs. For a moment she almost thought he was going to threaten to count to three. He hadn’t done that since she was ten, when it stopped working. Now Alyx was seventeen and she’d had enough of his childish behavior. She paused on the first step and looked back at him. That infuriatingly calm air had been replaced by set shoulders and a stormy expression. “We haven’t been a family since you got rid of my mother,” Alyx seethed. “Or were you someday going to tell me that she’s not dead? Public records, you know, there’s no death certificate.” If he replied, Alyx didn’t hear him. She rushed up the stairs, shut herself in her room, and locked the door. She left the Xerox of the commitment papers on the table with her father as the final statement of her indictment. She listened to the sounds of the house and waited for him to come upstairs. To knock on her door and ask if she’d speak with him. This is the way their fights normally went. But this was no normal fight. Downstairs, she heard the front door open and close. She was alone in the house now. Alyx unzipped her backpack and pulled a cloth bound book out of it. She ran her fingers along the rough surface and flipped it open to its first page. “The Journal of Mathilde Anna Vesper,” it read in flowery, calligraphic script. Alyx’s mother’s name. A few musical notes were sketched on bars beneath her name in a highly stylized fashion revealing a simple melody of chords. This was as far as Alyx had made it every other time she’d opened the journal. Here were her mother’s private thoughts. She wondered if her mother would care that she was intruding, but Alyx knew she wouldn’t get to know her any other way. Still, Alyx found herself unprepared to start. Instead of dealing with the book, and its implications, Alyx tried to think back to when things started to get really strange. She took her mother’s photograph out of her pocket and gazed at it in the dim light. It was the day the bird first appeared during orchestra practice, several weeks ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soothsayer Posted April 15, 2005 Report Share Posted April 15, 2005 Hmmmmmm ~ interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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