With detached fascination, Aria examined her arm, the disconnect between her situation and her emotions almost absolute. Had she suffered an injury like this to her real body – not that siren abomination, and certainly not this hairless pink lump – she’d be stricken and utterly panicked, but this wasn’t really her, was it? Her suspicion that none of this was real was only reinforced by the fact that it barely even hurt; a distant thrumming was all that told her it was even “her” arm she was looking at.
The flesh was minced and ornamented with gore, the snow all around decorated with her blood, as well as that of her attacker. She couldn’t rightly remember exactly what had happened – it was all an adrenaline-fueled haze. All she knew was that – for a moment – it had hurt very, very badly, and she went for the eyes. The fluids had spattered her good arm, and they were so hot they filled the air with vapor. Through the terror and disgust she’d been grateful for their warmth. There was something almost intimate about the struggle. She’d never had a lover, nor had she ever been grievously injured before, and as her thoughts succumbed further and further to icy idleness, she wondered just how dissimilar violence and sex really were.
No, there was a difference. At least with the one, she knew what to do. She could fight back. With the other…
The idea of willingly surrendering her body had always filled Aria with a throbbing, looming fear. The thought of another using her flesh as their own – touching, exploring, penetrating – left an ache deep in her belly. Like the knotting of a starving stomach imparting upon its owner one last impetus to find food, it was a painful, visceral twisting laced with hollow longing whose depths crossed the bridge between body and soul. It repulsed her in a way that she’d never fully understood.
Yet though she’d never experienced romance, she had been loved, and as she lay freezing and bleeding in a forgotten corner of this alien world, it finally dawned on her just how foolish and selfish she’d been. Her auntie and uncle…her cousins…her big sister…they’d all done their best for her, despite her antisocial tendencies, and she’d left them without a word. It was as though she’d vanished into thin air, her possessions being the only clue she’d ever existed at all. She wondered if they’d found her saddlebags and mandolin still lying in that clearing where Adagio had finally tempted her into this damnation. She wondered what had become of her piano. Had they sold it? Or had they kept it? Was it possible that they were still hoping she might come back? Homesickness overwhelmed her, and she felt the rare sting of tears escaping her eyes, already beginning to freeze on her cheeks. At the very least, they would never have to know it ended like this.
As she looked once again at her arm – up past the ruined flesh and at her fingers, which were rapidly turning blue – a single thought entered her head:
I could play so beautifully with these.
She attempted to flex them, and though they were stiff and cold and it hurt terribly, they moved; miraculously her arm wasn’t shattered.
It’s not broken…
I won’t let what I am dictate who I am, she’d told Adagio that fateful day. I promised myself I would be a great musician, and I will.
To see if you can? the siren had wondered.
No. Because I know I can
The simple truth quickened her pulse: no matter where she was or what she was, she was still Aria. It was all that mattered.
And Aria had to move now.
-----
“Well, that was bullshit,” Aria mumbled, taking a slug of whiskey. She’d been overindulging these past few months, but if ever there was an occasion that warranted a little abandon, it was this one. Her words received no response, but she hardly noticed – the ringing in her ears constantly threatened to overwhelm her own thoughts, and her chest throbbed painfully as though someone had punched her. Though the liquor had eased her nerves and she was doing her best to act unrattled, her heart pounded as she sat hunched over, head in her hands, peeking through her fingers at the scene before her.
The house looked just as tidy as usual – she certainly never bothered to clean anything, but between her two companions, the place had always been kept up nicely. Everything felt a bit darker – ostensibly because the fixtures that lined the walls near the ceiling had been left off, the only light coming from the lamp on the end-table next to Adagio.
The eldest siren sat rigidly on one end of the couch, posture fully upright, hands still clutched above her breast in just the same place where Aria ached in tandem. Her eyes were wide, her pupils pinpricks. She hadn’t said a word other than some indistinct mutterings as they’d walked home.
Yes, they’d walked. After fleeing the amphitheatre, they had – in what Aria considered to be the most bizarre anticlimax of their nefarious career – simply walked home. Nobody but those who’d attended the concert really knew what happened. Anyone in the city outside would’ve just assumed it all to be an elaborate light show. And so the three sirens had simply trudged back to their residence, completely unhindered.
Peering to her right, she regarded the occupant of the other chair. Aria could count on one hand the number of times in the last fifty years she’d seen Sonata without her ponytail. Yet the youngest siren was slumped in her seat, arms limp and head hung, her long, straight hair cascading down to completely obscure her face. Every so often, a sniffle escaped from behind the blue curtain.
Aria felt a headache coming on, and sleep’s call was slowly become more and more audible above the tinny ringing in her ears. But there was no way she was moving. No matter how uncomfortable this was, she needed to be here now. She hated to admit it, but she didn’t want to be alone, and they were the only company she could have. When she thought about that fact, she realized something: the house only felt different because they were.
Normally, at this time of night, Sonata would probably be making dinner, the hiss and steam of griddles and pans accompanied by some annoying, uptempo electronic nonsense playing in the background. Adagio would still be sitting in the same place, but clicking and clacking away at her laptop, a stack of books next to her that could be anything from history texts to ledgers and bank records depending on the day.
Aria herself would invariably be at her piano, waiting with ever-decreasing patience for food and shouting at Sonata to hurry up in between penning phrases. The thought only reminded her just how hungry she was now.
They’d lived in this house for over a century. It was the longest they’d ever stayed in one place, and the routine the three girls shared had – over time – cemented itself so deeply in their minds that this massive departure was nearly as shocking as the event which had precipitated it. She herself loathed leaving the house, Sonata was a homebody, and despite her colorful personality and need for attention, Adagio didn’t leave all that much either. In Aria’s mind, all they really did was laze about until Adagio deemed it necessary to go and screw someone out of money to keep their living situation comfortable. They relied completely on their powers, but the magic in this world simply wasn’t strong enough to facilitate any conquest other than swindling rich people out of their finances, so that’s all they did. Even if they didn’t always get along, there was an undeniably pleasant normalcy in it.
At the same time, the gems around their necks had always carried the potential for something more, and that promise had kept them going for a millennium. Whether they were struggling to feed themselves or slipping into comfortable monotony, their magic had always warded off despair with the assurance of greatness at some point in the future. What was the rush? Their youth was eternal. They would figure something out.
Then, that night at the café, everything had changed. If she was honest with herself, Aria had been impressed at how quickly Adagio had reverted from a keyboard-wielding couch potato to a single-minded force of nature on par with the one who’d sent Equestria into tumult and challenged Starswirl the Bearded all those centuries ago. It was clear she’d been mentally prepared for this – waiting for it – and for a moment, it seemed the promise of the gems would finally be fulfilled.
But now that promise was broken, along with the amulets, and they suddenly faced a terrifying prospect: this was all they had.
“Aria?”
She wasn’t quite sure who’d said it, because that certainly wasn’t a voice she recognized, but when she finally freed her gaze from its cell of digits, Adagio’s saucer-like eyes bored into hers.
“Aria, please,” the trembling, orange-haired girl said again, words thin and breathy as she slowly extended her arm, “give me that.”
When the younger siren realized what her sister was reaching for, she took a final drink and handed the bottle over, not in any mood to protest. Adagio grasped it in both hands and pulled on it as though the answer to her prayers lay at the bottom, and another quiet sniffle punctuated the glugging.
“What do we do?” Sonata wondered softly, finally giving voice to the question that had been hanging over the shell-shocked party for the last hour. “How do we get them back?”
“We can’t,” Adagio whispered, ignoring the errant trickle of liquor that ran down her chin. Though her voice was hushed, her tone was unmistakably final, and Aria only realized she’d been entertaining several wild hopes when her heart sunk as low as Sonata’s head.
“Well,” the youngest siren continued cautiously but with burgeoning confidence, reaching up and brushing her hair behind an ear, “it’ll be okay, right? We can just be, like, normal people, can’t we?”
The two older girls’ eyes met, and Aria felt a smile teasing the corners of her mouth at the distant gaze and unadulterated horror that crawled across her sister siren’s face. Before she even knew it, she was laughing, and Adagio joined her as they rode the edge between hilarity and hysteria while Sonata looked on in utter confusion.
“Good one, Sonata,” she chuckled raggedly, wiping away a tear as Adagio ended her fit of cackling with another long drink, “problem fucking solved. Hey, Adagio?”
“Aheh, hmm?”
“Let’s all go shopping tomorrow. We can find some cute outfits, then we’ll go get ice cream,” she gesticulated whimsically, an uncharacteristically goofy smile on her face, “and we can t-talk about…” she paused for a moment, trying to hold it together for the finisher.
“We can talk about guys. You know, like normal chicks.”
Raucous laughter once again filled the room, infused with an almost genuine mirth. Sonata’s brow furrowed and her mouth turned down.
“Hey, at least I’m trying to think of something, okay?” she snapped, her lip quivering for just a moment. The other two fell silent.
“Sonata, dear,” Adagio said after taking a final gulp and then handing the bottle back to Aria, “there’s nothing we can do.” The alcohol had restored much of the coolness to her voice, and it caught the youngest siren’s attention – something familiar in an ocean of anxiety. “This,” she indicated the three of them, “is over. We have no magic and no way out; our lives are – for all intents and purposes – over.”
“Yeah, sure,” Aria growled, reacquainting herself with her beloved whiskey, “like they weren’t over the moment you decided to mess with Starswirl.”
“You shut your mouth.” Adagio spat back.
“Make me.”
“Oh, if you make me get up right now, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life…”
“You said it yourself – my life’s already over. Go ahead, you can’t fuck things up any worse than you already have.”
There was a blur of orange movement, and Aria swung the bottle blindly. It connected, but couldn’t stop a full body tackle. Adagio’s hands found her neck, and they both tumbled as the chair tipped backwards. Already on edge, Aria felt a rush of adrenaline dumped into her veins like gasoline. She let the momentum carry her, and the two girls toppled head over heels. Aria was on top now, and she kicked her back leg out, stopping them both and pinning her sister siren to the floor. Two quick shots to the jaw was all it took before the grip around her neck loosened, and she smacked the hands away.
“Stop it!”
Just as she cocked her arm back for what would undoubtedly be the most satisfying knockout of her life, a hard shove to her side sent her flying off balance. Her forehead went straight through a leg of the upended chair as she fell, breaking it clean off and dimming the lights of her consciousness momentarily.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” Sonata shrieked, blinking back tears, “how can you be fighting right now?”
Aria sat up, blinking hard as the movement sent chills of vertigo down her spine. She rubbed at her forehead and winced, realizing it was split open nearly right at the eyebrow. Adagio still looked dazed, eyes unfocused and one lid drooping slightly. Aria contemplated one more jab, but her thoughts were interrupted again.
“You guys say I’m the dumb one?” Sonata shouted incredulously. “We just lost our magic, and you’re beating each other up like little kids!”
“She started it,” Aria shrugged.
“No, Ari, you started it! I was there!”
“Did not!”
“Did too!”
“Nuh-uh!”
“Bite me!”
“No you!”
“Just shut up! Shut up both of you!”
“N–”
“BE QUIET!” Adagio had finally returned to lucidity and quite literally screeched the exchange to a halt.
“You be quiet,” Aria grumbled back automatically. Their eyes only locked for a second before the situation devolved into hysterical laughter once again. When they finally calmed themselves down, Sonata had already left.
“Aria, dear,” Adagio prompted, wiping at her eyes but failing to notice the small trickle of blood coming from her nose, “do you have anything else to drink?”
Aria sighed. She already knew just how this night was going to end. She already knew where she would be when she woke up tomorrow. Every single time, she promised herself it would never happen again. But on all those mornings after when she was swearing that oath anew, she always seemed to forget the reason why it kept happening: sometimes, this was better than being alone.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling slightly as she forced her conscience back into its cage and locked it, “what do you want?”
-----
For the second time in recent memory, Aria awoke with a start, well before dawn. Last time she’d fought to fall back asleep; this time, she had no desire to – that had been quite enough for one night. Unsurprisingly, the bed next to which she slept was already vacant, and not just vacant, but stripped. The pillow case was gone and the mattress bare except for a piece of paper resting on it. Aria grabbed it, but was overtaken by a coughing fit before she could look at it. Moaning groggily and staggering to her feet, she headed for the bathroom, coughing again before hocking the remnants of yesterday’s cigarettes into the sink. She winced as she licked her dry lips and turned on the faucet to wash away the sticky glob of grayish mucus that she so affectionately referred to as “lung butter.” A small smile touched one corner of her mouth as she finally looked down at the piece of paper and the neatly-scrawled cursive on it.
Ari –
Your sheets are gross. Like, ew. I’m washing them. Please don’t freak out.
– Sonata <3
She crumpled up the note but then paused mid-turn toward the trash can. Carefully, she unwadded the paper and folded it neatly, reaching for her pocket. A wave of horror washed over Aria as she realized what she was doing. She tore the folded note in half, threw it in the trash, and then spat in the sink again for good measure.
What a great start to a day, she thought with a grimace.
Whatever, time for coffee.
Aria had long simply taken it for granted that Sonata was dumb, and it was partly true. She was, at the very least, frequently oblivious. Yet recent events – both in the form of more frequent interaction with the girl and a more honest attitude toward her own deficiencies – had made Aria reconsider her perspective. Yes, Sonata was definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to things like problem-solving and understanding sarcasm, but what did that actually matter now? Whatever she may’ve lacked in IQ, she more than made up for by being kind, forgiving, and relentlessly positive. Of the three of them, she was undeniably the happiest and most well-adjusted, and – if Aria were to be completely up-front with herself – really the only thing holding her back from living a fulfilling life was her emotionally codependent relationship with her sister sirens. The more Aria thought about it, the more she began to understand what the real solution to this entire situation might be.
“Ari!” Sonata yelped, nearly dropping her plate. She made a dexterous recovery, setting it down on the table. “How long have you been standing there?” she wondered, head cocked to the side as she removed her headphones.
“Just got here,” Aria replied, the fact that she was slouched against the wall with both her arms and legs crossed suggesting otherwise.
“Oh, okay. Did you see my note?”
“What note?”
“Oh, never mind. I made coffee.”
These words were enough to get Aria fully upright and heading toward the counter
“There’s eggs and toast, too,” Sonata added as she took her seat, but her words went unacknowledged. With as much haste as she could muster before caffeination, Aria poured herself a cup and then sat down in front of her friend.
“So…you definitely slept w–”
“I need to ask you something,” she interrupted, the severity of her tone leaving the room in silence. “It’s an easy question,” she added in what she hoped was a more conversational manner.
“Yeah? What’s up?” Sonata prompted with audible caution, taking a bite of her toast, which Aria noted was slathered with an ungodly amount of jam…on both sides.
“Well,” the elder siren continued, “I was thinking…we’ve all lived together for a long time, you know?”
“Yeah…”
“Adagio’s a soul-eating succubus masquerading as an ordinary whore, and up until recently, I thought you were literally retarded.”
“Sounds about right…”
“But I just realized you aren’t.”
“Like…right now?”
“You know,” Aria shrugged, taking a large gulp of her coffee, “recently.” When she looked up, her normally-bubbly counterpart’s knitted brow and half-frown made her realize that trying to articulate her entire train of thought was both pointless and possibly dangerous.
“Look,” she began again, “all I wanted to know is…” she scrunched up her face as she said the next words, “are you happy?”
“Yeah…” Sonata said a little too slowly, “totes.”
“Because,” Aria continued, staring at her drink, “I think there’s something I could do to make you a lot happier…”
“There is?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s kinda crazy, but I have a…proposition, if you want to hear it.” There was no answer, and when she looked up, Sonata’s eyes were narrowed in an oddly contemplative expression. “Are you having some kind of embolism right now?”
“Ari…what are trying to ask me?” the blue girl queried suspiciously, her usual levity completely absent.
“Why? What do you think I’m trying to ask you?” Aria shot back.
“It’s just…” Sonata paused, searching for the right words.
“It’s just what? What’s your problem?”
“I’ve just… never done this with another girl before, you know?” she admitted finally.
“Sonata,” Aria mumbled tiredly, rubbing her eyes so hard she started to see funny colors, “have you been inhaling paint?”
“Well, you’re like, asking if I wanna do it, right?”
“What in the blackest hells of Tartarus would make you think that?”
“Um…well…” Sonata winced, trying and failing to phrase her thought, “…how much do you remember about last night?”
“Oh gimme a–” Aria rolled her eyes and huffed in exasperation, “I get drunk and make one joke about grabbing your tits and now you think I’m some kind of sex maniac?”
“Nooo, I’m thinking about after that…” Sonata clarified.
“I went to sleep after that,” the elder girl insisted.
“Well, yeah,” the younger conceded, “but then…”
Aria felt the blood drain from her face.
“Sonata, what happened? What did I do?”
“Well, to be fair, you didn’t really do much…”
“Sonata, tell me. Now.”
“Look, I swear I didn’t listen on purpose…”
“Sonata!”
“You had some pretty uh…intense dreams, Ari, and you talked a lot.”
Aria froze in place as she began to recall exactly where her sleeping thoughts had taken her toward the end of the previous night. She groaned, face falling into her hands, so very conscious of the fact that she wasn’t wearing pants.
“Really, I swear I didn’t mean to listen,” Sonata explained again, holding up her hands for emphasis, “but you were really loud. Also you kept rolling around and hitting the side of the bed…”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?!” Aria raged, finally gathering herself enough to get angry.
“I tried,” Sonata swore. “I yelled in your ear for like twenty minutes, but you were…you were ‘in the zone.’”
“Then why didn’t you go back to your room?”
The youngest siren blinked a few times, very, very slowly.
“You are never allowed to sleep in my room again,” Aria growled, pointing a damning finger across the table, “ever.”
“Aww…never ever?” Sonata wondered with glassy eyes.
“How are you disappointed right now? If I were you, I’d ask for it in writing!”
“Ari…it’s not that big of a deal…”
“Yes it is!” Aria shouted defiantly, “this is a huge fucking deal!”
“But…why, though? It’s actually kinda funny if y–”
“My humiliation is not funny!” Aria roared, kicking her chair out and slamming her hands down on the table, which knocked over her coffee as well as the small vase in the center. “This is all your fault, with your ridiculously short skirts and your seasonally-inappropriate undergarments!”
The room fell silent except for the rush of blood in her ears, the drip of spilled liquids, and the sound of her own breathing. There was a tinge of wariness in Sonata’s eyes, but unlike the previous night when she had cowered at her sister’s wrath, she held her ground – posture straight, arms crossed, and a scowl of disappointment pulling her features taut.
“I’m being a crazy bitch, huh?” Aria proposed, still gripping the table edge.
Sonata nodded.
“This whole thing is really dumb, isn’t it?”
More nodding.
“It’s only a big deal because I made it…”
Vigorous nodding.
“And if I was a normal person, we could’ve just laughed at it and moved on, huh?”
“Probably,” Sonata confirmed.
“Look,” Aria sighed raggedly, dragging her fingernails down her face, “you already know I’m sorry, so just eat your stuff and I’ll clean this u–”
“Well”
“Well”
“Well”
Both girls’ heads snapped toward the kitchen entrance. There stood Adagio Dazzle. She was obviously fresh out of bed, and hadn’t gone through the rigorous process of taming her great orange mop, instead opting to tie it back into something that could’ve been called a bun if it wasn’t so enormous and frizzy. As it was, it looked something like a beehive constructed of cheese doodles, and Aria was suddenly stricken by both intense loathing and extreme hunger. They more or less canceled each other out, and in the end she just wished she hadn’t spilled her coffee.
In place of her normal self-satisfied smirk, Adagio wore a full on grin that spread ear-to-ear beneath two eyes that practically glowed with derisive glee.
“I can’t believe what I just saw,” she continued once sure all eyes were on her. “Did my dear Aria just…say she was sorry?”
Aria had been drunk last night, that much was for certain. But she remembered all that mattered – the promise she’d made to herself, and – more importantly – the promise she’d made to Sonata. She’d figured the overinflated drama about her dreams had been the first test of her resolve, but now she realized it had just been a warmup, and she’d have to do a lot better this time.
“What could’ve possibly changed your attitude like this?” Adagio wondered, stalking around them in a lazy circle, hips swaying back and forth like a pendulum. The short and tight piece of barely-opaque silk she always attempted to pass off as a bathrobe was just barely doing its job, though that was obviously the intent.
“Morning, Addy,” Sonata said in an attempt at her normal buoyancy, but the tightness in her throat was audible.
“Oh, Sonata,” Adagio simpered, stopping and resting her hands on the blue girl’s shoulders, “I feel like we haven’t talked in ages. What have you been up to? Or do I already know the answer?” She bent down until her lips nearly brushed her sister siren’s ear. “I always knew I wasn’t underestimating you…unlike some people.”
“Anyway, Aria,” she continued sweetly, once more addressing the other huge bitch in the room, “I’m surprised Sonata here had to pull her whip out so quickly…I figured the afterglow would keep you docile for at least a few more hours.”
Aria said nothing, heading toward the sink and grabbing some paper towels. The scent that assailed her when she walked by the mass of orange curls lent the sensation of getting one’s face blasted off by a shotgun shell full of perfume samples and bath salts.
“You smell like a prostitute in a jacuzzi,” she commented as she began mopping up the coffee she’d spilled. Sonata shot her a look, and she resisted the urge to make a few more observations.
“Oh my goodness, look at this!” Adagio laughed, “are you cleaning up after yourself? Sonata, what have you done to her? Whatever it is, please do it to me too.”
“Adagio,” Aria said slowly, her voice quavering slightly through clenched teeth, “is there a point to today’s performance? Because if not, Sonata and I were having a conversation, and we’d like to continue it.”
“Oh, don’t mind me, I just came here for my drink,” Adagio explained, grabbing a bottle of mango-flavored fizzy water out of the fridge. Aria reflected that much like the one who was about to consume it, the drink came in a pretty orange container and promised to do amazing things for you, but in reality it was mostly artificial and had no nutritional value. The metaphor broke down at the end, but she didn’t really care.
“I’ll be out of your hair in a moment,” the eldest siren assured, touching her own, “then you can go back to gazing into each other’s eyes and blushing, or arguing over who loves who the most.”
“Laying it on pretty thick today, aren’t we?” Aria managed to keep her tone even, but her fingers trembled as they gripped the edge of the table. It did not go unnoticed. Sonata was silent, eyes darting back and forth between her two sisters as the exchange drew closer and closer to the inevitable.
“Oh, you want to talk about laying it on, let’s talk about you two,” the orange-haired girl chuckled, arching an eyebrow. “I haven’t heard a racket like that in a few decades at least.”
“Which of your delusions are you referring to again?” Aria asked tiredly, as though it were her duty. Her adrenaline spiked with realization a fraction of a second before her sister siren replied.
“Oh please, Aria,” Adagio drawled, rolling her eyes in a big lazy arc and flicking her wrist, “you can’t lie to me anymore. I heard you moaning all the way on the other side of the house, and this one” – she pointed to the third siren, who started slightly – “probably woke the neighbors she was so loud.” She cleared her throat. “Ari! Ari! Come on! Ariaaaaaaaaaaaa!” she called in a decent imitation of Sonata’s voice. “I don’t usually say this twice in one morning, but whatever you did to her, please do it to me too…”
In a moment of uncommon clarity, Aria realized that circumstance had simply twisted her arm, bent her over the nearest flat surface, and fucked her in the ass so hard that she could scarcely even blame Adagio for thinking what she thought. It was one of those situations where the reality was so much less plausible than the misinterpretation of it that any attempt to explain the truth would only condemn her further.
“You know what, Adagio?” she said, sinking into her chair and relaxing for the first time today, “you can think whatever the hell you want, I really don’t care.” She smiled as she said these last words, gazing skyward, as though it were an inside joke between herself and the cosmos. “You can make up anything you need, and I hope it serves you well when you’re alone tonight with all those romance novels and magazines you keep under your bed. Please, treat yourself to a good rubbing; nobody else wants to.”
Aria’s world went fuzzy and swam for a moment as the back of Adagio’s hand struck her face, snapping her head to the side. It stung like hell. Once she was sure no second strike was coming, she spat into her empty coffee cup and wiped her mouth.
“Feel better?” she wondered quietly as she looked up at her sister siren with one eye, the other shut tight above her throbbing cheek. The passive response only incensed Adagio further, and she raised her hand again, but then hesitated. Aria smirked at her with a hollow chuckle.
“Keep going,” she encouraged. “Maybe if you hit me enough, you won’t be alone anymore.”
Adagio’s hand fell, but just to her side; the only part of her that connected with her target was a wide-eyed glower.
Maybe Aria was just dazed from the backhanding. Maybe she was tired, or hung over. Maybe it was all three, but she could’ve sworn she saw that ever-pouty lower lip tremble slightly as the eldest siren turned and left without another word.
“I know,” she said to Sonata in the wake of a door slamming in the distance, “you don’t have to tell me. I know it’s worth nothing, but I tried.”
There was a long moment of nothing.
“Ari?”
“Yeah?” she replied, still staring at the door through which Adagio had left.
“I’m sorry,” Sonata said slowly.
Aria felt those familiar jaws digging into her yet again, but she pried them off just in time to avoid snapping. Instead, she turned very deliberately and faced her friend.
“I don’t really get why,” she rasped, clicking her teeth together, “you didn’t do anything, and it kinda pisses me off that you’re trying to make this about you now.”
“Ari, no,” Sonata sighed. “I mean I’m sorry for being so…dumb.”
“You’ll have to narrow it down for me.”
“I’m so stupid,” the youngest siren continued, shaking her head. “I thought if I tried hard enough, I could make you guys be nice to each other.”
“Sonata…I’m just having a bad morning, alright?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Sonata said, picking at the last of her food. “I can’t believe it took me this long to get it…”
“To get what? That she’s a huge cunt?”
“Ari!”
“Fight me.”
“You know that thing you always say?” Sonata continued after a moment.
“What? The f-word?”
“No,” she corrected, rolling her eyes, “that ‘there’s a difference between giving up and admitting your limitations.’”
“I’ve never said that once in my life,” Aria scoffed, getting up and rummaging through the cupboard above the stove. Her fingers finally closed around a familiar short neck, her thumb resting on that unmistakable embossed seal. She poured herself another cup of coffee, added a generous dose of coffee-flavored medicine, and sat back down. “What are you trying to say anyway?” she demanded after getting comfortable and having a few sips.
“That it’s none of my business,” the blue girl admitted. “There’s something really wrong with you guys, and I can’t fix it. Addy’s like my big sister, and you’re my best friend, but I’ll never know either of you like that.”
However much it made her skin crawl, no matter how sick it made her, and regardless of how close she’d grown to Sonata of late, Aria could not escape this one simple fact: there was no person or creature – in this world or any other – that knew her better than Adagio.
And it held just as true the other way around.
-----
Aria was a good musician – at least from a technical standpoint, she’d never been satisfied with her songwriting – and it had made her a lot of money; that much she would always give herself. In fact, there may have been a time when she might’ve called this success, but it was hard to say. Aside from a few standout moments, her memories of her youth had the type of cognitive consistency that a normal person might experience when trying to recall a dream they’d had as a small child – she wasn’t sure how much was recollection and how much was just her mind filling in the gaps, and it was more or less impossible to put herself back in the mindset of a sheltered young mare in her twenties who had dreams and a family who loved her. Then again, what did it matter what she would’ve thought? What mattered was what she knew right now, and had for a long time – that other than the one thing she was competent at, her entire life was an absolute abortion of an existence. She was over a thousand years old, and had managed to make a grand total of two friends during her entire stay in the realm of the living, one of whom she’d come to hate in a manner that bordered on obsession, and the other whom she’d ignored and verbally abused for a millennium barring the last few days. Everyone else who’d ever cared about her had died thinking she’d just abandoned them, and that was because she had. Along with her sisters, she’d ruined countless people’s lives. Nobody could ever love her. Well, nobody except Sonata, and she was becoming more and more certain that even that was not genuine but rather some type of complex developed over countless years of dependency and rejection.
And so the day’s musings finally came full circle, and Aria returned to the same thought she’d entertained while standing in the kitchen doorway that morning. She’d spent the entire afternoon on the back porch, and though the air was beginning to nip as the sun set, she had no intention of moving – that question she’d never gotten to ask Sonata was once again gnawing on the back of her mind.
“What would you do if me and Adagio just disappeared?”
There was a second condition of this hypothetical circumstance which involved an enormous sum of cash and the deed to this house somehow falling into Sonata’s hands, but Aria didn’t want to get bogged down in the details. The point was that regardless of whether or not her own life was salvageable, she had the means to fix her friend’s.
But she’d think more about that later. Another very long draught of khalua staved off the chill a little bit longer, and she lit another cigarette, taking one drag and then letting it smolder as she watched the last bit of sunlight disappear. The porch faced east, so she could already see stars beginning to dot the sky above the rolling hills that surrounded the little town she’d become so accustomed to. The cold was becoming more than just nagging, but the idea of moving made her feel positively ill, so she just took another pull of the syrupy liqueur and closed her eyes. She had to figure this all out, and while she couldn’t do it now, the one thing she had on her side was time.
-----
“Don’t smoke in my house,” Adagio said, breathing still heavy as she finished the tail end of another bottle of wine, a lot of which dribbled down her face and stained the pillow her head was resting on. When she was lying down like this, her hair – which was, at this point, about as disheveled as it could get – had nowhere to go but out, chasing Aria to the edge of the bed.
“Stop making me hate myself and maybe I won’t have to,” the younger siren suggested, killing her lighter. She was drunk, but not so much that she couldn’t maintain her uncivility.
“Oh, poor you,” Adagio huffed, rolling her eyes. “You better learn to appreciate the simpler things in life, Aria dear, because that’s all we’ve got now.”
“Actually, that reminds me,” the purple-haired girl said thoughtfully, “do you have a belt I could borrow?”
“You have a belt, it’s right there with your pants.”
“That one won’t hold my bodyweight,” Aria explained.
“Hilarious.”
“What can I say?” she shrugged, standing up and forcing herself into the aforementioned pants, “I’m the comic relief in this outfit.”
“Why don’t you leave, Aria?”
“What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“No,” Adagio clarified, sitting up and glaring, “why don’t you leave? I’d’ve thought tonight would feel like the end of a prison sentence for you. I can’t fathom why you aren’t packing your things right now.”
“Because Sonata can cook and she does my laundry.”
“Ah, of course.”
“Anyway,” Aria said as she finished re-tying her hair, “time for me to fuck off. It’s been soul-destroying, as usual.”
“Aria?”
“What?” she sighed, pausing right at the door.
“Aria?”
“What?”
“Aria?”
“Are you having a stroke?”
“Ari wake up!”
And then suddenly, everything was very bright and very painful. She wanted to rub her eyes, but couldn’t find her hands. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t feel them, it was that she had no idea where they even were or how to go about getting in touch with them. The same went for her legs. All Aria could feel was a stabbing like needles and dizziness. The longer she remained conscious – if that’s what she was, it wasn’t clear – the worse it hurt, but the more she began to become aware of her body. Something blissfully warm was touching each of her tingling cheeks.
“Ari?”
Her eyelids were heavy, but she could feel them and the rest of her face now, and despite no relent on part of the blinding light, she forced one open just to spite it. Her vision was greeted by a blue blur and two magenta eyes staring straight into her own.
“Sssonata…” she slurred, barely able to pronounce the three syllables, let alone all the expletives that she planned on following them with.
“Ari!”
In an instant, her limited vision was eclipsed, and the vague sensation of squeezing made her inhale sharply as she realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d consciously taken a breath. Oxygen laced with the familiar scent of food and dryer sheets calmed her nerves and the dizziness began to abate. When the maroon veil of Sonata’s blouse finally lifted, the world looked a bit clearer, and she could see the relief in her friend’s expression. The more the resolution of both her vision and physical awareness increased, the more Aria began to realize just how awful she felt. She could finally sense discernable limbs beneath the constant needling, and every muscle she could feel was beginning to spasm. She couldn’t think about it for too long, as just then her stomach lurched. Instinctively she sat up, which was both incredibly painful and very disorienting.
“Ari, no! Lie down!”
“Here,” said another familiar voice.
Something touched her hand, and she knew what it was. Aria took the plastic wastebasket as quickly as she could in her weakened state and retched, finishing with a whimper as the sensation of pins and needles redoubled and the muscles in her stomach all locked into a cramped knot. She heaved again, tasting bile and coffee-flavored liqueur, and once more she silently vowed never to drink khalua again, even if she lived another thousand years. With a final, strangled gasp, her stomach was empty, and she was warm enough now that unconsciousness began to beckon her back to its soothing embrace.
She gratefully accepted the offer and passed out.
-----
When Aria awoke once more, the first thing that greeted her was a splitting headache. The second was the sensation of being hot. Way too hot. She sat bolt upright – much to the dismay of her throbbing head – and in so doing easily found the source of her discomfort: she was covered from head to toe in blankets
“Ugh…” she groaned, throwing them off and realizing that there was more than one heating pad entangled in them as well. The final layer of fleece was soaked with sweat, and once free of it she breathed deeply and wiped at her brow. There was a large glass of water on the coffee table before her, and she grabbed it and drank loudly and gratefully.
“Ari?”
Blinking back the fog of morning amnesia, she realized she was far from alone. Across from her – in the only other seats in the room aside from the piano bench – were her sisters, one of whom was now awake.
“How’re you feeling?” Sonata asked brightly. She looked like she was about to get up, but Aria stopped her with a raised hand.
“I’m fine, I just feel like someone punched me in the chest a hundred times. What’d I do?”
“Ari,” the youngest siren said with worried eyes, “you fell asleep outside…in the middle of the night…with no clothes on. Your skin was like ice, and I wasn’t even there when Addy found you,” she nodded toward the third, still-sleeping member of the party.
“Oh,” Aria said thoughtfully, “my bad.”
“We were really worried about you!” Sonata chided, finally standing and planting her hands firmly on her hips. “You could get pneumonia or something. I didn’t get home until right before you woke up, but Addy said you were as blue as me.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” the elder siren snapped. “What the hell else do you want me to say? I won’t do it again? I didn’t even mean to do it once!”
Sonata didn’t say anything right away, she just made her way to the couch and sat down next to her friend.
“Aaand we’re touching,” Aria whined when two hands came to rest on her shoulders and she was pulled into a half-hug, “there just had to be touching.”
“Just be careful, stupid,” Sonata smiled, squeezing even tighter. Aria had a lot to say, both about this uninvited physical contact and about certain people calling certain other people “stupid,” but she hadn’t seen her friend looking this happy in a while, and for once in her life she just decided to keep her mouth shut.
“You have to be ready for our gig next week,” the blue girl finished.
“What?” Aria blinked.
“Where do you think I was last night, Ari?”
“Sonata, I don’t even know where I was last night. Now be a good little pain in the ass, and tell me you aren’t as delusional as I think you are.”
“I found a place where we can play music!” Sonata confirmed, clapping her hands together, smile ever wider.
“Great,” Aria drawled, rolling her eyes. “Look, I know I agreed to this bullshit, but you need way more practice, and if I’m going to put together some kind of performance, it’s gonna take more than a week. Maybe in a month or so we can th–”
“Too late!” the youngest siren interrupted cheerfully, “I already signed us up. We’re playing next Friday!”
“You really think that’s gonna happen, huh?” her sister said, a touch of awe in her voice.
“Yup.”
The two girls just stared at each other for a long minute, the purple one with a razor-like glare, the blue one with shimmering eyes and an increasingly-poutier lip.
“I hate you so much, Sonata,” Aria sighed in defeat.
“Yay!”
“Now make me food or I’ll suicide-bomb a maternity ward.” The sun was now streaming through the sliding-glass doors, and at this point, stuffing her face sounded much easier than trying to go back to sleep.
“Watcha want?”
“Anything with enough cholesterol to kill me before next Friday.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Sonata said in sing-song voice as she practically victory-danced all the way to the kitchen.
“And do it quick, we need to start practicing today or this is going to be a fucking disaster.” The words were already lost as the whir of a fan began mere seconds after that blue ponytail disappeared through the door, soon accompanied by the scraping of pans being dropped onto the stove. While annoying, the noise did give Aria the opportunity to say something she’d been holding in for a while.
“Stop pretending to be asleep.”
Adagio was reclined in the other chair, legs crossed and head propped up by one hand in a casual state of ostensible unconsciousness. She didn’t move an inch, she just opened her eyes, which were already staring straight at Aria.
“I have no idea what you mean,” she said dryly, “I just woke up.”
“Why are you here?” the younger of the two sirens asked quickly and evenly.
“I fell asleep here.”
“Why?”
“Just tell me you didn’t do it on purpose, Aria.” Adagio’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it bit through all the noise.
“I would ask you what you’re talking about,” Aria reasoned, leaning back into the softness of the couch, “but I don’t care.”
“Fair enough,” the eldest siren said as she stood up and headed for the stairs. She paused just before the first step to spare her sister a sidelong glance. “Next time I find you lying in a chair and not breathing, I won’t be so selfish as to interrupt you.”
By the time she heard the door to the master bedroom shut at the top of the stairwell, Aria was beginning to wish she hadn’t asked Sonata to make food.