Singing and Other Noises
If you have to clean the bathroom on a multi-species spaceship, you can at least take the opportunity to annoy your coworkers with some high volume space shanties. The acoustics of most bathrooms I’ve been in are great, and this one was no exception.
“If you find snacks in high places, adhesive eyes making faces…” I sang, passing the sanitation wand over the floor. “Someone gives thanks to the void, and knives to the droid … Then you might have some humans onboard, onboard, you might have some humans onboard!”
Paint laughed in the hallway. “I don’t think anyone would miss the fact that we have a human onboard.” When I leaned out to grin at her, she continued, “You’re very loud.”
“This is the perfect place to sing!” I said, leaning back and switching to a different song. “You’ll hear us singing loud and proud, in halls and hulls and ventilation chutes. You’ll know us by our range and joy, and we sing better than you!” It echoed nicely.
Paint was shaking her lizardy head. “Are there any quiet human songs?”
“Oh sure,” I said, looking for spots I’d missed. “Calm melodies for a relaxing afternoon, lullabies to soothe babies to sleep, plenty of those. They’re just not as fun. I like the ones where you can really feel your lungs vibrate, you know?”
Paint was giving me that cocked-head look that said she wasn’t entirely sure what I was talking about, but didn’t feel like saying so. “Right. I think that one made the floor vibrate too.”
“Oh, you should meet an opera singer. They can shatter glass.”
“What!” Paint stepped closer, switching her tail. “You are making that up.”
“No, really!” I said. “It’s very impressive. A rare talent for sure.” I got to my feet and emptied the sanitation wand into the trash chute. “My voice is nothing special. Pretty good, I like to think, but no kind of superstar. Still, singing is fun.”
Paint seemed to be having trouble coming up with a compliment. “Your voice is very… clear? Low? Is that a good thing?”
“I like to think so.” I put the wand away and washed my hands. “I can sing the low notes easier than high, which is great, because I enjoy them more. I think that makes me an alto? Contralto? Something like that. Not a soprano, at any rate.”
Even with her orange scales, Paint’s expression was a distinct mask of polite blankness. She nodded, hands clasped together.
“Not much for singing, I take it?” I asked.
Paint exhaled and dropped her hands. “I just don’t see the appeal,” she admitted. “It’s only talking! In a distorted voice!”
I switched off the light and joined her in the hall with a head bob of agreement. “Yeah, I suppose it is. Some of it’s fast and good to dance to, though.”
She pointed at me in excitement. “The dancing does make sense! That’s fun! But I just cannot understand the noises that go with it.”
I shrugged. “Eh, don’t worry too much about it. There’s bound to be lots of things that any given species does that makes no sense to others.”
“Like those shiny rocks you insisted on keeping?”
“Hey, that’s not just me,” I protested. “Zhee and Trrili both wanted some too. And you’ve still got those smelly seed-things that you liked so much.”
Paint raised her snout in pride. “They remain beautiful. Coals, Eggskin, and Captain Sunlight will agree with me!”
“And those are all the Heatseekers on the ship, which is exactly my point.”
A high-pitched noise that I’d been barely aware of grew louder, drifting down the hallway all faint and screechy. I had no idea what it was, and judging by Paint’s expression, neither did she.
“Is that metal scraping?” I wondered.
“I don’t think so,” Paint said.
The sound continued, changing in tone like an alien violin. I turned in place, trying to locate it. “Is that music?”
Paint rubbed her earhole. “It’s unpleasant.”
“C’mon, let’s make sure it’s not actually a problem of some kind.”
“Yes,” Paint said with a sigh. “Ignoring a mechanical failure because we passed it off as horrible music is not something I want on my record.”
I started off down the hallway. “I think it’s this way.”
Ready as I was for a long and mysterious hunt for the quiet shrieking, I was almost disappointed to find it coming from the third door we reached. This was the door to Coals and Trrili’s translation workroom. It was shut. I hesitated over the opening panel, then knocked instead.
The noise stopped.
When the door slid open, it was to a vision of exoskeletoned nightmares, shiny black and red, with pincher arms, mandibles, and a pair of antennae angled into a very irritated expression.
“Hi Trrili,” I said. “Everything okay in there?”
Paint added, “We heard a noise—”
The door shut in our faces. After a moment, the screechy serenade resumed.
I blinked. “Rude.”
Paint had her hands over her earholes. “What is it??”
“Probably not a machine failure,” I said, wincing as the noise approached nails-on-chalkboard levels. “Let’s go ask Zhee.”
We walked very quickly away, and found Zhee outside the kitchen talking to Eggskin. The sound was faint here, but still audible.
“Hey Zhee,” I said cheerfully. “Can you tell us what in the seven spherical black holes Trrili is doing right now?”
Zhee threw his own purple pincher arms in the air. “Butchering a classic,” he exclaimed. “I’ve told her that she’s got the middle part backwards, but she insists it’s a regional variant!”
I glanced at Eggskin, who was just shaking their scaly head. “So it is music, then.”
Zhee folded his pinchers with a flare of antennae. “There’s a skreeking competition at Basal Station,” he said. “She’s under the impression that the judges there will enjoy regional variants that are wrong.”
“I see,” I said, wondering if I should ask the obvious question.
Paint beat me to it. “What’s skreeking?”
“Leg-singing,” Zhee said. “You know.” He moved a hind leg in a way that made a brief screech.
I knew I was staring, but it was either that or burst out laughing, and that was rarely complimentary. You’d think I’d get used to discovering ways that my alien crewmates resembled Earth animals, but you’d be very wrong.
Paint let out a gusty sigh. “I don’t understand that kind of singing either,” she said. “This makes even less sense than the other one!”
“Remember, there’s always dancing,” I told her. “And if it makes you feel better, I have no idea how to dance to the noise Trrili’s making.”
Zhee hissed quietly. “No one could dance to that. Not without tripping over every other limb.”
Eggskin spoke up. “Well, I’m certainly not going to try. Would you three like to help me settle on the primary meal for tonight’s dinner?”
I smiled. “Oh, I’m sure we won’t disagree on anything there.”
~~~
Keen eyes might recognize the shanty lyrics from a couple older posts. I even used one song in The First Time Traveler to Survive, which is a different storyverse entirely, but it's too much fun to leave there. I'm going to say humans invented it twice, and no one's going to stop me!
Anyways, this is the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book. More to come! And I am currently drafting a sequel!
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Dark fantasy AU?
-In hindsight, as he's being chased through the forest, hunted by mythical creatures is not where Reggie thought he'd end up when his folks told him they were moving to Los Angeles. Honestly, considering how he used to roam the woods and fields near his Meemaw's farm, the fact that he'd stumbled into a fairy circle near the beach was almost insulting.
-It's not even that he manages to outrun them. It's that one night (he thinks it's night, though time moves differently here and light and dark are all tangled up and is the purple haze of the sky supposed to be dusk or dawn or just a dark stop of the forest?) he'd decided to just... give up.
He couldn't remember how long he'd been running, running from the pounding of hooves and the yapping of dogs that did not look anything like what a dog should look like. He couldn't remember a time where he wasn't hungry, or thirsty, or tired, but something inside of him just kept making him run and run and run
-But he'd had enough. So he just sat down, with his back towards the noise, and hoped they'll kill him quickly. And to comfort himself, he sang the lullaby his Meemaw used to sing when he was scared of the thunder.
-That's what saved him. One of the fae, Caleb, was so charmed by the song that instead of doing whatever it is they did with their prey, he bundled Reggie up and took him to his... castle. Dwelling. Domain.
-He was dressed in finery and made to sing as Caleb and the other fae danced and ate and did things that Reggie very much had not wanted to see, thank you very much. But eventually, they slept, and Reggie met... the other humans who were trapped here.
-Luke, a young boy who had run away from home to become a musician in 1875. He was distraught to hear Reggie tell him it was the nineties now. Even more distraught when Reggie clarified it was the 1990s.
-There was Alex, who had been cast out of his village for reasons he did not want to share, but that Reggie figured out pretty quickly when he saw the way he looked at Willie. He'd fallen asleep near a fairy circle, and the promises he'd been made had been so tempting, he'd said yes before he fully understood the deal.
-And then there was Willie. The boy who had been stolen from his parents, a changeling left in his place. Who had grown up here, a part of this world yet not really. Who did not know what the other boys meant when they talked about years, or America, or really the whole concept of 'family'.
-Luke's the one who tells them of their escape plan. Alex is worried they can't trust Reggie not to rat him out to Caleb, and Reggie is like: um excuse me I was just hunted for sport for who knows how long you think I wanna help that guy?
-But before he can Willie just tilts his head and says: his heart is pure.
-Which is very sweet but also a little creepy.
-Anyway, they do manage to escape Caleb's clutches somehow, and end up back in the human world.
-Being yeeted out of a little ring of mushrooms in the soil of a plant Ray overwatered in the big plant wall of the Molina studio was not particularly pleasant, okay. Considering a real human should not be able to fit through that. But Willie explained that as soon as a fairy portal grew, it was only a manner of time that the fairies would notice it and stake it out to see what they could lure to their realm.
-Somehow, Luke and Alex get thrown clear across the room, Luke slamming against the door, Alex dropping onto the concrete floor.
-Reggie's not sure if him crashing against a pretty wooden piano is better or worse. The sound it made was definitely worse.
-Somehow, Willie ends up sitting crosslegged on the little piano bench, and he turns and quickly crushes up the mushrooms to destroy the portal.
-Julie, of course, is screaming, Alex and Luke and Reggie are screaming. Willie is trying to explain to Julie she over-watered her fern and pouts when she runs away.
-No they're not ghosts but they are changed and they all have weird powers. Luke nearly cries with joy that he can still summon his guitar. Alex is really not okay with this whole 'walking through walls' thing. Reggie is sad he cannot summon a puppy or a pizza.
-Willie can teleport short distances and is shocked to learn humans can't just do that? You have to walk everywhere? Or ride a horse. What's a car? What's roller skates? He needs to see one of these skateboad things immediately, let's summon the human girl back to ask for one. What can they trade for a skateboard?
-They're kind of freaked out at the whole 2020 thing, but hey, Reggie's like: at least it hasn't been a hundred years like when I told Luke about the 90s.
-Queue canon but it's even worse and more chaotic.
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