[Thread] Queen of the Cello on Top of the World [Open to the Invited People]
She was the last one to play. There were quartets, trios, duos, ensembles. There was the sweet, sweet euphoria that came with each lovingly crafted song; there was the whispered disapproval when something didn’t have as much feeling as it could have. The people in the theatre were a good audience, and that was what scared Tenten, who smoothed out her dress for the nineteenth time and checked her face in the backstage mirror. This was it. There were conductors, musicians, musical critics… and army out there that had never heard of her, never seen her picture, save for that tiny 3x2 in the program. It was like being offered up to wolves.
Tenten suddenly felt her eyes itch as though the makeup had decided to take up a rebellion just seconds before she was to go on. She could hear the Master of Ceremonies introducing her. Don’t bomb, don’t bomb, don’t bomb.
”Our next performer is a very pleasing young lady from Tsunade’s School of Performing Arts,” He sounded surprised, Tenten noted. Well, if the hurried, cautious whisper was any indication, so was much of the audience. Tenten felt her stomach start it’s migration into her right leg. Butterflies hammered against her rib cage. She straightened and drew a breath, gathering her dress in one hand, her bow and her cello in the other. “Well, then, without further ado, may I present Miss Tenten Shaow, playing Paganini’s ‘Caprice Twenty-Four’.” He butchered her last name, but that was okay, it was her turn. She could almost her hear father in the audience, muttering the correction under his breath. Hsiao, it’s Hsiao. It’s not that hard, Hsiao. A surprised murmur ran through the crowd with the applause.
Tenten wasn’t sure if it was because she was Asian, or if it was because the piece she’d chosen was more naturally played on the violin. She sat down in the chair, spread her skirts out and promptly hid behind her cello. It went silent in the audience, the heavy air blanketing over performer and stage. She closed her eyes and begged which ever being it was out there that was helping her along to make sure she didn’t fail. For the next five minutes, she thought confidentially, you, all of you, are mine. She launched into it, fueling the song with everything she could possibly give it.
It was, after all, perfect. Perfect for all that mess she so desperately was trying to fix between her and Naruto, all the sticky circles she’d manage to cross as she ran away, the high anxiety in the school, the love triangles and parallelograms, the plotting. Her own vitriolic jealousy over Anko. How hurried everyone, and everything seemed to move around them, even when Tenten held still.
No, Tenten might not have been able to fit herself into the many circles with in the school, floating forever between groups, but that was fine. All the people that cared for her were in the audience. Her fingers danced along the strings, paired with her bow’s firm knowingness. She knew that things would always dance round and round in the same kind of sick and twisted dance, it would occur every generation with new players.
When she pulled her bow across the final, sharp note, and it had faded into the ambience, the applause hit her. There were people standing, people she’d never met, her fingers were finally beginning to register that ache from dancing them across strings in patterns unnatural. Tenten’s surprise registered for a brief second, and she smiled brightly, standing and curtsying, before hurrying off the stage with the curtain fall. She made it all the way to the dressing room, put her cello back in its case and looked at the wide-eyed, pale girl in the mirror, drunk off her elation.
She hurried out into the lobby, and looked for her parents and friends, cello held in both hands as though to protect it. Tenten frowned. Where were they, already?
All at once, all for you.