Summer Contest Entry
Hey you guys! I think I'm slipping in just under the wire here, and I hope I'm not too late!
Title: Summertime
Author: Heledren
Characters: Toki
Word Count: 2301
Rating: G
Summary: It's summertime, and the livin' is easy.
It was an unusual sound that found Pickles' ear and drew him out of the indoor pool. He'd been floating around on an inflatable dragon, drink in hand, when he heard the strained strains of a song that certainly didn't sound anything like metal. He kicked and paddled in an ungainly way to the edge of the pool, keeping his drink aloft, then allowed a Klokateer to lift him out.
He followed the noise out to a balcony, where he found a drunken Toki, wearing only happy face boxers, hanging over the railing and belting out lyrics at the top of his lungs.
“Toki!” Pickles tried to catch the Norwegian's attention with no success. “TOOOOOHKIIIII!”
Toki didn't pause in his broken warbling. It looked like he wasn't just drunk, he was sloppy. Pickles did the only thing that came to mind for breaking concentration; he slapped Toki's back hard, where a sunburn was forming. The Norwegian howled, but at least it was no longer lyricized howling.
“Pickle! De fucks!”
“Hey Toki,” Pickles grinned as though he'd done nothing. You couldn't grow up with Seth or hang out with Murderface without becoming at least a bit of a douchebag. “What'cha doin' out here?”
Toki scowled, weaving slightly as he tried to rub the spot where he'd been hit. “Ams singing, what's it look like?”
“Dunno, it sounded kinda gay. What were ya singing?”
The scowl solidified on Toki's face. It looked like Toki was settling in for a long sulk. “It amn'ts gay, it ams de best song ever! It's about de summers.” Toki started crooning again, though at a lower volume. “Ams summertimes, an' de livin's is eaaasyyyyyy...”
Pickles smirked, recognizing the song from long ago, on his mother's record player. “Yeah, Toki, I hate ta break it to ya, but dat's definitely gay. It's from a musical, so it's gahtta be! Where'd you even hear that, anyway?”
Toki staggered a step back, then aimed a punch at Pickles that passed easily a foot from his face. “Fucks you, Pickle! You amn'ts know good music if it bites you in de dick! You screws off now!” Toki fled back into Mordhaus, albeit more at a stagger than a run. Pickles shrugged to himself, and wandered back to the pool. Just Toki being weird again, like any other day.
Toki, on the other hand, wandered to the kitchens, determined to eat and drink as much as he wanted. The Americans in the 'Haus had celebrated the 4th of July in style, with fireworks and racks of alligator ribs (Nathan had insisted) and lots of booze. Today, July 5th, was Toki's day, though. The day that he'd landed in America, bewildered and hot and unable to communicate with anyone but the workers on the ship he'd come across on. July 5th was his freedom day, when he celebrated the ability to do what he wanted, anything he wanted, and no one could tell him differently. And no one could tell him that his song, the song that had started his new life, was gay.
(Norway, Toki's childhood)
Music was a forbidden pleasure. By the order of Reverend Aslaug, no one in the congregation was allowed to know how to play instruments, except for the ancient organist who accompanied the droning hymns every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. If everyone knew how to play, he reasoned, what was to stop them from perhaps playing music in public, perhaps in pubs, and perhaps leading to drinking and dancing and other lewd behaviours? No, music was only appropriate for worshipping God, and it was best to ensure that only Fru Ingerlin, 97 years old, knew how to play. She was hardly likely, at her age, to begin frequenting dens of iniquity.
However, she was 97 years old, and despite her pure, spartan lifestyle, the Reverend knew that she wouldn't last forever. He had talked with his wife briefly about finding an apprentice organist before it was too late, and then had pondered in silence for a week, waiting for the voice of God to lead him to a member of their flock, pure enough to avoid the temptation that music brought. They could think of no one, and the silence from Above was an added condemnation. He led his family in a fast, praying and consuming only water for three days before his only child, a son, had broken the silence by asking for bread. Furious at the impiety, Aslaug slapped him and threw him out into the snow. When he returned to his fireside, Anja smiled and touched his arm gently.
“Perhaps the child...?” she said, and Aslaug considered it. Young Toki lived a clean life of hard work and discipline. He attended all church meetings, of course, and while he was not perfect, the Reverend would be able to guide him closely and make sure that his son did not abuse the gift of music. Perhaps Toki had not been impious after all, but the broken silence had been a sign. He nodded to Anja, who opened the front door and drew their son back into the warmth of the firelight. Toki's arms were wrapped around him and he tried not to shiver under his father's stern eye.
“On Monday, you will go to Fru Ingerlin. You will learn the organ from her, and when she dies, you will take her place in the church. Do you understand?” Aslaug saw the emotion well up in the boy's eyes, and frowned slightly, relaxing only when he saw Toki try to wrestle the joy down. He'd have to watch his son very carefully indeed, to ward off temptation.
And so, in exchange for a bundle of firewood every week, Toki's musical education began. He had never talked to Fru Ingerlin before (children are to be seen, not heard), and he found her a hard taskmistress. She did not smile, and she scolded him when he played the hymns too fast.
“Hymns are solemn tributes to God,” she would say, smacking his fingers with a ruler, “Do not turn them into sinful dancing music. Play the scales again.”
But her house became a haven for Toki. For two hours every week, he could sit in the warmth of her living room, on a seat that was padded-a first for the child-and soak up all she had to teach him. Sometimes, when he played his scales perfectly and did not play the hymns too fast, she would stop the lesson early and allow him to drink hot chocolate in her kitchen. The sweet treat was another first for the child, and it became the driving force in his life. He worked harder at home, so that his father would not put a cease to the lessons, and strived for timing and perfection at Fru Ingerlin's. Eventually, Fru Ingerlin put away the ruler altogether, and she even smiled occasionally as he played. Toki had never been smiled at by an adult before, and the first time she did, he felt an unfamiliar emotion-love-bloom up in his heart.
It was therefore a shock to Toki to learn that his beloved teacher was not as perfect as he, and his father, had assumed. He was a little early for his lesson, and as he carefully negotiated the doorknob to the kitchen with firewood in arms, he heard glorious music-certainly not from any hymn. He gasped at the beauty of it, and when Fru Ingerlin's rich but cracked voice chimed in in a foreign tongue, Toki dropped the firewood with a clatter. He stepped over the firewood and walked to the living room, where his teacher was hurriedly stuffing unfamiliar papers into the casing of a sofa pillow.
“What is that?” he asked, and she froze, then straightened.
“It is not what you think, Toki,” She started, and then crumped onto the sofa, tears starting to well up in her eyes. “Please, please do not tell your father.”
Toki rushed to her side, horrified without quite knowing why. Sympathetic tears sprung up in his own eyes, and he threw his arms around her.
“I wouldn't tell on you! Not ever! What kind of music was that? What were you doing with this paper?” It was the most Toki had spoken in his life. He was excited from the thrill of the forbidden, enjoying the feeling of holding someone's safety in his hands. He wouldn't let Fru Ingerlin feel his father's wrath. This much, if nothing else, he could control. Fru Ingerlin must have decided that she could trust Toki, because she brought the papers out one by one.
“This is sheet-music,” she said, “Like the written-down words in the Bible.”
Toki looked at the incomprehensible marks. “Will you teach me?”
Fru Ingerlin looked stern. “Of course not,” she said, “Your father would excommunicate me if he knew that I play this modern music. He sent you here to learn the hymns, not how to blaspheme. But,” she softened at his downcast look, “In exchange for keeping this secret, each week I will play a song for you. Is that fair?”
The sun rose again in Toki's eyes. It took so little to make the child happy, Fru Ingerlin thought. There were some few issues besides music that she disagreed with the Reverend Aslaug on. So after Toki's lesson, despite his occasionally stumbling fingers, she made him a cup of hot chocolate and she took out the sheet-music for a song from an American musical and sang to him.
Toki sat enchanted on the sofa, hardly even touching his hot chocolate. The foreign words, though they made no sense to him, swirled around him and through his head in an intoxicating way. “What does it mean?” He asked when she was done.
She beckoned him to the organ and pointed at some tiny verses in Norwegian written beneath the bars of music. “Can you read?”
Toki shrugged, then shook his head. Fru started singing the tune over again, in Norwegian this time, pointing to the words so Toki could follow along.
“Summertime,
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
Oh, your Daddy's rich
And your momma's good lookin'
So hush little baby,
Don't you cry
One one these mornings
You're gonna rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky
But 'til that morning,
There's nothing can harm you
With your daddy and momma standing by
Summertime,
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
Oh, your Daddy's rich
And your momma's good lookin'
So hush little baby,
Don't you cry”
The lyrics were like nothing Toki had ever heard before, and he said so.
“Of course, little Toki. This is not a hymn, this is a song.”
“Why can't our hymns sound like that? Wouldn't God like something beautiful rather than something...” Toki caught the blasphemy before it tripped off his tongue, but Fru Ingerlin never slapped him when he said inappropriate things, often just gave him a stern look. This time, she just smiled.
“Many people, such as your father, things that beautiful things are reserved for the life after this one. But, Toki, I think that happiness is no sin.”
Toki took the words and songs home with him in his head. Though Fru Ingerlin has declined to “teach him to blaspheme”, she had nevertheless put ideas in his head that he'd never considered. That life could be beautiful. He could be happy. That his father-Toki scarcely dared to think it when inside his house-his father could be wrong. That was practically blasphemy in itself.
Toki stayed at home a few years more, until the death of Fru Ingerlin. He arrived for his lesson at the usual time, but found no one in the kitchen, or in the living room. He hesitated and knocked on the only other door in the house, then peeked into the room. She was in bed, and the room was silent and cold. The smell of death lingered faintly.
Toki sat in the living room for a long time, trying to think of what to do. He'd never been close to someone that died before. He sat down at the organ for a while and played some hymns before he stopped. It wasn't even the music that she liked. He tried to play some of her jauntier American songs, but couldn't. He had never learned the pieces, since Fru Ingerlin had steadfastedly refused to teach them to him.
He thought about that for a while, and about his father, and then he took the secret pages of incomprehensible music of of their pillowcase. He took them into the woods to burn them, and then he left. He did not return home. He simply started walking, determined to find a new life in the land of song-America.
He didn't have a plan, and he had no concept of direction or distances, so it took him a lot longer than he thought it would, but he eventually found a job on a ship bound for the States, and not much later he found himself staring out at a new country. As he leaned over the railing at the prow, the cracked voice of his teacher came back to him:
“One one these mornings
You're gonna rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky.”
Toki spread his arms wide and took in the baking heat of his new home. It was summertime, and he was sure that somehow, eventually, the livin' would be easy.
Title: Summertime
Author: Heledren
Characters: Toki
Word Count: 2301
Rating: G
Summary: It's summertime, and the livin' is easy.
It was an unusual sound that found Pickles' ear and drew him out of the indoor pool. He'd been floating around on an inflatable dragon, drink in hand, when he heard the strained strains of a song that certainly didn't sound anything like metal. He kicked and paddled in an ungainly way to the edge of the pool, keeping his drink aloft, then allowed a Klokateer to lift him out.
He followed the noise out to a balcony, where he found a drunken Toki, wearing only happy face boxers, hanging over the railing and belting out lyrics at the top of his lungs.
“Toki!” Pickles tried to catch the Norwegian's attention with no success. “TOOOOOHKIIIII!”
Toki didn't pause in his broken warbling. It looked like he wasn't just drunk, he was sloppy. Pickles did the only thing that came to mind for breaking concentration; he slapped Toki's back hard, where a sunburn was forming. The Norwegian howled, but at least it was no longer lyricized howling.
“Pickle! De fucks!”
“Hey Toki,” Pickles grinned as though he'd done nothing. You couldn't grow up with Seth or hang out with Murderface without becoming at least a bit of a douchebag. “What'cha doin' out here?”
Toki scowled, weaving slightly as he tried to rub the spot where he'd been hit. “Ams singing, what's it look like?”
“Dunno, it sounded kinda gay. What were ya singing?”
The scowl solidified on Toki's face. It looked like Toki was settling in for a long sulk. “It amn'ts gay, it ams de best song ever! It's about de summers.” Toki started crooning again, though at a lower volume. “Ams summertimes, an' de livin's is eaaasyyyyyy...”
Pickles smirked, recognizing the song from long ago, on his mother's record player. “Yeah, Toki, I hate ta break it to ya, but dat's definitely gay. It's from a musical, so it's gahtta be! Where'd you even hear that, anyway?”
Toki staggered a step back, then aimed a punch at Pickles that passed easily a foot from his face. “Fucks you, Pickle! You amn'ts know good music if it bites you in de dick! You screws off now!” Toki fled back into Mordhaus, albeit more at a stagger than a run. Pickles shrugged to himself, and wandered back to the pool. Just Toki being weird again, like any other day.
Toki, on the other hand, wandered to the kitchens, determined to eat and drink as much as he wanted. The Americans in the 'Haus had celebrated the 4th of July in style, with fireworks and racks of alligator ribs (Nathan had insisted) and lots of booze. Today, July 5th, was Toki's day, though. The day that he'd landed in America, bewildered and hot and unable to communicate with anyone but the workers on the ship he'd come across on. July 5th was his freedom day, when he celebrated the ability to do what he wanted, anything he wanted, and no one could tell him differently. And no one could tell him that his song, the song that had started his new life, was gay.
(Norway, Toki's childhood)
Music was a forbidden pleasure. By the order of Reverend Aslaug, no one in the congregation was allowed to know how to play instruments, except for the ancient organist who accompanied the droning hymns every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. If everyone knew how to play, he reasoned, what was to stop them from perhaps playing music in public, perhaps in pubs, and perhaps leading to drinking and dancing and other lewd behaviours? No, music was only appropriate for worshipping God, and it was best to ensure that only Fru Ingerlin, 97 years old, knew how to play. She was hardly likely, at her age, to begin frequenting dens of iniquity.
However, she was 97 years old, and despite her pure, spartan lifestyle, the Reverend knew that she wouldn't last forever. He had talked with his wife briefly about finding an apprentice organist before it was too late, and then had pondered in silence for a week, waiting for the voice of God to lead him to a member of their flock, pure enough to avoid the temptation that music brought. They could think of no one, and the silence from Above was an added condemnation. He led his family in a fast, praying and consuming only water for three days before his only child, a son, had broken the silence by asking for bread. Furious at the impiety, Aslaug slapped him and threw him out into the snow. When he returned to his fireside, Anja smiled and touched his arm gently.
“Perhaps the child...?” she said, and Aslaug considered it. Young Toki lived a clean life of hard work and discipline. He attended all church meetings, of course, and while he was not perfect, the Reverend would be able to guide him closely and make sure that his son did not abuse the gift of music. Perhaps Toki had not been impious after all, but the broken silence had been a sign. He nodded to Anja, who opened the front door and drew their son back into the warmth of the firelight. Toki's arms were wrapped around him and he tried not to shiver under his father's stern eye.
“On Monday, you will go to Fru Ingerlin. You will learn the organ from her, and when she dies, you will take her place in the church. Do you understand?” Aslaug saw the emotion well up in the boy's eyes, and frowned slightly, relaxing only when he saw Toki try to wrestle the joy down. He'd have to watch his son very carefully indeed, to ward off temptation.
And so, in exchange for a bundle of firewood every week, Toki's musical education began. He had never talked to Fru Ingerlin before (children are to be seen, not heard), and he found her a hard taskmistress. She did not smile, and she scolded him when he played the hymns too fast.
“Hymns are solemn tributes to God,” she would say, smacking his fingers with a ruler, “Do not turn them into sinful dancing music. Play the scales again.”
But her house became a haven for Toki. For two hours every week, he could sit in the warmth of her living room, on a seat that was padded-a first for the child-and soak up all she had to teach him. Sometimes, when he played his scales perfectly and did not play the hymns too fast, she would stop the lesson early and allow him to drink hot chocolate in her kitchen. The sweet treat was another first for the child, and it became the driving force in his life. He worked harder at home, so that his father would not put a cease to the lessons, and strived for timing and perfection at Fru Ingerlin's. Eventually, Fru Ingerlin put away the ruler altogether, and she even smiled occasionally as he played. Toki had never been smiled at by an adult before, and the first time she did, he felt an unfamiliar emotion-love-bloom up in his heart.
It was therefore a shock to Toki to learn that his beloved teacher was not as perfect as he, and his father, had assumed. He was a little early for his lesson, and as he carefully negotiated the doorknob to the kitchen with firewood in arms, he heard glorious music-certainly not from any hymn. He gasped at the beauty of it, and when Fru Ingerlin's rich but cracked voice chimed in in a foreign tongue, Toki dropped the firewood with a clatter. He stepped over the firewood and walked to the living room, where his teacher was hurriedly stuffing unfamiliar papers into the casing of a sofa pillow.
“What is that?” he asked, and she froze, then straightened.
“It is not what you think, Toki,” She started, and then crumped onto the sofa, tears starting to well up in her eyes. “Please, please do not tell your father.”
Toki rushed to her side, horrified without quite knowing why. Sympathetic tears sprung up in his own eyes, and he threw his arms around her.
“I wouldn't tell on you! Not ever! What kind of music was that? What were you doing with this paper?” It was the most Toki had spoken in his life. He was excited from the thrill of the forbidden, enjoying the feeling of holding someone's safety in his hands. He wouldn't let Fru Ingerlin feel his father's wrath. This much, if nothing else, he could control. Fru Ingerlin must have decided that she could trust Toki, because she brought the papers out one by one.
“This is sheet-music,” she said, “Like the written-down words in the Bible.”
Toki looked at the incomprehensible marks. “Will you teach me?”
Fru Ingerlin looked stern. “Of course not,” she said, “Your father would excommunicate me if he knew that I play this modern music. He sent you here to learn the hymns, not how to blaspheme. But,” she softened at his downcast look, “In exchange for keeping this secret, each week I will play a song for you. Is that fair?”
The sun rose again in Toki's eyes. It took so little to make the child happy, Fru Ingerlin thought. There were some few issues besides music that she disagreed with the Reverend Aslaug on. So after Toki's lesson, despite his occasionally stumbling fingers, she made him a cup of hot chocolate and she took out the sheet-music for a song from an American musical and sang to him.
Toki sat enchanted on the sofa, hardly even touching his hot chocolate. The foreign words, though they made no sense to him, swirled around him and through his head in an intoxicating way. “What does it mean?” He asked when she was done.
She beckoned him to the organ and pointed at some tiny verses in Norwegian written beneath the bars of music. “Can you read?”
Toki shrugged, then shook his head. Fru started singing the tune over again, in Norwegian this time, pointing to the words so Toki could follow along.
“Summertime,
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
Oh, your Daddy's rich
And your momma's good lookin'
So hush little baby,
Don't you cry
One one these mornings
You're gonna rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky
But 'til that morning,
There's nothing can harm you
With your daddy and momma standing by
Summertime,
And the livin' is easy,
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high
Oh, your Daddy's rich
And your momma's good lookin'
So hush little baby,
Don't you cry”
The lyrics were like nothing Toki had ever heard before, and he said so.
“Of course, little Toki. This is not a hymn, this is a song.”
“Why can't our hymns sound like that? Wouldn't God like something beautiful rather than something...” Toki caught the blasphemy before it tripped off his tongue, but Fru Ingerlin never slapped him when he said inappropriate things, often just gave him a stern look. This time, she just smiled.
“Many people, such as your father, things that beautiful things are reserved for the life after this one. But, Toki, I think that happiness is no sin.”
Toki took the words and songs home with him in his head. Though Fru Ingerlin has declined to “teach him to blaspheme”, she had nevertheless put ideas in his head that he'd never considered. That life could be beautiful. He could be happy. That his father-Toki scarcely dared to think it when inside his house-his father could be wrong. That was practically blasphemy in itself.
Toki stayed at home a few years more, until the death of Fru Ingerlin. He arrived for his lesson at the usual time, but found no one in the kitchen, or in the living room. He hesitated and knocked on the only other door in the house, then peeked into the room. She was in bed, and the room was silent and cold. The smell of death lingered faintly.
Toki sat in the living room for a long time, trying to think of what to do. He'd never been close to someone that died before. He sat down at the organ for a while and played some hymns before he stopped. It wasn't even the music that she liked. He tried to play some of her jauntier American songs, but couldn't. He had never learned the pieces, since Fru Ingerlin had steadfastedly refused to teach them to him.
He thought about that for a while, and about his father, and then he took the secret pages of incomprehensible music of of their pillowcase. He took them into the woods to burn them, and then he left. He did not return home. He simply started walking, determined to find a new life in the land of song-America.
He didn't have a plan, and he had no concept of direction or distances, so it took him a lot longer than he thought it would, but he eventually found a job on a ship bound for the States, and not much later he found himself staring out at a new country. As he leaned over the railing at the prow, the cracked voice of his teacher came back to him:
“One one these mornings
You're gonna rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky.”
Toki spread his arms wide and took in the baking heat of his new home. It was summertime, and he was sure that somehow, eventually, the livin' would be easy.