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28/9/06 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
minervasoloI wrote this a couple of years ago. Think it'd do for the magazine? It's silly, and I don't know if I like it so much because of the memories it evokes, rather than for itself.
Grade Eight
Her hair curled around her ears, a silky mass of dust-brown waves that had rebelled against what must have once been a neat bob. Glasses kept it out of her eyes, but there wasn’t a lot else she could do with it. Too short to be tied up, too long to be left loose.
It was particularly annoying today, during her piano exam. She could hardly stop playing to tuck it back behind her ears, and it kept tickling her. Worse, the piano was flat. At least, she hoped the piano was flat. Surely this piece hadn’t sounded so bad at home, had it? How she hated these exams. She had been doing them for so long now. Over a decade. And always that nagging question at the back of her mind: was it worth it? Did she want to be a concert pianist that badly? Disadvantaged by starting to play later than most of her contemporaries, she always blushed when she found herself surrounded by girls five years her junior in the waiting room in the old Victorian house, all holding the same sheets of music and reciting the same scales under their breath.
She made it to the end of the piece with a sigh of relief. Stretching and wiggling her fingers to combat poor circulation, pausing briefly to admire her short burgundy nails, she raked them through her hair and dug in her bag for an Alice band. Bands had never worked before, but there was a first time for everything. At least it would be marginally less irritating.
Her examiner chuckled. He was a tall man, almost lanky, in his mid twenties, as far as she could guess. She’d had him before, way back when she was doing Grade Two. She liked him, in as much as she had liked any of her examiners. Last year she had her friend had been joking about how to get good grades by flirting with the examiner, and she knew that if she were ever to test their theory, this would be the guy she would test it on. “Well hel-lo, Mistah Examinah,” she mouthed to herself and bit back a giggle.
The examiner asked her to play some scales and arpeggios, slowly getting more complex as he ran through the list. She didn’t mind, she liked the smooth flow of notes up and down. In fact, she’d always preferred it to the music. Sometimes simpler was better, and these trails of notes pleased her. It showed too.
“So, I think that about wraps it up,” the examiner told her as the last tone died away. “Obviously I can’t tell you right this very minute, but I think you passed, and passed well.”
“Thank you,” she murmured “Is it okay if I go? I have a train to catch,” she purred, head lowered, looking at him through her eyelashes, all coy smile and dimpled cheeks. She heard him breathe in sharply, and bit her bottom lip to hold back the laugh. But then, why hold it back? She giggled girlishly and pulled the band from her hair, letting her curls fall in an unruly tumble about her face. She stood up and collected her bag from beside the piano stool. When she was younger, she used to share the stool with the examiner, sitting side by side so he could see exactly what she was doing. But they were both adults now, and though they could have fit it would have been a bit snug. Pity. But then, there were advantages to being older, too. She let her hips slip sideways, just a bit.
“Yes, well, we’re done here,” the examiner told her, speaking a little too fast and looking a little too flustered. “You really have done well. I suppose we’ll be seeing each other, soon enough?” he reached over and started to collect the music sheets up into a pile.
“Friday’s good for me,” she winked back at him as she closed the door. “8 o’clock, at Zizzi’s?”
Also, could everyone who's offered to send me stuff actually, yunno, send me stuff? I still only have non-writers pieces, which is great, but there's another 31 pages to fill. I know I won't have this done by the deadline I'd set myself originally (which would be two days away now), but I really need to get it done within the next week so we've got time to print it!
Grade Eight
Her hair curled around her ears, a silky mass of dust-brown waves that had rebelled against what must have once been a neat bob. Glasses kept it out of her eyes, but there wasn’t a lot else she could do with it. Too short to be tied up, too long to be left loose.
It was particularly annoying today, during her piano exam. She could hardly stop playing to tuck it back behind her ears, and it kept tickling her. Worse, the piano was flat. At least, she hoped the piano was flat. Surely this piece hadn’t sounded so bad at home, had it? How she hated these exams. She had been doing them for so long now. Over a decade. And always that nagging question at the back of her mind: was it worth it? Did she want to be a concert pianist that badly? Disadvantaged by starting to play later than most of her contemporaries, she always blushed when she found herself surrounded by girls five years her junior in the waiting room in the old Victorian house, all holding the same sheets of music and reciting the same scales under their breath.
She made it to the end of the piece with a sigh of relief. Stretching and wiggling her fingers to combat poor circulation, pausing briefly to admire her short burgundy nails, she raked them through her hair and dug in her bag for an Alice band. Bands had never worked before, but there was a first time for everything. At least it would be marginally less irritating.
Her examiner chuckled. He was a tall man, almost lanky, in his mid twenties, as far as she could guess. She’d had him before, way back when she was doing Grade Two. She liked him, in as much as she had liked any of her examiners. Last year she had her friend had been joking about how to get good grades by flirting with the examiner, and she knew that if she were ever to test their theory, this would be the guy she would test it on. “Well hel-lo, Mistah Examinah,” she mouthed to herself and bit back a giggle.
The examiner asked her to play some scales and arpeggios, slowly getting more complex as he ran through the list. She didn’t mind, she liked the smooth flow of notes up and down. In fact, she’d always preferred it to the music. Sometimes simpler was better, and these trails of notes pleased her. It showed too.
“So, I think that about wraps it up,” the examiner told her as the last tone died away. “Obviously I can’t tell you right this very minute, but I think you passed, and passed well.”
“Thank you,” she murmured “Is it okay if I go? I have a train to catch,” she purred, head lowered, looking at him through her eyelashes, all coy smile and dimpled cheeks. She heard him breathe in sharply, and bit her bottom lip to hold back the laugh. But then, why hold it back? She giggled girlishly and pulled the band from her hair, letting her curls fall in an unruly tumble about her face. She stood up and collected her bag from beside the piano stool. When she was younger, she used to share the stool with the examiner, sitting side by side so he could see exactly what she was doing. But they were both adults now, and though they could have fit it would have been a bit snug. Pity. But then, there were advantages to being older, too. She let her hips slip sideways, just a bit.
“Yes, well, we’re done here,” the examiner told her, speaking a little too fast and looking a little too flustered. “You really have done well. I suppose we’ll be seeing each other, soon enough?” he reached over and started to collect the music sheets up into a pile.
“Friday’s good for me,” she winked back at him as she closed the door. “8 o’clock, at Zizzi’s?”
Also, could everyone who's offered to send me stuff actually, yunno, send me stuff? I still only have non-writers pieces, which is great, but there's another 31 pages to fill. I know I won't have this done by the deadline I'd set myself originally (which would be two days away now), but I really need to get it done within the next week so we've got time to print it!
