The Girl the Dreamer Loved - Prologue (sort of).

a story that i wrote while my dad and my sister were swimming on sunday. my friend helped me with it.



ps. I will be adding an epilogue, for the simple reason that I think I added the last bit in a bad mood. Therefore, please look out for "The Girl The Dreamer Loved - Epilogue."
xxxx
jenna

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27-10-2007
Ok, I've edited the end. It made my friend cry when she read it, so i decided it was definitely too depressing. The girl the dreamer loved epilougue is on an indefinate haitus.

jenna
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Transport to Gineva took two hours; the subsequent hike four, and evening was falling when he found the bus, purple in the twilight. There were curtains in the back and a fire stoked on one side. Jackpot. He stood and looked at it for a long moment, then said, “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

The back door opened and a familiar head poked out. “What,” she said shortly, “the hell?” Hands in black cut-offs and feet in combat boots followed. “Ain’t ya heard of privacy?”

“No.” Andrei Khashoggi crossed his arms and waited.

“How come you always stand where you look scary?”

“Habit.” He looked her over, this girl the Dreamer loved. Her hair was worse than usual; it had, at some point before she left, been cut and styled a bit, which suited her, but it appeared that in protracted tantrums, she returned to form. Her trousers had seen better days. The boots he knew and respected and unless he was very much mistaken, the shirt had once belonged to Galileo. She had acquired a necklace shaped like an ankh, but that was it. Scaramouche the fighter, fists curled and face screwed up in adolescent annoyance.

She changed position slightly, resting one hand on her hip. “Can I help you?” The politeness was exaggerated, juvenile.

“Not me personally.”

“Well that’s good.”

“What,” he said finally, “are you doing in the middle of Switzerland?”

“None of your damn business.”

“It’s mind if I choose to make it mine.”

“I ain’t your business, pig.”

“No,” he said. “But the Dreamer is.”

“Like hell.”

“He is. He has been my business since you were still a delinquent with blonde hair and acne, playing with motherboards in Music History.”

“I did not have blonde hair!”

“Back when you were thirteen you did. Now listen to me, you self-indulgent adolescent.”

“Hey, now.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I got two words for you, pig, and they sound like Duck Toff. I can make you leave.”

“Oh, really?” Khashoggi lifted an eyebrow. “Unless you’ve got mace and a hyper-laser, I very much doubt it. Do you know what you’re doing to Galileo?”

“Godammit,” she said, her voice shaking, “this is not your business, you crazed policeman.”

“Are you planning on coming back any time soon? I only ask because he’s killing himself over you and we’d all appreciate you making up your mind sooner rather than later.”

“Killing himself my arse; it’s lost puppy syndrome. How would you know?”

“How would I not know?”

She clawed the mat of hair out her eyes impatiently. “Says you.”

Khashoggi stayed very still for a moment, then lifted his chin slightly. “Christ,” he said. “You’re even more of a mess than I thought you were. Hands.”

“What?”

“Show me your hands.”

“What?”

Khashoggi reached out and grabbed the girl’s closest hand, pushing the glove back. Her wrists were thin and clearly-defined, muscled and smooth and dotted with oil-stains. “Well, thank god for that,” he said, dropping her hand. “Nice to know at least one of you has self-control.”

Scaramouche stared at him for a long minute. “Oh God,” she whispered.
“You mean he..."

"You mean you didn’t expect it?” He was angry with her, even more than he had been before he left. “You knew. You knew how he thinks and how he reacts to pressure. You knew what would happen if you left.”

“Oh, Jesus…I didn’t –”

“Think? No, clearly not.”

She dropped her hands in a little, desperate gesture. “Get in the van; I can’t see you and you scare the hell out of me looming like that.”

He paused, then followed, ducking under the doorway. The inside was like a gypsy caravan, the walls hung in faded, patterned fabric and tiny, smoked-glass bulbs lining the ceiling. The back was full of pillows and tossed sheets of paper – music scores by the looks of them. The front seat, as far as he could tell, was stacked with guitar shapes. Had she been building guitars for six months? Christ. What a thing for the bad arse rocker chick.

Khashoggi leaned against a cushion and watched her. She sat cross-legged, hands resting on her knees and her face self-possessed and mostly calm. “Right. Gazz is depressed and it’s my fault. Did you really come all the way here to tell me that?”

“Yes.”

“Look, I knew he was buggered up. Everybody knows that. All he needs is someone to hang onto; why does it have to be me?”

“Who else is it going to be?”

“Charlotte.” Her face flickered for a moment. “Mads, Cheeky Fairy, Donna, Pink, Evita; he can have any of them, so why does he need a short, fat, dysfunctional little head-case who likes her guitar better than her dude?”

Khashoggi studied her in the dim light. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Damn right.” Scaramouche moved, a slight fidget she had somehow picked up from the Dreamer, just as he had picked up an edge of sarcasm from her. “Hell. Tell me something, Kashers - how do you and Meat work?”

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not actually desperate.” Scaramouche almost smiled and then, for a moment, she just looked lost. Khashoggi, oddly touched, elaborated. “Love isn’t the right word. It implies…effort or making a choice. It's there, something you can't deny, but you don't pay much attention to. Do you love your hands? They’re just there. Part of you.”

“Meat and Khashoggi, Moet and Chandon,” said Scara softly. “You just are. It’s like breathing or something. Two halves to the same thing. Is that why you’re not together anymore?”

“One of the reasons.”

“Um-hmm.” She slapped her legs in a gentle unconscious rhythm. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he working on? Right now?”

“Nothing scored for guitar.”

She winced. “Oh, now that’s a surprise. No, really, what?”

Khashoggi passed her the paper. “I took it from the studio.”

Scaramouche read quickly and he watched as her face changed. A rapid blink and a slight quiver as she crumpled the paper. “’S' crap,” she said. But she didn’t offer to give it back.

“Why leave?”

She looked up at him. She looked young without makeup. “Head-over-arse insane, that’s why. All these people, all the time. They’re awesome and they rock and all that, but they never go away. When I was really little, I used to go virtual hiking with my parents. And then on the weekends, sometimes we’d transport out to like Preston or wherever and walk around for real.

It was beautiful, you know? It’s so…quiet. All you can hear is the wind and things going crunch when you step on them. And rocks. Well, there used to be rocks, anyway. I felt like there weren’t any more edges to the world and I could just walk and walk and walk and nothing would ever end.

I mean, obviously it did – it always got dark and we had to go home and I had to do my homework, blah, blah, blah. But there was always this…little bit of me that was mad about those big spaces. Running was like that, you know. We didn’t know where we were going, so we could go anywhere, and we ended up,” she looked around the van, “here. And it was safe and it might as well have been the edge of the universe. And everything was beautiful.” Her voice shook a little bit. “He was, anyway. Hell, even I was beautiful, you know? He thought I was, so I was.” She closed her hands on her knees and said softly, “He’s the Dreamer – he can remake the world.”

“Very pretty,” said Commander Khashoggi. “If you feel that way, why are you still here?”

“Because he pi-" she changed her wording at the scowl on Khashoggi's face. "because he won't leave me alone.” She was back on her own ground again. “It’s always the Music, the Songs, the Vibe, the Band, and the goddamn Chick. I’m not a chick, I’m a guitar-player. I’m me, not some durr-brain Gaga groupie. And I’m also not just some ditzy accessory who happens to play a magic guitar. I’m good.” She took a breath. “I’m the best, and I don’t think he’s really OK with that either."

“So it’s a creative differences thing?” His tone was scathing and he saw her twitch. Good.

“No, it’s a me thing. I don’t need him. I never needed him.”

Khashoggi leaned over and caught her arms. She tensed, looked up and stared him full in the eyes.

“Well, he bloody needed you! How dare you do that to anybody, let alone Galileo Figaro? How dare you take what they give you and throw it back at them like that? I realize ‘responsibility’ is a big word for a little girl like you, but I thought maybe you understood it. What gives you that right to abandon?”

Her lips pinched together. “I told him I was going.”

“Yes, you said, ‘I’m going. Have fun.’ That is hardly acceptable.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Scaramouche tried to struggle free. “Don’t start giving me this crap about acceptable. What are you, my Dad? He drank himself to death. My Mum? She’s probly still in a hospital somewhere. My teacher? I don’t think so. You’re a turncoat traitor son of a moronic bastard who doesn’t know crap about acceptable!”

Khashoggi let her go and sat back.

“And you’re a hard-arse self-centered teenager with commitment problems. So what?”

“So what,” she echoed. “Look, you’re here now and you’re annoying me. Just go to sleep and you can yell at me some more tomorrow.”

----

She didn’t want to hear them, but Khashoggi’s words made it into her head. He stood there blankly and looked at her, almost emotionless, as he spoke. He did that a lot, and it was creepy. She wondered what Meat saw in him, this tall, gaunt man with his scarred face and bleached hair. Once or twice she caught a mesmerizing movement in his hands with their graceful, articulated fingers. Perhaps there was something there. Or perhaps there wasn’t.

She listened to him, feeling heavy and awkward and defensive – she always felt like this around the Commander. Wrong-footed, even when she was sitting. Scaramouche tied her hair back and fetched a new Scaramark 8 from the front seat. She’d finished a few, and she liked this one the best. Didn’t compare to Bri-anne’s Axe, obviously, but she was happy with it. She grabbed a lightbox and crawled out of the van, a little ways away from the sleeping police officer, then spread out the piece of paper. Why did Gazz have to send someone out after her? Why now? He had lousy handwriting. She moved the light closer and began to sound out the metre of the piece. Something was fluttering in the back of her mind, a four-four time butterfly; a bubble of a thought.

It might work.

She ran through a few chords on the Scaramark 8, then returned soft-footed to the bus to get the Axe. It was a labour of love to tune it, a pleasure almost sensual in the familiar ridges under her calloused fingers and the dig of the tuning pegs. She had learned to hear the notes as they should be. That was weird, that part: she had played it when she picked it up, but as she learned more, she did more and the Axe less. Like now, she tuned it herself, while in the first few months it had never needed tuning. Never mind. She played to herself to get her fingers warm, then looked at the new song again.


"For Scaramouche -

It’s only forever – it’s not long at all

Lost and lonely

Life can be easy

It’s not always swell

Don’t tell me truth doesn’t hurt, little girl

‘Cause it hurts like hell."



She rolled her eyes, allowing herself a small smirk.

Very Gazz.

She let her fingers fool – bah bah bah-buh-buh buuuuuh – like clarion chords on the guitar. It could be dance piece, maybe. It should be in F and have a pretty strong underbeat – one and a two, one and a two – and a smoother melody line. Decidedly upbeat. She fingered the chords; oh yes, she knew how he thought and how he would put together a song. The problem, of course, happened when she thought a song should go together differently than his bloody Dreaminess Galileo Figaro. He would turn it into some kind of moaning power ballad to get the lighters out and make the crowd sway.

Nope. This one should make them dance. “No, you don’t get it, Scara – the lyrics and the music have to match,” he’d said. Not necessarily. Not for this one. It wasn’t a miserable emo fest; it was fun. Alive. Underground.(?) She wondered in whose brain he’d dug this one up.

She played with it for another hour or so. This was the fun part – the experimenting, trying to find what would fit, like Mads shopping. When she couldn’t see anymore, she crawled back into the bus and curled up on her cushions.

She woke the next morning with the tune butterfly flapping in her head – solid enough to be a tune bird by this point – and knew that it was time to go back. She might not want to, but there was the shape of an oddly gentle song pulling her back in and she knew that, no matter what other things she could fight, music wasn’t one of them. Khashoggi found her outside the bus making coffee, her hair wet and flat from washing. She looked at him and said, shortly, “All right, I’ll go. Do you have to take me?”

He smiled, rather unexpectedly. “No.”

“Good. So bugger off and announce me or whatever.”

She found the beat again on the transport, leaning her head on the window. It wasn’t going anywhere – why not? She fished out a computer-pad and called up a score template. She wasn’t wild about longhand, but somehow Gazz and Pop had badgered all of them into scoring by hand. She grasped the pen a little awkwardly and began drawing notes. Four four, F? No, E. She chewed a loose strand of hair and fingered an imaginary guitar with her left hand.

----

The walk back to – what? – Home, the Dreamer’s House (and that sounds right pathetic; she blamed Bob for that one) was too short. The Bohemians loitering in the atrium saw her come in, and they all backed out of her way. She ignored them. If she decided to stay, she could talk to them later.

Later.

Gazz was upstairs in the studio, kneeling in front of the sound deck, fiddling with a sound knob. Scara sized up his back, shirted and sticking between his shoulders. She crossed her arms and waited until he turned. He stared at her like he’d been hit. “You –” He cleared his throat, rubbed his nose awkwardly.

“What’ve you been doing?” She didn’t move and continued to watch.

“I’ve been messing around with a few things with, um, with M-mozart.” He bit his lip. “Will you listen?”

“I might do. Should I get my lighter out?”

“No, it’s not rock. Well, not really. It’s like…both. Just, you know, listen.” He messed with the sound equipment, then hit play and stood back.

Scara, ready to be annoyed, stood still. It was…unexpected. She’d listened to Mozart’s endless lectures about classical and form and structure and crap, but she hadn’t really listened to his music. Whatever was playing definitely belonged to Mozart, not Gazz. She wasn’t sure what the instruments were, but they sounded nice, in the sort of textured and quiet way that acoustics did.

She was thinking about the sound, not the actual shape of it, when she noticed that her hands, independent of her brain, were moving in time with the chords and she realized with a shock that went from shoulders to feet that what she was hearing was 'Live Forever'. It was a different kind of sound, obviously – all those lower strings with a higher one (violin, possibly? She thought that was the name) rising out of the middle like a ray of light, but it was the same song. The same slow rise of seconds that tugged at the heart-strings, transfigured from the raw power of rock to the softer shadings of light and shadows you got from acoustics.

She looked up at him in confused surprise. “You did that?”

He shrugged. “Me and Mozart. Together. It was nice not having words to mess with. It’s…gentler.” The music soared for the sky and called the way it never had with a guitar. Oh, god. “Hey,” he said, changing the track, tossing a shy grin her way. “How bout this one?” A warm buzz of low strings, then the gentle rippling effect of a piano, spinning 'Love of My Life' out into something elegant and playful. Gazz danced on the spot, moving to the music and singing very softly under the piano, “Bring it back, bring it back – don’t take it away…you don’t know what it means to-oo me!” He stopped and glanced at her. The piano went into the bridge, the strings welling up in a mass of sound. “Sorry. You don’t like my dancing; it’s kind of stupid anyway, and I. Um. Well?”

“Not exactly rock’n’roll, but it’s cute.” She held his eyes a moment longer. “I’m back on my own terms, Gazz, just so we get that clear. I’m the guitar player. I’m not your baby or your chick or your groupie, I’m just the girl with the axe. Got it?” He nodded. “Good.” She turned and walked out of the room without looking back. She didn’t want to look back in case he started dancing in the sunlight again, lithe and graceful and smiling, like his damned beautiful music.

"Scara?"

She turned. Gazza was standing behind her. He was too close. He gave her a small smile.

"Missed you, Skirmisher."

She breathed in his smell, the scent that six months ago, she'd benn totally dependant on. As Gazz pulled her close, they kissed, and Scara foung herself wondering why she'd ever left.