Carol, Part 15 - Ring

The final key falls of the piano and the whole room feels almost too quiet. I turn to look at my friends.

"That was," Nick says, opening and closing his mouth for a while, looking for the words. "That was perfect!"

"It was," My says, with perhaps a hint of skepticism in her voice. "Almost too perfect, really. It was just like what was stuck in my head. How did you do that?"

"Actually," I say, glancing at Leea and smiling sheepishly, "We kinda recognized the tune as well and after transliterating your humming, we went to the library to see if it we could find something about it. And we did."

"It's a really old song, dating back several centuries!" Leea sounds excited and My makes a soft 'ooh' sound. "We managed to find... some kind of lyrics to it as well, but they're in really, really old English and I don't even know what they talk about. So I was thinking we'd make our own lyrics."

"Sounds fun, but we only have eleven days before the Christmas ball," Nick reminds us. "So if we're gonna write stuff in addition to learning how to sing the song, we're gonna need to work on this the whole weekend."

"I can't today, I have a Spanish essay I need to finish for tonight," My says and rubs her eyes. "But I don't have anything tomorrow or Sunday before six."

"I'm free the whole weekend," Leea says with a shrug.

"I have dentist tomorrow morning, but other than that I think I'm good. Where should we meet?" I ask.

"We could first meet at the library and then go to someone's place for the night?" My suggest.

"Not ours, my mom has some old college friends over or something," Leea says.

"I live in an apartment, so not there. The neighbours are already complaining about my violin practice..." Nick says.

"And we can't all fit here," My says and everyone turns to look at me. "Soooo....?"

"I guess it's okay," I say. "I'll have to check with mom, though. But we'll meet at the library, yeah? I should get there by noon, but you guys can go ahead without me."

I play the song several times more and we talk about what themes everyone wants in the lyrics, until it's half past seven and My throws us out to finish her essay. I walk with Leea (Nick lives in the opposite direction, so he left as soon as we walked out) for a while, until she turns to another road.

"See me in your dreams!" she says with a wink and skips away, leaving me to walk home alone.

~x~

We're trying to think of a good rhyme for mistletoe when the door opens. I don't even have to look up from the paper; Flame's happy reaction is all I need to know who it is. Rachel plops down next to Leea and peers at the paper we're writing line ideas on.

"So, what did you tell your friends about the origin of the notes, eh?" she asks, nudging Leea's shoulder lightly.

"We told them we found them at the library," Leea says. Rachel grins.

"Told ya you can't make them believe you made such perfect notes from listening to someone hum," she says. "So, how's the lyrics coming on?"

"We're working on love," I say, tapping the pen on the paper. "But Leea is insisting on adding these verses on skating."

"I like skating," Leea says, crossing her arms. "And I happen to think that it's a very romantic thing to do with someone you love. Y'know, skating hand in hand, doing pirouettes, then going back inside and snuggling in front of the TV, marathoning the extended edition Lord of the Rings...."

"I thought it was supposed to be a fire place?" Rachel asks with a grin. Leea shrugs.

"I never did get the whole ring thing," Cecil finally chimes in. "If the Ring had a mind of it own, which it clearly did, how was Isildur ever able to cut it off Sauron's finger? Did it deem him unworthy or something? And why did it finally decide it was time to resurface after like, centuries?" 

"Are we seriously going to have this conversation? Right now?" I ask. "I mean, I'm all up for some lotr speculation, but we do have some more pressing matters at hand here."

Cecil finally sits down next to us, Flame curled around his shoulders. "You're right, sorry. So, themes? If you're working with a romantic love theme, you could have a verse about finding the perfect gift?"

"Yeah, we could work with that," Leea says and scribbles something down. "What would you get to the person you really love?" Rachel shrugs and then grins.

"Rings are nice."
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 Lord of the Rings. I don't even. I'm going to bed now, screw this.

Your topic issssssss. Apple(s).

Pie out.