Wren can't help but smile a little at Alex's flush. He probably shouldn't find it so attractive but, well.
"That's fair," he agrees at the slight semantic difference; after all, he's already thinking, a little, that it's not all luck. It's only appropriate that Alex has a better word.
He pours him another glass and nods. "I do." Wren nods toward the slight nook where he keeps his instruments; he pushes himself off the counter he's leaning off with a slightly ostentatious gesture and heads over in that direction. The wall, chosen for its position away from both the heater and the windows, is hung with various stringed instruments of diverse origins. A few chairs and a keyboard stand and pedals occupy the floor space in front of them.
"It's a song from Scotland," he says, "I think. Shetland, maybe." He smiles wryly over his shoulder at Alex as they head over. "Clearly I'm very studied about this."
He pauses at the wall of stringed instruments, running his fingers over them and tilting his head thoughtfully. Wren's eyes go a little soft at his instruments. They're like friends, lovers, things he knows in and out. He sets down his wine on the keyboard stand, lifts down a dulcimer. The drone string is right for the song, he thinks, and Alex hasn't heard him play anything but a guitar.
"There's a version in French, too, where the man turns into a dolphin," he comments, tuning the dulcimer as he sits down.
He starts with the traditional melody, improvising on it a little, and eventually starts, the story of the wandering, absent selkie who returns for his son, warning the boy's mother that one day she'll marry a hunter who will kill them both in their seal form. An earthly nurse sits and sings...
When he was little, too little to be resentful of his father, he'd romanticized the idea of the missing father returning and scooping up his son, of them both bearing some kind of magic. He hadn't thought much of the ending. As an adult with little interest in knowing the father who'd never returned, it seems much sadder for everyone involved.
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Date: 2014-10-08 03:20 am (UTC)"That's fair," he agrees at the slight semantic difference; after all, he's already thinking, a little, that it's not all luck. It's only appropriate that Alex has a better word.
He pours him another glass and nods. "I do." Wren nods toward the slight nook where he keeps his instruments; he pushes himself off the counter he's leaning off with a slightly ostentatious gesture and heads over in that direction. The wall, chosen for its position away from both the heater and the windows, is hung with various stringed instruments of diverse origins. A few chairs and a keyboard stand and pedals occupy the floor space in front of them.
"It's a song from Scotland," he says, "I think. Shetland, maybe." He smiles wryly over his shoulder at Alex as they head over. "Clearly I'm very studied about this."
He pauses at the wall of stringed instruments, running his fingers over them and tilting his head thoughtfully. Wren's eyes go a little soft at his instruments. They're like friends, lovers, things he knows in and out. He sets down his wine on the keyboard stand, lifts down a dulcimer. The drone string is right for the song, he thinks, and Alex hasn't heard him play anything but a guitar.
"There's a version in French, too, where the man turns into a dolphin," he comments, tuning the dulcimer as he sits down.
He starts with the traditional melody, improvising on it a little, and eventually starts, the story of the wandering, absent selkie who returns for his son, warning the boy's mother that one day she'll marry a hunter who will kill them both in their seal form. An earthly nurse sits and sings...
When he was little, too little to be resentful of his father, he'd romanticized the idea of the missing father returning and scooping up his son, of them both bearing some kind of magic. He hadn't thought much of the ending. As an adult with little interest in knowing the father who'd never returned, it seems much sadder for everyone involved.