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"I didn't know you could play the guitar."
He woke up to find Neil sitting on one of the crates, tuning a guitar. He had never seen a guitar in their container. But well, compared to the inversion stuff, this was probably just a minor trick of Neil's.
Neil raised his head at his voice, his blonde fringe falling a little. A smile appeared almost instantly on his face. "Well, now you do," He replied lively, then continued to adjust the pegs.
"Strange habit." He sat up on the bed, moving a little closer.
"Just a pastime. Learned it from one of my college friends. Street play, pub band, sort of stuff. Had a couple of crazy nights. We were pretty welcome. "
"Where'd you get this?" He couldn't help but ask.
Neil looked at him with an unexplicable, amused expression. "Logistics."
He watched as Neil finished tuning. The guitar was apparently inverted as well; the instrument sounded strangely normal to his ears, which had got used to distorted sounds. The blonde adjusted his own posture, moved his shoulder a little, then put his left hand onto the fingerboard. He hesitated for a moment, closing his eyes.
When the strings were plucked, they were quiet. Kat slept aside, her countenance calm and peaceful.
"Good to see you're not getting out of practice."
"I do...practice, from time to time."
He turned his attention to the melody Neil was playing. It was composed of only three notes, far apart, each following its predecessor. [1] The sounds echoed gently in the cramped space, trapped, as the air flowing in a heat exchange box.
"That sounds...sad."
"She's sad." Neil tilted his head, signifying Kat, who was still sleeping.
"You're playing your tune from her? Inspired?"
"More like empathized."
"Really."
A note was plucked a little louder. "All she did was for protecting her kid."
"She said he was everything to her. You got similar feeling?"
Neil just kept playing. He looked up, and there was the same smile again, the one that he had never understood, eyes and mouth annotating opposite emotions. He speaks and refrains at the same time, an incarnation of the policy of suppress. He realized that he had again touched on the invisible surface, cold and impregnable, while Neil, being Neil, was always on the other side.
The melody flowed steadily from Neil's hands.
He tried to break the glass. "It sounds...indefinite."
"Yeah. You could just go on and on. Or backwards, it'll sound the same anyway. "
"Like our march in time."
"Exactly."
"Then what's your music for me?" The question was abrupt, but he was too curious. Neil had many secrets, too many. He had already known that violence and threats do not work with him, yet questions, posed in such a natural circumstance, without possible defense--they would perhaps make a difference.
Upon hearing his words, Neil stopped playing. He seemed to have fallen into a kind of meditation.
"You'd dance with that." After a while, he put the guitar down to his feet, then bent down to knock his knuckles against the crateboard. Taptap, tap, tap, tap. [2]
"It's a bit too regular."
Neil smiled to him. "Haven't got to the better part yet." Taptap, tap, tap, tap. Taptap, tap, tap, tap. Taptap, tap, tap, tap. The last two beats went off the balance, derailed, then back to the start again. Tap. Tap. He thought of the first time he got inverted, the world reeling around him, his head light and dizzy.
"Still not so satisfactory. " He tried.
"You're regular." Neil said assertively, looking at him in the eye.
"Predictable?"
"Hm."
"Like?"
The blonde gestured to Kat. "Knew you'd save her. From the beginning."
"That's why you agreed so quickly. " He realized aloud. Neil grinned, again taking up the guitar.
"What's for yourself, then?"
Neil sweeped the strings casually.
"Just this? Two chords?"[3]
"Chords are the basic of harmony." Neil looked at him, looked through him, as if gazing into something faraway, beyond his existence. "Everything you hear in music, every feeling, every mood, gets its color from harmony. They are a preparation, a foundation of all the prettier things. An ambience so comfortable that you'll forget its existence." He winked, "That's basically what i do for tenet, i guess."
"Hmm. I'll pretend that i understand. "
"And here i thought you'd approach Sator with opera." Neil put the guitar down on his knees, squinting at him knowingly.
"Well, I succeeded, anyway."
"Hmm. Shot in the dark."
"Some'd have said cowboy shit."
"I'd prefer to say you've got a certain edge on that. Hey, listen to this." Neil smiles. "This one is special. I acquired it a long time ago. Liked it since."
So he listened, as Neil played with his eyes closed, fingers brushing against the strings. The melody was as slow as Kat's, but he heard the difference. [4] Kat's tune was a whirl, with notes circulating like the Ouroboros, encaged in the loop, never escaping. But this one was a tide. The melody flowed forward despite occasional returns, like rotating wheels that drove forward, or an inverted spring flowing to where it started.
To his surprise, he found a strange pain in his chest. He had still not figured it out, as Neil finished the last note and stood, watching him curiously.
"Alright, end of break." Neil glanced at the sloping clock on the wall. "Time to get back to reality."
He watched as Neil walked back to the instrument bag, glancing back at him, a big smile on his face.