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It had been months since she had left grimdarkness behind, but the whispers were still there.
Well, not whispers, really. They didn't actually have a sound to them. It was just a constant faint awareness at the edge of her consciousness, the pantheon of horrorterrors making themselves known. Most days it was manageable. Today was not like most days.
Rose hurried down the shadowed corridor of the meteor, praying she wouldn't run into anyone before she reached the seclusion of her room. She heard footsteps, and pulled her hood up to hide her face as best she could, before turning down a different hallway to avoid contact. She made her way back to her room without further incident.
As soon as she closed the door behind her, her carefully neutral face dropped into a more panicked expression, and she rushed to pick up the violin she had left in a pile of yarn and laundry on the floor. She barely bothered to tune it or apply resin to the bow before starting in the middle of the most complicated song she knew. Her bow flew over the strings, reproducing the tune she had taken weeks to learn, but she could feel the shaking of her fingers amplified through the instrument, the chin rest vibrating against her chin.
The dark gods crowded her mind. She concentrated on the music and the movement of her fingers on the strings. Their ancient consciousnesses oozed tendrils through her awareness, but she was determined. Immortal eldritch beings or not, she would outlast them. She sped up her tempo.
This had happened before, she told herself. This would not be her end. Her thoughts went back to a song she had heard back on Earth. She drew the name from her memory. What was it? Ah, yes. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." It seemed appropriate for her situation, though she privately believed that the devil would be nothing compared to the gods of the furthest ring. A fiddle of gold against her soul? She could do that. She switched songs, to one different but no less complicated.
She would do this, she knew, for hours. She would play until black marks smeared her teeth from biting down on her painted lips, until her fingertips bled on the strings, until the horrorterrors retreated once more to the edges of her consciousness. She would play until she regained control.