Chapter Text
Eugene blew into her flute, her breath thin as air as it glided through the shining silver. Her fingers danced, gliding, gilded, smooth and soft across the holes in her instrument.
With every sound that left the lips of the wind instrument, her ears flapped, pricked, perky yet patient. Her thin tail swayed with every vibration, imitating each one so impeccably it was difficult to tell where Eugene ended and the music began.
Her round, olive-colored eyes followed the instrument, hope blazing in them, bright yet guarded, like a star reluctant to burn supernova. She examined the flute as if expecting a miracle.
Do miracles even exist anymore?
Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
The Ratian flopped over onto the bedsheets in her dorm room with a despondent groan, squinting at her sheet music like it had personally betrayed her. Though an actor first, Eugene loved the arts in every variation, especially band— though this specific piece was testing her limits.
It was the opening number of The Pied Piper, bright and bubbly and crisp, saturated staccato oozing exposition from every note emblazoned upon the ink. Fans of the piece often made the bold claim that it transports the listener and performer alike to the world where the story took place.
Eugene didn’t feel transported in the slightest. She felt… lost. And out of tune, in more senses than the literal one.
“Your F-sharps could be sharper,” Wendy suggested from where she laid on her own bed, long legs kicking in the air like diamond knives slicing water. She wore an ivory silk tube top and long, shiny black leather pants, the epitome of style and perfection lounging out upon a bedspread. She absently twirled a platinum-blonde strand of hair that caught in the dim lights — Eugene felt her own breath catch at the enrapturing sight, could feel the glisten of stars crowding her eyes.
“And your C-sharps are a little too sharp, and—” a pause, the pretty pale face growing pinched in puzzlement. “Eugene?” Wendy asked, laughing softly to herself at her Ratian friend. “You’re staring.”
Ah. That. The shorter of the two blinked, heat rising to her darker skin, awkwardness overtaking her expression. “O- oh. Um. My apologies,” the girl stammered, grasping at her flute again, fingertips trembling with adrenaline. Watch the sharps then. Right.
“Watch the sharps,” Eugene whispered under her breath, less to herself or to her flute, but to the pair as a unit. When her eyes fell shut and the first note fell from hesitant, slipping, shy whispering lips, she couldn’t quite catch the human’s look of affection down at her slightly smaller frame.
But perhaps she felt its warmth. Or perhaps there was an excess of sunlight, filtering itself through the blinds.
The beginning started off soft, sweet, romantic. Pianissimo like rose petals drifted down the line, graceful like a continuous, cream-colored cotton thread flowing with ivory elegance over the lace of a wedding dress.
Wendy, kicking her legs, enraptured, all but gushed over the Ratian as she treated the incoming sharp note with extra care, a tenderness so unique to this specific musician that the resulting swooning was practically inevitable.
“Just like that!” the girl encouraged, through triplet and through trill. “You’ve got this, Eugene.”
Eugene felt her face heat. She figured she just needed to take a breath. That was it.
The next note she exhaled was a C-sharp, and that C seemed to stand for care, and suddenly she felt very warm yet again. Her fingers felt hot— she feared the silver of her flute to be slipping.
“Music,” Wendy gushed, “When it comes from the heart… a-and when played with certainty… it can grant unimaginable strength, Eugene. Like a superpower, y’know?”
The Ratian took a prompt inhale where her part was resting for a few measures, turning to look at her friend with a soft, fond smile, lines of her mouth creasing like paper, eyes shining like peridot, heart fluttering like a cloth in the November wind. “Sure, Wendy,” she sighed wistfully.
“I think that you’ve already mastered it, actually,” the human continued, eyes downcast in their flustered flush, twirling a strand of dusty blonde hair with a slender sunlit digit. That— bashful, beautiful image of bixbyite bliss was the last Eugene saw of Wendy before her eyes fluttered shut, losing herself in the moment yet again.
(Little did she know it would be the last she saw of Wendy for a long, long time, even after opening her eyes.)
“In fact,” that honey-warm voice continued in the comforting, enveloping darkness of the Ratian’s mind. “I’ve been wanting to tell you, I— Eugene?!”
Her body jolted— her eyes all but pried open— the flourishing finale of an F-sharp fell flat.
Eugene concluded the expository number, and her reward for it was a crystal-clear view of Geneveieve the Pied Piper himself, hand in hand with his dear friend Dawson as the pair fought to quell the waves approaching their city.
The sight was inspiring. Incandescent.
Interdimensional…
The sight was literally interdimensional.
In time with the breath Eugene sucked in, a dark pocket was torn in the sky, a hole shaped like a halo, right about Geneveieve with the flute pressed to his lips, the valiant man not even looking up. Lost in the notes. A strum of familiarity reverberated between Eugene’s ribs.
Dawson shifted in response to the gust of wind the tear in the sky had birthed, her eyes pried away from a nightmare of sapphire liquid to bulge in horror at the cosmic blackness above her human companion. “G- Gen?!” the Ratian stammered, clutching her fists until her pale flesh strained.
The Pied Piper didn’t even flinch— between the roar of the wind and sea and the chime of flutesong, the man appeared to be utterly lost in his music. As Dawson fought to capture his attention, she locked eyes with Eugene, who had been helplessly staring for what felt to be eons, feet solidified beneath her, the young Ratian paralyzed with wonder.
Dawson’s tail twitched, her ears flicking. Bright eyes flashed with clarity, with awe and fear and swirls of realization.
Eugene took a step back. Whatever Dawson had realized, had reacted to, was just as much as she herself now knew.
She was in the world of the Pied Piper, existing in the space where that fable took hold, in the womb of the original miracle itself.
And she was responsible for the violent, pitch-black rip now plaguing its skies.