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“Mm. From the beginning.”
His mother’s voice betrays neither dissent nor praise to his playing. Victorian smiles easily. He lifts his hands from the zither and begins to play the concerto from the beginning. His mother taps a finger on the skirt of her dress, blood red lacquer on blood red silk. Victorian’s fingers are light on the strings, the music flowing easily. He’s only really passable as a player, but he still enjoys the craft: the feel of metal beneath his fingertips and the notes the instrument can sing.
He’s barely made it halfway through the concerto before his mother interrupts once more. She clears her throat, a harsh break into the melody. “Enough.” Victorien pauses his fingers on the strings, and the resonant hum that lingers is his only applause. His mother rises to her feet, reaching for her pipe and smoothing her skirts down. She breathes a sigh.
“This will have to do. If only you had a guqin to properly play, then your music would surely surpass all else.”
She looks meaningfully at his father, seated in his study, where only two more open doorways separate them. His father doesn’t look up from the papers in his lap, his fingers tightly clenched around them. He gives her no response aside from a tightening of his brow.
She scoffs, turning her back on him. Victorien meets her eyes, his face dutifully still. She eyes his face critically, brushing aside a lock of his hair with a manicured finger. Victorien had taken almost entirely after her, displaying her dark hair and eyes, and the pale skin of Doma, not Ishgard. The only traces of his father’s lineage in him were in his ears, ever so slightly pointed and drastically short for an eligible elezen scion. Not that his mother particularly cared about that, she took every victory of hers over his father’s at any chance she could. Something his father took great umbrage with, but could never voice. Not if he wanted to keep his house standing.
Satisfied with her inspection, his mother makes her exit. “You shall perform at the next ball. Wear the red silk, and keep that zither well tuned.” She is half out of the room before she has even finished speaking, the words called out over her shoulder to Victorien.
Victorien waits until the sound of his mother’s steps fade completely. As soon as it’s quiet, he screws up his face, and puts on a mocking voice. “From the beginning Victorien. No, no, from the beginning but on a guqin, Victorien.” He blows out a breath, stretching out his wrists and shoulders. It felt like he’d been sitting there for hours. And at the next ball he would have to sit for hours more, performing lovely music for the driest, stuffiest nobles in all of Ishgard. The old and refined who would smile at his face then whisper and point at his ears. Ugh.
All the more reason to enjoy himself while he can. Victorien stands, undoing his tie. Aigle had said something about an excursion, today. He sweeps his hair up, tying it off with the ribbon he’d liberated from his neck. He puts the zither aside, and calls out to his father.
“Good evening, father! I’ll just be out for a walk.”
His father doesn’t look up, but he grunts. Despite mother’s needling, he’s in a rare good mood.
Victorien smiles, and strides quickly to the door. Perhaps Aigle hasn’t left his estate for the day yet, and he can impose upon his family’s hospitality for a while. Victorien is feeling faintly peckish, and quite intent on raiding Aigle’s secret store of nibbles.
Plan in mind, Victorien scoops up his coat and is out of the door, leaving only the last of a melody he hums.