“I guess I didn’t look at it that way,” Kre grumbled. “It really would be a pretty miserable time for you, wouldn’t it?”
Jem moved her fingers in a manner mimicking the playing of a lute as she hummed a soft tune to herself. After half a minute she paused, hands hanging motionless in the air, and turned to look at Kre. “I did it again, didn’t I?” she asked a little sheepishly.
Kneeling down beside Jem, Kre took her hands in his own and gently pushed them down to her lap. Blushing slightly, he quickly removed his own hands and patted his legs as if brushing off stray dust. Before he could say anything though, Jem rubbed her fingers together and looked down at Kre’s hands. She quickly reached out and grabbed his right hand and brought it up to her eyes.
“Kre,” she whispered with a tinge of worry in her voice, “your hands are bleeding!” She muttered softly as she pawed through each of her pockets in turn until she finally pulled out a piece of cloth. She used it to wipe Kre’s hands, each one in turn, methodically and carefully. She continued humming her tune as she did so and Kre knew better than to disturb her song-filled meditative state.
She was like that sometimes… she would just disappear into a tune, always different, always a work in progress but never completed. Sometimes she would repeat a section in a different key or with a slightly different tempo, but so long as Kre had known her, he could never recall hearing the same tune twice. It was impressive really, the way she seemed to tap into the melody in the wind, the very earth upon which she trod, and turn it into an audible echo of the world’s soul.
It was one of many things that Kre admired about his artistic friend. Some folks in town thought of her as scatterbrained or a wastrel that can’t manage a normal day’s work without falling into a musical daydream and ruining whatever she happened to be working on. Even those few that could not appreciate her for her ability to perform the more mundane tasks thought her musical talent to be a blessing from heaven itself.
More than one traveling musician has offered to take her on as an apprentice. The townsfolk usually ran those folk off, knowing that they were planning to simply profit from Jem’s superior talent. There was one case where a visiting bard actually demonstrated a significantly higher skill than Jem and their duet stunned the entire crowd into pure silence followed by several folks actually weeping when the song ended.
The humming stopped and Kre felt Jem press the cloth into his hand. “I wish I had some balm, to help the wounds close faster, but this will have to do for now. What happened?”
“It must have been the torches,” Kre shrugged. “I guess when the wood splintered as we hit each other, it sliced up our hands.”
“You boys are idiots,” Jem sighed. “Complete and utter idiots.”
“I can’t disagree with you there, but we certainly had fun.” Kre smiled as Jem rolled her eyes. “Besides,” he added sadly, “who knows when I might see these guys again or do something stupid again.”
Jem snickered, “I can answer that one. You’ll do something stupid again in the next ten minutes. Guaranteed.”