i feel it in my soul, i feel the empty hole [open]

[goodweather]

Who: Phil and you! And others.
What: flower time :)
When: through September
Where: bellona theater, kitchen, john's, around
Warnings: none yet

and i feel it in my blood [meta]

Anyone who knows him well has seen something off about him lately. There's a hardness, a bitterness, something kept between his teeth before he's bitten down. There's a couple very good reasons for it, but one is no secret to anybody, when he walks around the ship with one pale eye. (It should have gone. It didn't.)

But going into September, he's... he's not better, really, but there's a certain lightness to his step that hasn't been there for some time, maybe was never there before. The reason for this, too, is evident: two little earplugs sit in his head, tied on a silk cord that he wears around his neck. He doesn't jump at sudden noises that nobody around can hear; he's less distracted, he's sleeping easier. This lightness lasts for a while. Not forever. But it was there, and that matters. Thanks, César.

i. in the fire and the flood [redbud, homesickness]

ia.

Someone's hiding in the Bellona Theater.

Well. Not really. But anyone coming in is clearly intruding on a more private moment. Phil is working out a song on the piano by ear, transcribing the sound from his phone into something playable and writing it all down on some blank sheets of paper with a pencil, and he has to write at an angle to keep the paper from getting wet. He's hard at work, though sluggish and frantic in turn. Sometimes he stops transcribing altogether just to listen to the thing on loop.

Sometimes he sings along. Again and again and again and again. It's the only time anyone will have ever heard him sing. His voice is a little tight from disuse, but smooth from all his years of public speaking and pitch-perfect from all his ear training. Redbuds burst in little bunches between the boards of the stage, if it was any wonder what he's doing here.

ib.

He's busy clattering around the kitchen, hard at work baking... oh, are those cupcakes? Oh, those are a lot of cupcakes.

He's going slow and careful, not wanting but needing to make sure his lack of depth perception doesn't fuck this one up for him. Something has him feeling desperately choked, wires wound around his neck and between his teeth, and if he has to be reminded again of how far from home he is and how long it's been, he's going to--... something. Something ugly. He doesn't know. But it's going fine. Steady. Fine. Having had Darcy cook with him in the kitchen beforehand has made this easier, at least.

When he runs out of frosting, Phil hurls a spoon into the sink and sinks to the floor.

ii. the beast that can't be killed [angel's trumpet, phantom]

It's another sunny morning like it always is in Sand Dollars. The same cumulus formation rises over the horizon right on time at 9:42 AM like it always does, and Phil sips his coffee with a book open, and beautiful yellow and white flowers dangle from the wall above him where he sits by a window in a booth.

Seated across from him is a figure faintly imposed on the air.

"You know, Phil," he says, voice nasally and just a few notches too loud, "I've noticed something. You don't really do much anymore, do you?"

"You've gotta clarify yourself, Ned," he hums, not looking up.

"I mean, a guy that's as smart as you are, you'd think you'd be helming something here. But you're not--heck, you don't even talk to the fellas running the place!"

"Mmhmm."

"I'm just sayin', and I'm sayin' this as a pal--you gotta wonder where they'd be if they had you actually helping."

iii. even now you mark my steps [forget-me-not, amnesia]

Phil is playing John's, as he always does. He's doing a fine one this month, too, throwing himself into it and flying across the keys. At some parts he starts getting a note wrong here or there, but like, that's fine. He just needs more practice.

He picks a section he started to especially have trouble on and rolls his shoulders, ready to have a proper crack at it. And he goes, running through the runs, trying to nail down some points of articulation that are especially tricky, except... ugh, it's not coming together. He keeps dropping notes and keeps forgetting the key. Which is weird, but if trying to go at it this fast is just making it worse, then he's just got to slow down and read it note by note. Sure. He can do that. So he does that.

Until he begins to struggle with what he's looking at altogether. The notes swim. The notation doesn't make sense. What section is he on? Is this a sonata? A ballad? What does "sfz" mean?

The music peters out, slowly and awkwardly, until there's no noise at all. For at least fifteen minutes, Phil is sat at the piano, utterly dumbstruck, surrounded by little blue flowers. He can’t even remember what he’s doing here. He can’t…

iv. lovely bitter water [poppies, dreams] (locked to darcy)

Phil's cut down significantly on his sleeping-in-public habits since the start of August, but some things still slip through the cracks. At least this isn't the middle of the day.

Some time in the evening he's been left sequestered in a corner of the library, some forgotten sci-fi novel left open and turned downwards in his lap, poppies sprung up all around the shelf immediately next to him. He's quite firmly out cold, and has his earplugs in to boot. Oops.

v. all the days of our delights are poison in my veins [wildflowers]

[ have another idea? hmu! ]