Writing Away From Home [Open]

[Astrid Sherinian]

It wasn't much that would draw Astrid away from the techy comfort and convenience of Bolt Dorm when she was trying to write new songs. But somewhere she could have a good cup of coffee and some sweets while not having to brew the former in an instant coffee machine usually fit the bill. Such was what drew her out here, to an old-fashioned local cafe in Mavro City. She'd gotten herself a cup (which had now become three over time) and a couple slices of pound cake, and set to work.

She had her laptop out and was currently hammering away on the keyboard. It would be clear to anyone looking over her shoulder that she had several files open, and the top one seemed more like a jumble of text than anything coherent. Sure, there were complete sentences that said things (at least, they said things that made sense to her), but each went straight into the next without line breaks, paragraph breaks, or sometimes even periods. Behind and under her laptop, meanwhile, were several sheets of paper, each lined with a musical staff. Musical notes were filled in on any of the visible sheets, along with scribbled non-musical notes in whatever space was available.

After several seconds of nonstop typing, Astrid finally paused, looked at the screen a second, then deleted the last couple lines of text. "No, that won't work," she said to no one. She switched over to another tab, one containing more coherent lines that could more easily be interpreted as song lyrics (or failing that, a poem) and added a note several stanzas back to rewrite that stanza. She then switched back to the incoherent wall, sat back, and let out a sigh. She'd hit a stumbling block, but that was fine. Going out to the cafe had been surprisingly effective for making progress, and she hadn't gotten nearly as many stares or people excitedly trying to talk to her as she had expected. "Now if only the coffee would refill itself," she said, picking up her mug and looking at its now meager contents.

[Crispin Yates]

With all of the absent wondering and distractions lately, it was of little surprise that he needed some time to sit and recoup.  For some that involved going somewhere quiet not doing much of anything.  For this wanderer that only made him more anxious.  No, his idea of relaxing and gathering his strength involved being around plenty of people.  Even if he didn't actually interact with them, just sitting and watching all of the different types of people was fascinating.  

There were the usual normal business people, just popping in and out to get fuel to keep them going through the day.  Various trainers doing the same, often stopping to sit in and relax before going back on their way.  The occasional oddballs, varying from only slightly abnormal to 'what on earth were those people thinking when they left home this morning', and intermittent Gray Garden Academy npcs students came and left as well, though none really paid the trainer with a Joltik nesting in his hair any real mind.  

Not that he minded.  On days like this it didn't hurt to just be near all the people as they went about their day.  Who didn't like a little people watching after all?  There was one, though, that seemed to follow two of the previously described folks.  She was dressed in a uniform that matched his own, except a dark blue where his was cream.  He tried to rack his brain to remember which dorm that meant she was in, and other than not being Nature he couldn't put his finger on it.  Shrugging it off, he absently watched her furious typing and flurry of papers, which put her in the 'occasional oddball' group as well.  Even if she was just working on homework (which made him wonder what class he had possibly missed that much homework in), it was with a deep fervor that made it seem out of the norm.

For a while he didn't say anything, just casting her a glance when the other coffee house goers became boring again.  He didn't want to interrupt that, after all.  Goodness knows he would hate to be interrupted if he was that occupied with working on something.  He chuckled a bit at that; as though he would be so excited to work on what seemed to be... a very chaotic paper, from his viewpoint.  As he watched some of the other patrons, he heard her mumbling to herself.  He blinked, tilting his head as she grumbled about her coffee.  Now, that was something easily remedied, and the least he could do for providing entertainment as she brutally attacked the keys of her keyboard.

Standing up and heading towards the counter, he ordered a coffee and a mocha.  After paying and tipping the barista, he took both drinks to the table.  Handing her the coffee and keeping the mocha for himself, he smiled.  "Sorry ta interrupt, but I overheard ta tragedy av ya cup fallin' empty. I figured I cud pay it forward by pickin' up a cup av coffee for yer, seein' as we both go ta Gray Garden.  M'names Crispin, by ta way."  There, he thought to himself.  Hopefully that would manage to not come across as overtly creepy, but still be a half decent ice breaker.  One could only people watch for so long without wanting to actually interact, after all.

[Astrid Sherinian]

Astrid hadn't actually expected a response. She could get up and deal with her empty mug once she got to a good stopping point. She'd already paid for a few more in advance, just to make things easier. All she'd have to do was go up and ask for a refill. It was the 'getting up' part, as in 'tearing herself away from her work', that presented a problem.

But just then, a guy with a noticeable accent spoke up. Astrid's eyes snapped away from their piercing gaze into the computer screen, meeting those of a guy who was now standing over her table. With an extra coffee. That he just handed to her. "Oh. Thanks," Astrid said, surprised by the sudden generosity. She accepted the new mug, sitting it down next to her own mostly empty one. Then she gestured for the boy, Crispin apparently, to have a seat across from her if she wanted. A quick glance back at her computer screen told her that she was close enough to a passable stopping point to take it, so she hammered out another sentence, then saved the document and folded her laptop closed.

"I'm Astrid," she said in response to his introduction. "So do you always do stuff like this? Buy coffee for strangers in cafes because they happened to mention it? Or am I special?"

[Crispin Yates]

Crispin smiled with a nod, absently replying to her thanks.  "Naw big dayle."  Taking the seat he was offered, he took a sip of his own mug as the other student finished up where she was.  He almost felt bad interrupting, but everyone could use a distraction now and again and he was glad to help in that respect.  At the very least, she didn't seem annoyed by it, which was a plus.  Hey, she got free coffee for being interrupted, so that had to have been a plus, right?  Sipping his drink again he replied to her own introduction casually, "Nice ter meet ye, Astrid."  Her next remark made him click his tongue a bit as he thought about it.  

He finally nodded with a grin, "Sometimes, aye. Ah wus watchin' ta others cum an' go for quite a while, an' ye looked stressed enoof ta warrant a disrupshun. Waat sort 'av 'omework 'as ye in a frenzy?" He glanced down at the papers, noticing all of the music notes.  He furrowed his brow for a moment, trying to wrack his brain to think of what class that could be.  There wasn't any sort of music class, was there?  Looking back up to the girl he blinked, "Unless dis is a 'obby an' not work?"  He was a bit intrigued.  Unless there was a reason for it, he couldn't imagine himself getting so worked up over something for 'fun'.  Hell, even if there was a reason he would probably find an excuse to get out of it.

[Astrid Sherinian]

Astrid laughed at the idea of what she was doing being 'homework'. Or being stressed for that matter. No no no. She probably wouldn't get this into homework. Sure, she'd do all of it, but she couldn't see herself sitting in a cafe hammering away madly at her laptop for that. Or maybe she could if that's what it took to get it done, but Astrid doubted that any of it would be that bad. At least, not during her first year, and certainly not this early in it.

Then, she laughed again when Crispin suggested that maybe it was a hobby. "Oh, no, it's work. Just not for school," Astrid answered. "It's more like a job. I'm writing a concept album." She noticed Crispin glancing at the sheet music around her laptop, and moved it so that he could get a better view. Not that it would tell him much, since half of it was music and the other half was illegible to anyone who wasn't trained in reading Astrid's 'no one has to read this but me' note taking. "And I'm not really stressed, I just...tend to get really into it. It's like if you're reading or playing a game and get into it to the point where you don't notice anything around you...am I making any sense?"

[Crispin Yates]

Even though he had no talent in reading music, he could appreciate the effort that it must had taken to write all of it out.  He was curious, glancing through the music to see all of the work she had put into her project.  He finally shook his head, smiling as he gave her the papers back carefully.  "That's fascinatin'.  Ah cud never sit still long enoof ta git al' av dis done.  Waat kind av concept album?"  True enough that he didn't really understand much when it came to music, but he did enjoy it.  He was just never in one place long enough growing up to ever put a face to any of the music he liked.  When he listened to it while he was in a town he enjoyed it, or whenever someone suggested something and put it on his music player. 

Pondering her phrasing for a moment he nodded.  "Ah can git caught up in a gud buk from time ter time, so ah can see wha yer comin' from.  Still, too much work can be a bad tin'.  Ye don't want ter git yerself too burned aht."  Which was one reason he was here to begin with.  It was a nice little break from the action of the school to keep himself from getting bored.  Change was good!

[Astrid Sherinian]

Oh? Was that genuine interest she heard? Astrid smiled, pulling out the sheets that had ended up under her laptop as well. "I'd guess you'd call the genre Darkwave, or something similar at least. Electronic music with a bit of gothic rock mixed in. It's a story about a girl who undergoes a near-death experience and ends up seeing the edges of the land of the dead while she's out. The bulk of the album is her telling stories about what she saw there," she explained. Not the most lighthearted concept, by any stretch, but so long as she could do just about whatever she wanted now, she was going to take full advantage of it. Just to be sure she didn't accidentally alienate anyone she'd gotten interested in her with her little revelation during and after her last concert, though, she'd planned on releasing a 'normal' album with final versions of some of her old online persona's stuff, as well as a few new ideas.

She let out a soft sigh as Crispin continued. "I know that. But it's better for me to get all this stuff down while it's still fresh in my mind. Or else I end up forgetting it when I try to get back to it later. It's funny though, a lot of the notes I've made probably won't even have much impact on the final songs."

[Crispin Yates]

Crispin listened intently, his brown eyes furrowed as he tried to take it all in.  He didn't know all that much about music, though he didn't mind trying to learn what he could about it.  Most of what she said sounded almost like a different language to him, but when she started mentioning the story aspect about it his interest was piqued.  "As far as a story point av view goes, dat sounds pure interestin'.  You'll 'av ter let me nu whaen 'tis done, oi'll definitely gie it a listen if oi can."  Even if he wasn't sure about the genre's she mentioned, he enjoyed music and he loved a good tale.  Why not mix the two together?

He could understand where she was coming from, of course.  Writing something out like that had to take a huge amount of focus.  Crispin almost got antsy just thinking about it, and he was impressed with the girls dedication.  "Oi can respect dat.  If oi'm providin' too much av a distracshun den jist let me nu, oi'd fale brutal if oi made yer lose yer train av tart."  As much as he enjoyed talking to someone new, he didn't want to overstep his bounds either.  

[Astrid Sherinian]

"It'll be awhile. I'm wanting to release a more standard album alongside it, so, double the production time. In a perfect world, I'll get them done by the time I'm done with school, but that all depends on whether I can get the time and hire the people I need to record once I'm done writing it all. And that's not including everything else that'll go into it." The post-production, at least, she planned to mostly do herself. She was learning a lot of that on the side as well, which was thankfully a much faster process than actually putting that knowledge to use would be. Add to that the rest of the writing, getting any interested members of her old sound team back together as more of a proper band and hiring new ones to replace the ones who weren't, recording all of their tracks, then finding a good way to distribute it without enslaving herself to some big record label, and four years seemed pretty optimistic.

She opened her laptop again, looking over her work. She'd stopped off right at the end of the story for Endless Night, and while the lyrics weren't done, everything she needed in order to finish them later was. "Actually, I'm at a pretty good break point, so if you want to stick around a bit more, I don't mind," she said, smiling over at Crispin.

[Crispin Yates]

As he listened to all the work that went into what she did, Crispin just watched incredulously.  There was a lot more to music than he thought, and he had to respect it all that much more.  When she was done he just shook his head and raised his eyebrows.  "Dat sounds roi crahzy.  Oi wish yer al' de luk ter git through it, it sounds loike yer certainly 'av yer 'ands full in de long run."  Raising his Mocha in a mock toast to her future he took a big sip of it.  It made him think though, honest and truly.  It seemed like she had a whole huge plan thought out, but what did he honestly have?  Roam the regions battling trainers as he traveled like his mom did?  Was that really what he wanted to do with his life?  

Brushing away his thoughts for now, he grinned as she said she was actually at a good stopping point.  "Ah?  If that's so, den sure, oi don't mind sittin' an' blatherin' for a bit if yer don't."  He leaned back in his chair, mug on the table well away from any papers of hers.  He'd feel absolutely terrible if he accidentally spilled any, and didn't want to take that chance.