Feb 2022 chooseyourownadventure orchestral vocal score story fantasy
Just in case you don't know, I'm creating a "Choose Your Own Adventure" FAWM.
For this FAWM, I've decided to make a score to a film/story that hasn't been written. This is because YOU will decide where the story will go and how it will eventually end. After each song, I will give you options for your "Choose Your Own Adventure" story. Write your option in the comment section. I will wait about 8 hours or so, calculate the numbers, then create the next song that fits this option. After each song is posted, I start the process all over again until FAWM and the story is over.
The majority of you voted for A) Dream.
Holy Mother of God, I'm so tired. Got caught up in work stuff and new house stuff. I'll live, I'll make it. I gotta finish this story!
Thank you to everyone who has been commenting and voting. Again, I really love seeing your answers and all your thoughts. I'm making this up as I go, I swear. That's probably why it takes me so long to type up the story bits. I wanted to mention that every choice Kaleb makes affects the depths of his relationships with other characters and their level of trust.
Also, I wanted to do a vocal thing and that stuff always takes me forever.
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You dream.
You dream about her again.
Delphine. The White Witch. The only woman you’ve ever loved and the only woman you’ve ever failed. She’s young here, like you remember, untouched by time, wearing the same blue dress she had on when you first met her. Has it really been twenty one years? You were sure she was dead, you swore you saw her burning in the courtyard. But she’s alive and smiling at you. She takes your hand, old and covered with calluses and ragged scars. She looks at it and turns it over, then presses it to her cheek. You feel your eyes go hot, welling up with tears. You collapse, fall on your knees and lean into her. She smells like blooming jasmine in the middle of Spring. She holds you close, cradling your head, stroking your long grey hair, saying nothing. You can’t remember her voice. Disease of the mind.
Your dream drifts and throws you back through time and, suddenly, you’re the younger, better-looking version of yourself two decades into the past. Your hands are less rough and you’re wearing a burgundy uniform with a black sash decorated with a bronze star. Your head is completely shaved, which helps hide the fact that you’re starting to grey. There may be younger pups always coming along, but you’re still the best tracker in the kingsguard. You are a Seeker of Janga-on, the kingdom east of The Great River. Only a handful of Seekers can track bounty from east to west. You are told who to find, you sniff them out, and you bring them in, sometimes dead, sometimes alive. You are a good dog and you always follow your master's orders.
Until you don’t.
You’ve never considered yourself to be susceptible to emotion, which is why it all caught you off-guard so many years ago. SHE caught you off-guard. The woman with the white hair and the clear blue eyes. Delphine must have been half your age. Your king had heard of a powerful witch, a colorless monstrosity of nature, devious and cunning. He wanted her brought in and told you that it was for the protection of the kingdom. Such evil could not go unchecked, he said.
She never stayed in the same place for very long. She was difficult to find, but, when you did find her, she wasn't at all as you imagined. Instead of a monster, you found something else. She was strange-looking, no doubt, but not the monster your king had described.
You took your time, which was unusual for you, watched her for several days, hesitant to bring her in, pondering the thought of letting her go. And just as you had come to your decision to fulfill your duty, she approached you.
You drift back to that moment in time and you finally remember the sound of her voice–soft and calming.
There she is, again like the first time, staring at you. You think she’s going to ask you some questions and you mentally prepare some answers.
“I know why you are here,” says Delphine. “I won’t come willingly. I hope you know that.”
“The king says I must bring you in. He said you’re a threat to the safety of the kingdom,” you reply, though you don’t sound convinced yourself. You’ve always been a bad liar.
She doesn’t cry, doesn't beg for her life like so many before her. She fights you tooth and nail, scratching and clawing, kicking and biting. And even when you have her pinned down on the floor, she is defiant. Rather than just looking at you, she looks INTO you with those fierce, glassy eyes and her expression softens. Your breath leaves your body. Remember, Kaleb? That was the moment everything changed.
You let go of her wrists and bend down to kiss her. She’s warm and feels like home, only no home you’ve ever known before. She's inviting and pulls you closer and you breathe in the scent of her mixed with flowers. You can feel yourself disappearing into her, melding and intertwining. You don’t stop to wonder if this is what love is supposed to be and, for the first time, you let yourself go and sink into the moment, drowsy with pleasure. She is all that matters right now and you want to fill that ache inside you, that need to be as close as humanly possible to her.
You stay with her. It starts with one week, then two. Then a month goes by. You talk about going somewhere new with her, building a new life together where no one knows you. You make plans. You’re constantly twisting in a whirlwind of bliss. You’ve forgotten your obligations as a Seeker of Janga-on. You're a Defector now. You ignore any sense of danger. You idiot.
You both become careless and careless people get caught. But that memory is for another time you tell yourself.
You wish you could stay in this memory, in this dream, in this one beautiful moment where you are still together and hopeful. It hurts to leave her. You hate this part of the dream, the part right before you wake up. You know that reality is going to shake you out of the sleepy cloud, rip away the soft veil covering your eyes. You hold onto the memory desperately, trying to remember details so you can stay just a little bit longer.
But you can’t remember as much as you used to. Your memory is not what it used to be. It's a disease of the mind and there is no cure. That’s what the medicine man said.
The dream disappears, like the fine morning mist in the valley that gets burned away by the sun. You feel Delphine slip through your fingers on your hands, which are now old and rough again. She is gone and you feel that ache, that longing, like a knife wound that never healed. You know it's going to hurt when you wake up and you'll definitely be tired and in a foul mood.
Do you wake up:
A) Screaming?
or
B) Sobbing?
@headfirstonly Mar 2022
Vocals on this are outstanding. I was wondering whether you were going to make the whole track a capella, but then that huge synth tone arrives, and this becomes something darker and more mysterious and (when the strings arrive) more melancholy in a way that screams "doomed relationship!"
@dragondreams Feb 2022
This is simply beautiful, Mel. And so dreamlike. I would definitely wake sobbing.
@pooka Feb 2022
B) Sobbing.
That's so sad that I don't think Kaleb could not wake up with a crying heart.
@hanley Feb 2022
Wow, beautiful arrangement, and that choir is super angelic! Love the cascading bell falling like little rain droplets in the gentle breeze.
I choose B, because I can't imagine anyone wanted to scream after hearing this song, but it certainly plucks the heart strings! Thanks
@sapient Feb 2022
Gorgeous dreamy music and its so good to hear your voice again!
I dunno how you are doing all this just after moving house...
This is quite a choice you give us. Again.
It would be nice to think B, showing his sense of deep loss. But nah, he's an angry old git. He wakes up screaming at the injustice of it all. Gotta go with A.
@tamsnumber4 Feb 2022
THANK YOU BEAUTIFUL SONGSTRESS!! I loved hearing you and all that you are giving during this time is so appreciated! That was an amazing track!
I choose sobbing...........'cause I love emotion and I can't imagine what he would scream about.
@wylddandelyon Feb 2022
Sobbing. By the end you know you are just dreaming, and that there's a dangerous world out there, and a scream could endanger not only you, but the people with you too. Would certainly endanger you and them. And careless people get caught. You don't want your carelessness to give your dream an equally tragic sequel.
And yes, he's a man of action, but if the emotion won't stay hidden inside, the quiet option is better.
And yes, the music is so very lovely!
@dzdandcunfsd Feb 2022
Yet another one I had to stop reading and concentrate on this wonderful bit of music for. It's absolutely beautiful!
I'm going with A, He strikes me as more a screamer than a sobber, both perfectly viable emotions for the situation, but sobbing seems too much like accepting defeat and dwelling on regrets. I think he's more a man of action and no use dwelling over what can't be changed when there's work to do to change what happens next.