“That’s unfortunate,” Katriel deadpanned as she delicately paged through a gilt-lettered manuscript that was way more pretty than practical. “I really didn’t feel like sitting through a scene of the proprietors kicking you out at closing time, today.”
The other betazoid wasn’t the least bit put off by Katriel’s response and he went on quite glibly. “Well, you can either put up with a scene of me pouting about leaving at closing, or you can bail me out of detention after I try to steal half the books off this shelf. See how generous I am to let you pick?”
“Yes, yes,” she replied as she cautiously shut her book and set it back into its place on the shelf. “I am overwhelmed by your considerateness. Ooo, an original Yammalton Playbill!”
The two Sedai siblings had been prowling through the aisles and corridors of Sonic Emporium for almost half an hour now. The shop had opened on the station shortly after Brian had transferred to the USS Ponderosa, so he’d never had the opportunity to see it before now and both of them were more or less flabbergasted by the available inventory.
Though Katriel hadn’t yet seen anything she wanted to purchase and own for herself, she was naturally keeping quiet tabs of anything Brian exclaimed over. She’d already picked out his gift for this holiday season, but if there was something particularly exceptional, surely it could wait until his birthday instead.
But their outspoken mission today was searching for a gift to donate to the Livesong Toy Drive, for which Katriel’s assigned orphan professed interests in –
“Classical music, camping, swordfighting, and lizards,” Brian had read aloud.
He sounded skeptical. “Classical music for a ten year old?”
Katriel merely shrugged. “I’m not going to question it. Anyway, that’s the one
I want to focus on, because I like classical music, too.”
“Technically you like swordfighting and you don’t entirely hate camping, either?”
Brian mused as he closed down the assignment file on her desk console.
“Sure, but I don’t want to gift a saber to a ten year old.”
“Touche.”
So here they were, frequently getting sidetracked whenever they saw something interesting to look at. Brian had been a bit of a theater junkie prior to enrolling at the Academy and Katriel’s appreciation for classical music had grown significantly after her stint in DS13 Chamber Ensemble, so the time was passing most pleasantly as they poured through music sheets both familiar and foreign.
“HEEEYYyyy, remember this??”
Brian’s excitement levels had been elevated ever since their arrival, but his most recent find pushed him to yet another degree more and when Katriel glanced over to see what he held in his hands, she understood why. Her expression twisted into some blend of horror and amusement.
“Lyizana,” she read the title. “Yes, how could I forget how you dragged me in to run around and sing and pretend to be a street urchin?”
“You were almost too tall for it, too,” he held the music score in his palm and let the pages fall open to a random spot. “But the director liked you the best of all the other kids, cause you were so quiet and on task.” He grinned over at her. “I wish I had gotten to see more of you on stage, I was only able to make time once and almost missed my own entrance because of it.”
“I don’t think you were missing much,” Katriel said, self-deprecatingly, momentarily suffused with the memories of participating in the youth production of a Betazoid opera, both her own and her brother’s. “And I’m not sure if the director would have liked me so much if he’d known what I was thinking once, halfway through the season.”
“Oh? What was that?”
The counselor replaced the item she had been looking at – an artbook on the original Risian production of Lady Butterfly – before turning to look at Brian, her expression contemplative.
"It’s silly, but there was one time… you remember, me and the other girl I was with, we were posted at the very top of the scene scaffolding? So whenever we were waiting to go on, we had this view of the audience from way high above and I could see some of their faces, enjoying the show and generally expecting a smooth run.
“And… we were standing on this sparse metal catwalk, with barely any railing, so I had the thought that it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that someone could have an accident or, even on purpose, hypothetically… fall all the way down and … you know, SPLAT on the stage.”
Brian’s eyebrows came up just a little bit. “Uh-huh. One of those really random morbid thoughts, I guess?”
“Idle minds go in weird directions,” Katriel hid her mild embarrassment behind a shrug. “Anyway, in that moment, when I was contemplating the absolute catastrophe that I could cause, I realized how much…” she paused as she tried to sort her thoughts in order. “It… was a moment where it finally crystallized for me how much agency I actually have, as a person. How all my choices are really my choices and my actions would have consequences and I could do things as people expected, or I could go counter to that and really ruin everything, at least for a little while.”
Her brother took a long several moments to digest what she was saying. “Well,” he finally said after a moment, “I’m glad you never decided to actually act on that agency in such a non-retractable way.”
“Pfft,” Katriel turned to continue down the aisle. “That was never a real possibility. Too quiet and on task, remember? Although I have to admit, I haven’t had a ton of moments since then that were like that.”
“Moments where… you felt like you were absolutely in control of your choices?” he wanted to clarify.
“Yeah. Mostly these days, I feel like…” she shrugged helplessly. “Like I am ever eternally following someone else’s script and how it’s hard or impossible to go off it.”
Brian methodically returned the Lyizana score to its place on the shelf. “I’m not sure that’s really the right way to look at it,” he said slowly. “Your path probably has had a lot more choices than you think. Just that when it comes time to make one, you’ve already determined what the right course of action is to get the result you want, so you go that way without even realizing there was a fork in the road.”
Katriel was silent for a long moment. She appeared to be scanning the shelves for interesting titles, but Brian could sense her mind turning over what he said. “Huh,” was all she said finally, in response. She didn’t sound convinced, but neither was she completely disbelieving.
The older Sedai sibling would take that for now. “Anyway, a cool find, but probably not the most appropriate opera for a ten year old.”
“No, but… this might be?” Katriel had alighted onto a new find and pulled a slightly thicker tome from the shelf. On the hardbound cover, the words Die Zauberflöte were printed in shiny silver calligraphy.
“Ohh, nice. Looks a little thick for a score, though?” Brian asked.
“I think it’s…” Katriel gently pried open the cover. They were both surprised when the inside pages were full of boldly-colored pictures to accompany what appeared to be the opera’s script and various stage directions. “An illustrated libretto,” Katriel marvelled. “See, introduces the characters, has all the major musical movements… and…” she turned to the back cover of the book, opening it from that end instead.
The final half an inch’s worth of pages were apparently not pages at all, but instead a hard shell containing a molded compartment, which housed a small portable audio player and data rod.
“It includes a full audio recording of the opera, so she could follow along,” Katriel realized outloud, feeling quite giddy at the find. “This is it, right?” she looked up at Brian for confirmation, that it wasn’t just her that found the libretto astonishing.
“Yeah, this is definitely it,” he agreed, but then went right on to revive a debate they must have been having before they came to the Emporium. “But you should still get her a stuffed lizard, too. I mean, c’mon. Who doesn’t love a plushie?”
Katriel was too enthralled with the libretto that she didn’t even roll her eyes. “Fine, fine, we’ll get her a lizard plushie, too.”
He was clearly on a roll. “… And then we should stop by Kabloom after that to get a Christmas tree!”
“Wh… what! Brian…”
“I’m just saying…”
