Crystalline Fractals

The crystalline shard of ice arched up, catching the light of the fluorescent bulbs for one dazzling moment before dipping back down and dissolving into nothingness. Snowflake, his gray muzzle wrinkled in a frown, sighed and put the flute down.

“I can’t focus on it,” he said.

His bandmate, Rossco, set her face indignantly. “That was still better than last time,” she said. “Keep trying, I’m sure you’ll get it.”

“And hey, at least you can do magic.” Yono, to his credit, didn’t look bitter about his own statement. He rolled his wheelchair around, picking up loose garbage from the garage floor.

“I’ve only ever done it in battle, though.”

“Most of us have.” Rossco put a hand, tiny by comparison, on his shoulder. She grinned encouragingly up at him. “What’s got you stuck up like this?”

“I don’t know. Getting back to playing was like riding a hikofu, but adding my chi into it…” He sighed. “It sounded like a good idea but it’s a lot to focus on.”

“Well, hey, we haven’t started advertising ourselves as a chiæ band, so it’s not like you have to push yourself to do it right now.” She picked up her kitær, a seven-stringed instrument with a short neck, and strummed it. Little droplets of water formed in the air, like the tiniest rainstorm Snowflake had ever seen. “I’ve been doing this since I was little. You can’t be expected to pick it up right away.”

He looked down at his flute. It was ornamented with ice-blue LED accent lights, much like the one that his father had taken and had made into a weapon. He could still hear the old tom’s grating voice as it was handed back to him.

No son of mine is going to do something so frivolous as playing music. You’re an Ortuxan, a warrior. And it’s high time you acted like it.

‘Well, Perr,’ he thought, scowling, ‘I acted like it once and it got me put in the hospital.’

“Try again,” Rossco encouraged him, her hands stilling the strings of her kitær.

Yono wheeled around to face them, giving an encouraging dip of his strangely long muzzle. It hadn’t taken long for Snowflake to befriend the Sciftan, though the guy still got flak for being part of the species that had unwittingly invaded Ortuxia. Never mind that he’d been injured so badly in the crash that he couldn’t move anything from the tail down. It also meant their band wasn’t the most popular in the city of Tsaurre, but Snowflake would rather play for fans that kept an open mind than ones that would sooner hurl insults.

He sighed, and raised the flute to his lips. A soothing melody came out, a lullaby his merr used to sing. He knew the tune by heart; he almost didn’t have to focus on remembering. So he could turn his focus to the little droplets of Rossco’s chi and freeze them.

“That’s it,” the gray-and-white queen murmured.

Snowflake took a deep breath. The frozen droplets began to move, shuddering at first, then arching up in a row like the first one. Each droplet he tried to make bounce along with each piped note. Each droplet…

Subsequently fell with a tiny “ploosh” on the floor.

He sighed and sat, reaching out a claw to poke absently at the melting ice. “This is stupid,” he decided. He looked up at Rossco. “How do you do it so easily?”

“I don’t think about it.” She sat cross-legged next to him, her tail sweeping around to curl around her knees. “I kinda just let it happen.”

“Well, it’s not happening.” He wished he could melt into a puddle, too. His own tail thumped against the redstone of the garage floor, his long fur cushioning the blows just enough to render it silent.

“It is, though,” Yono said. He wheeled forward, taking out a telescopic backscratcher to point at the melted ice crystals.

“I know I’m making the magic. I just don’t know how to make it anything other than axe blades.”

Rossco pondered that for a moment, then grinned. “I’m an idiot. Snow, we’re a band. We’ve gotta do it together. Here, what if we try this?”

She leaned forward to whisper in his ear, and Yono cocked his head, trying to listen in. 

“What?”

“You’ll see,” she said cheekily, then grinned at Snowflake. “You got it?”

He smiled hesitantly. “I think so.”

“Good.” She hopped to her feet, swaying a moment, then reached for her kitær and strummed an opening note. Snowflake got up a bit more carefully–sudden movements tended to agitate his war wounds–and set the flute aside.

Yono’s head cocked the other way in confusion. Then he mouthed an “oh”, and his head righted itself again as he smiled.

Rossco’s claws picked deftly at the strings and frets, playing a more toned-down version of the song they’d teased to Guavato the previous month. Snowflake frowned, raising a brow at her.

“We’re not worrying about the lyrics right now,” she said. “But it would be cool to make lightning out of ice eventually.”

He took a deep breath. She hummed the melody along with her fingers. Moisture from the air condensed before her, several drops of water swirling around the two of them–one of them zipping over to burst playfully on Yono’s nose. The Sciftan wrinkled his umber muzzle and scowled at her, though his eyes twinkled with fondness.

Snowflake smiled as well. He watched the droplets zip around for a moment, breathing slowly. He was a skilled Rrechiæ; something as simple as freezing a bit of water shouldn’t be hard. He twirled a claw, and the first droplet crystalized, the momentum turning it into an arrow-shaped slice of ice. It sparkled in the artificial light as if winking at him, and he found his shoulders relaxing, the nervous twitch in his tail shaking itself out. He caught Rossco’s eye. She dipped her muzzle and smirked, then opened her mouth to sing.

Strike like lightning, let it out

Crystalline fractals, let it go

We’ve braved the test and  survived the rest

So let’s put on a show~!

He tilted his eyes back to the flute resting on the shabby couch, but no…he wasn’t quite ready yet. He’d frozen one droplet. It still hung in the air, following its own point as it zipped around with its liquid cousins. With one sweeping motion, specks of ice drifting from his claws in thin trails, he watched as the rest solidified. The gentle cracking of ice prompted a pleasant chill at the back of his neck, and he purred happily.

But it wasn’t over. Now he just had to stop them from dropping into a slushy puddle in the redstone. Those glittering trails still coming off his clawtips, he spun in a slow circle, animating the chords of Rossco’s notes with each subsequent ice tooth. His eyes slitted to slivers, watching the shards dance through his blurred vision.

Rossco let the last chord hang in the air a moment before setting the kitær aside and diving at him. He let out a surprised yelp, eyes popping wide as the small queen squeezed about his middle. The ice teeth fell from the air, a couple of them landing in the dense pelts of Rossco and Snowflake.

“I told you you could do it!” she exclaimed, purring. She pulled away from him. “Now we just have to figure out how to do it with the flute–but, you know, one step at a time.”

“It looked really cool,” Yono agreed, wheeling over. “We could install some lights on my chair to reflect off them, make a cool lighting effect.”

“I just said one step at a time,” Rossco teased him, stepping back to pat his hand.

“I know,” he protested. “I’m just making up excuses to put cool lights on my chair. Sue me.”

The three of them laughed. Snowflake, more relaxed than he had been in a while, smiled fondly at his friends.

“Okay,” he said with renewed vigor. “Yono, if you come in with the drums, and we use more water, I think we can keep this practice going. Unless you two have places to be?”

“Date night is tomorrow,” Rossco said, picking up her instrument and handing Yono’s hand drum to him. “Let’s keep this going!”

Snowflake hadn’t yet picked up his flute again by the time they finished practice that evening, but he was starting to realize that was okay. One step at a time. And, more than anything, he was happy to be spending time with his friends.