Cowsowhorseacropolis - Dessert
Treats of Orchestration
You’re snacking on In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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An instant flurry of violin vibrates the steamy lung. Each note warps the clouds, conjuring nebulas of indigo and canary-yellow. At the same moment, bagpipes squall. A swine-like screech, and the steamclouds pulse and undulate, writhe and wrap, slither like tentacles at the violin. Before scalding vapor wraps the grey form, a brassy, blaring trumpet condenses the tentacles. They hit the floor. A rainpatter at the violin’s feet.
All three instruments strike at once. Sharp strings, piercing pipes, a roaring horn. Horn and violin alternate notes. The trumpet strikes. Condensed water explodes off rimy pipes near the blazing wick above the bagpipes. The violin strikes. A cloud jumps color. Pale pearl, dense black, neon green; dizzily flashing. But no cloud reaches the blazing wick. A pipescreech, an enchanted command, stops the steam before the fire, like a sheltering glass dome.
The trumpet sputters out. The tide turns. Steam-colors shift, vainly. Clouds gather. They close like thunder-bearers. Violin and trumpet are surrounded in lowering walls. Color flashes fainter and fainter in the dark.
Then the trumpet clamors heavy, just before the walls close. Two seven-note measures of bright, screeching triumph. Two peals breaking cloud-walls down in buckets.
Now a struggle. Now the trumpet cries in fits, just raising steam between pillars. Now the violin screams in sixteenth-flurries, turning steam to grey or tinting it copper. Trumpeter and fiddler flee for the colored clouds. But at each newmade hideout, bagpipe screeches shatter the fog. The horn strikes again. The steam liquifies. The floor flash floods. But the blazing wick steers the waves with his pipe. He leads water - overtakes horn and fiddle - with his drones. The mist clears. The bagpipes close in.
A gapless wall of scalding steam obeys the pipes’ jig. It falls over the trumpeter. The burning wall stifles the trumpet's squeal. The violin picks up what slack it can. Color-bearing notes shake the misty room. The pale marble and pale fog run with gingerbread tints, caramel hues, shades of walnut and hickory and cedar. The violin races to camouflage the fallen hornman.
The bagpipes scream; remorselessly vulgar. They shake the clouds - eerie wailing - making them shiver to the corners. The scream drowns the room: ancient, inhuman, noisy. Steam meekly compresses. Walls of vapor squeeze to the marble’s thickness. The violin flashes scantly. It only darkens the walls. The fiddler and trumpeter are caught in dark clouds, a monster squall, a dooming tempest with bagpipe thunder.
Coughing and gasping sound from within; the steam thickens to a choke. Wail after wail after wail, squeeze after squeeze, the bagpipes spew their reedy dirge. A burst of trumpet summons a pocket of air. A vital breath. The pipes give orders, the mist closes instantly. Another trumpet burst; another closing-in; a losing battle. The piper with blazing head steps toward his crafted steam-prison. Thick, hot, choking steam licks the fiddler and trumpeter like fire.
The violin and trumpet creak with naked, stripped, tones. Barely they hold an enchantment. The bagpiper doesn’t see the steam outside his storm. It creeps like a ghost off the wet floor and wet pillars, tinted like marble by the violin’s tunes. Shrill, picked notes; a sudden rush of strings; colors flashing through the fresh-crept mire. The blazing man backsteps. Just enough, for the fiddle and trumpet breach the cloud walls.
The stingers of the violin, the brash trumpet notes, just set them free. Nowhere near victory. The bagpipes squeal on: terrible, loud, fishly powerful. Measures pass, steam forms and moves and changes color, and all three instruments battle blind.
The bagpipes surge, breaking a wall, moving into a clearing of pale floor. There stand the fiddler and trumpeter; sawing the string; pumping the slide. The burning wick flickers forward. The pipes pull the walls close around all three.
The violin stops. The floor - falsely colored as marble, concealing its nature - reverts. A hidden film of bright, glittering water reflects the candle’s burning brand. The candle wavers. The piper steps back, but too late. The trumpet rings like the sound of sunshine. From its tubes, a most melodious chorus. Dew vibrates as mist off the shelled bell. Beneath all three, the wet floor detonates in cloud, like a stomped bag of flour.
The wick light vanishes.
The trumpet stops. The bagpipes’ thunder rolls off. With final notes, the violin crystalizes the steam. Vapor walls turn window-clear.
A forest of marble trees. A wet and stony fiddler. A red-faced and scalded trumpeter. Splayed on the ground beneath both; a doused demifish.
The music fades. The steam disperses. The Cowsowhorseacropolis steam room pistons squeeze, hiss, and stop.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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