The Demon in the Pastry Shop

5: Why Don't You Speak For Yourself?

Kit threw her arms about emphatically as she spotted Jude after his concert. She pushed through the crowd and rushed up to him, smiling her biggest and brightest. His song for three strings brought her to tears in her seat. Kit didn't know what Ephemeral musician Jude was inspiring these days, but his latest pieces have been especially exquisite. He and his human had perfect chemistry.

When the throng of spirits, beings, and demons parted a little better for her to see and cut through, she saw Jude again, this time through a wider slice between the crowd. She helped him pick out his attire for the evening. They went into great discourse over the violet cape or the teal one. Kit argued on a notepad, losing half of her points between the pages and the time it took to write the words down. As the time before the concert ran short, they decided on violet. Now as she spied him, she thought the teal would've been better. He would've popped on stage in the teal.

She waved her arms at him again as she approached, but over all the commotion after the concert, he couldn't see her.

He was speaking to another muse. Maybe an old friend? Kit didn't know. So much of her time with Jude in the past year and was focused on trying not to be swallowed whole by grief. There wasn't the chance to get to know him intimately in that dark time. In recent months, they had begun to share their histories with each other, but Kit hadn't learned enough to know about old friends.

The old friend had dark blue hair and white skin with a cherry undertone. Like cherry filing inside an unbaked pie. Kit made about a couple hundred of those in the past two days. She was still saw her fingers criss-crossing the lattice whenever she closed her eyes.

Every muse had a kaleidoscopic shimmer that pulsed through their bodies at unique rhythms. Jude's prism-pulse was slower than most muses. It was one of the only things Luca told her about his father before she met him. A slow prism-pulse was rare in a muse. From what her husband said, humans were impatient and liked a fast flow of inspiration. Muses like Jude didn't guide with frequent spells of insight, they guided with long, long pauses between intense storms of inspiration.

The muse Jude spoke with had a quick flashing prism. His body was like a diamond top spinning in the sunlight. Knowing what she did about muses, Kit imagined he was a muse for precise and short worded poets. Maybe even for a human poet that exclusively wrote couplets. Likely even phenomenal couplets, because the muse's prism was bright and bouncy in its ripple across his features.

Jude let out a clouded laugh, sweeping his cape back into place after it was blown out of it by a passing Weather Maid. He patted the other hard on his shoulder with a grin before his eyes strayed and he caught sight of Kit. She grinned with relief. She was beginning to fear being swallowed by the crowd.

Jude turned out toward her and opened his arms wide as she walked swiftly to him in her three-inch heels, "So?" he called out, voice booming over the chatter.

Kit pressed her hands to her smiling cheeks. With animated eyes and breath, she presented her hands with stretching fingers by the sides of her head to say shock! Then mimed his soulful playing on his violin to say your beautiful peformance. She trailed her fingers from her eyes down her cheeks, made me cry. And for good measure she pressed her hand over her heart.

"I can see that," Jude noted with a chuckle. He leaned toward her and discreetly offering his handkerchief.

Kit furrowed her eyebrows and squinted at him, but then he pointed to her under eyes. A jolt whipped through her body and Kit took the cloth, wiping the running mascara and hopefully the embarrassment off her face.

When he leaned back, he placed his hand on the blue-haired muse and said, "Laurel, this is my daughter-in-law, Kit."

Laurel thrust out an anxious hand. His energy was as high and frantic as his prism-pulse. It threw Kit for a moment, but she reoriented herself and shook his hand with as much of a smile as she could spare.