La Serenissima

The White Queen & Her Lost King

So, this is a long chapter. Sorry. I'm glad you're all enjoying this! Also, remember Google Translate is your best friend.

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Austin hadn't been frustrated in a long time. The last time, if he recalled, was when his label made him record a duet with a washed up lounge singer who was looking to make a comeback, but in reality, was the most horrible person ever. She shouted and yelled at everyone and anyone, smoked like a chimney and there wasn't one moment he could remember that she didn't have whiskey on her breath. The song did well, but he had a feeling that was only because it was him and he was never the one to give himself a pat on the back about things like that. In fact, whenever he heard the song being played, he cringed.

Today, he was frustrated for an entirely different reason and it had nothing to do with that experience, but everything to do with the girl who had become Venice to him. When he thought of the Floating City now, he wouldn't think of the gondolas and the bridges, he would think of her and her rich brown eyes and the way she spoke the sweetest Italian words, trying to teach him in the process of it all. It was getting the best of him and not just since he had been sitting at the piano in Santo's classroom, but since three days ago when he saw her last. His hands physically hadn't moved in twenty minutes and when Austin Moon was at a piano, he played it. He didn't hover over it and try to cast an invisible spell to make it play for him.

He hadn't been feeling any pressure from his record label, but that didn't mean he wasn't putting the pressure on himself. Austin had completed five songs for the album, and he had at least eight more to go. Number six was staring back at him, the lyrics telling them to put them to music that just wasn't coming. He kept going back to the night of the party, when he became completely enamored with this girl, who had shown him not just a secret Venice, but a secret her. Up until that party, she was just the woman who was a friend, not the woman who had invaded his mind, thrown it upside down and pinched his heart.

It was like all of the sudden, he didn't just want to learn Italian from her, he wanted to learn it for her; he wanted to run across the island with her like mad people; and he wanted to dance with her and hold her even closer than he did before so he could feel her heartbeat against him and he'd be prepared then, pushing back anyone who even dared break them apart.

Pressing down on the keys, the sound that came out was not pretty but he turned it into something pretty with "Heart and Soul", one of the first pieces he could actually play. Just play, Austin. Taking his conscious's advice that was shouting in his brain, he did just that. He played, and played, and played even more, trying to get a new rhythm and sound that fit with the lyrics leaning on the stand in front of him, but they weren't matching up to what he was looking for. Pulling out another sheet, Austin wrote the new notes down, keeping them for later when more lyrics would come to him.

"These lyrics are amazing, Austin," Santo's voice and footsteps broke in on the mess that was going on in his head. "'There's a fire raging underneath, running through the pages. Here I am coming clean, I'm sick of lying to myself gotta get a little truth. And now I got to do what I gotta do'. Damn man."

"Thanks. Now if I can't get actual music to the new ones."

"Still stuck?" Santo leaned back against the edge of the desk behind Austin, and made him turn around to hand him the other lyrics.

"I want it to be alluring and all I'm getting is...well, this," Austin placed his hand randomly on the keys, pressing down a mess of notes that wasn't music to anyone's ears. He ran a hand through his hair and leaned over, his elbows on his knees. "Any suggestions?"

Santo started to hum a chord, pairing it with the lyrics in his hand and stopped before it got anywhere. He switched to another...and another, and another. Two hours had passed by and they still weren't getting anywhere. It was usually easy for him, and for Santo. Today just wasn't on their side, apparently. Then again, the past few days hadn't been kind to Austin anyhow.