Cassie sits on the floor in the orchestra room, cello out and resting on her chair, music spread all around her as she is diligently marking down notes on her music. It looks like scribble upon scribble, but this is what she needs to be prepared. She has an audition at two separate universities this weekend and she’s terrified she is going to bomb.


There is a knock at the door and the red-head jumps. This Cassie looks vastly different. Her hair is a deep copper color, almost orange, and her eyes are a hazel green with flecks of brown. She is a rather thin girl, still medium in height, but with hardly much curve to her. Her pin-straight copper hair is scrunchied up in a high side-pony, semi-curled wispy bangs not quite knowing where to go curving down to just below her eyebrows. Glasses sit just at the edge of her nose and she has to adjust them to look up.


“Hey, Earth to Cassie,” It’s Valerie. Of course it is. She is likely the one person who actually comes down to grab Cass for just about anything. If she didn’t, Cassie would spend every class period in the orchestra room with no brain for time. The tall, tawny-skinned girl stood waiting, arms crossed over her chest impatiently.


Cassie’s eyes dart immediately to the clock. She hasn’t missed the bell, had she? No, it hadn’t been that long. She blinks, “We still have like a full fifteen minutes left of lunch.” Her hands are still in her lap, but she still has a hard time not just going back to what she’d been doing.


“Well, duh. Eric and I were talking about ditching this joint to grab some fries and a shake. There’s like, barely a period after this and then we have study hall,” Valerie begins making that face that Cassie hates so very much. It is the kind of face that begs for her to let loose and actually do something horrendous.


Cassie rolls her eyes, “As if, Val. I have an audition in like two days. This is my future we’re talking about. I, like… I’m really worried I’m going to crash and burn over here.” Her voice is nearly exasperated, but half of it is fake and Valerie knows it.


Valerie walks up, grabbing all of Cassie’s sheet music and begins stuffing it in her folder.


“Hey! I can’t just dip. We’ve still got English and you’ve got after school.” Nothing Cassie says seems to be stopping her friend, and Cassie stands up, crossing her arms. “Valerie-”


“Nope. Noooope.” Valerie waves her hands and the folder with it, “We are seniors, Cassie. Seeeeeniiooooors.” She extends the vowels just to make a point. “You’ve done this since middle school. Stop bugging out and come live a little. Please?”


The copper haired girl lets out a long sigh and looks back to her instrument. Would a day really make the difference? She’d be practicing with Alexander later anyway, right? Just some fries, a shake, some chilling, and then she’d go practice. It’s not like they ever hung out before dark anyway. “Okay. Fine.”


Valerie’s jaw drops, “Wait. For real?”


Cassie raises her eyebrows, “Well, help me pack up before I change my mind.”


It was the last normal day. Ish. It was the first time she’d gone out and done something she hadn’t expected to do. It was something unregimented, perhaps like what she’d soon experience in college. Ish.


She ate fries and had shakes with Valerie and her friends and got dropped off at home where she ate a normal dinner afterward with her family. A light one. And of course she didn’t mention that she’d already eaten hardly an hour before. She did her homework and when it got just late enough that she knew she wouldn’t be bothered, she took her instrument and snuck out through the side door of the house. Something she’d been doing for over a month now.


Cassie walks through her neighborhood, her cello strapped to her back as she makes her way ten minutes down the road to the playground on the corner. It is a large, open area, close to a set of woods. Lots of picnic tables spread about. She walks up to one of the tables and sets her cello case up against it before walking over to sit on one of the swings. For a few minutes, she swings gently back and forth as her mind focuses on what would be coming this weekend.


It seems almost without warning, but she’d really just been so focused that she didn’t notice Alexander appear on the swing next to her. She jumps a little. It seems to be a jumpy kind of day. “Gees, Xander, where did you come from? I didn’t even see you show up.”


Alexander is beautiful. His hair is a shaggy, glossy black, his eyes nearly as dark. He is just over a foot taller than Cassie and so many times has she thought about imitations of those movies with girls getting up on their tiptoes to kiss their boyfriends. Of course, Xander wasn’t her boyfriend. No. They were just friends. Friends…


They met a month earlier at a national orchestra event down in Georgia and as it turns out, he only lives down the street from her. How is it possible that an incredible violinist like him lived that close to her and she never knew it? He’s homeschooled, of course, which accounted for all of it. Nearly every day in the evening, they’d sneak out their houses to hang out and play together. It’s odd, being this excited about hanging out with someone. Someone who she felt like understood her, could listen to her play and know what she means. Things she could never put into words, she could put into music and he’d understand.


Then, of course, there is the attraction. She’s never been attracted to someone before, but he just does something to her. When he’s near, a nervous excitement grows in her, her heartbeat quickening, and she’s sure she looks beyond helpless. She can’t help it around him. It doesn’t help that she’s been dreaming about him too. Dreams of just running off together, being together. Everything would be so much easier if they could just exist in their own little world and do nothing but play together.


“You looked like you were enjoying yourself. I didn’t want to disturb your composition.” His voice is like silk, smooth and deep. He gives her this look and she stops dead still on her swing. It’s an odd look, one she’d never seen before. She’s not entirely sure what it is or what it meant. His black eyes almost seem to sparkle somehow. “What?”


Cassie shakes her head, realizing she’s been staring and stammers out, “Huh? What? Oh, um, I uh, heh, I, I’m sorry, I just, uh-” A blush begins creeping to her cheeks.


“I didn’t realize I made you this nervous, Cassie.” He teases, offering a faint smile. “Do you want to play or are you going to keep staring?” Something about the way he says it could have implied he’d be fine with either, which is confusing to her. What is that supposed to mean?


“I um… yeah, playing,” She stands up from her swing and goes to grab her case and set up her instrument. Xander does the same, setting himself down next to her. “What are we playing tonight?” She asks as she is tightening the hair of her bow, careful not to tighten it too much.


“I thought we’d do some improving tonight.” That makes her breath catch and not in a good way. She hates improvisation. She can’t do it. She can’t let go enough to make it work and she feels like a doofus when she tries.


Cassie looks down at her instrument, “I… sure,” the nerves are evident in her voice.


Alexander looks down at her with a curiosity, “You don’t sound too sure.”


This just makes Cassie purse her lips and give him a squinty expression. Without any kind of warning, she feels his hands cupping her cheeks before pulling her into a kiss. It isn’t until he pulls back and looks at her, waiting for her reaction, that she even registers what has just happened. That was her first kiss. It was so brisk, she hardly remembers it, as if it never happened at all. She gives him this very confused look, barely sure what this means. “Xander?” Her voice is so soft, airy.


He’s leaning in slowly then and pauses just before his lips reach hers, and she hasn’t hardly moved. She doesn’t know what to do. “If you tell me to stop, I’ll stop, Cassie.” But she doesn’t want him to stop. No, he can’t stop. That first kiss was nothing. It… it should be something to remember. She drops her bow without a second thought and closes the gap herself to kiss him. It’s slow, gentle, sweet, like walking on air in a dream. A dream she never wants to end.


She’s never taken a drug in her life beyond prescribed medicine, but she’s positive that kissing him must be what it is like to be completely high. There is a sigh of disappointment as he pulls back again and with it comes the endless stream of questions flooding her mind. What is this? What does that mean? Does he actually like me, like me? What am I doing? Do I want this?


“Do you trust me, Cassie?” It’s an odd question. Of course she trusts him. He’s never given her a reason not to, right?


She slowly nods her head, “Yes.”


“I want to show you something.” His voice is soft, gentle, calming, somehow almost intoxicating.


Again, she nods. He stands up and takes her hand in his and for a moment, it is like being in a trance. Everything is so beautiful - every leaf upon the trees, every star in the sky, the cracks in the sidewalk, the way the moon illuminates the metal playground. Why does it suddenly feel like a goodbye?


And he leads her somewhere. No, not somewhere. He leads her There. There where Cassie becomes a shadow of a foggy dream in the back of Cassandra’s mind. There, where she becomes a muse, an Artist, the very expression of emotion living in art with her Polychromatic skin. There, where her life takes the ultimate twist that she once might have given everything to change.


1991. Now it is 2021. Thirty years later, she’s found herself just under 30 years old now and truly happy for the first time in a very long time. The love she has now wasn’t born from Fae magics, it was born out of pure understanding, an understanding she’s been craving her whole life. Someone who can look at her and knows what she is feeling without her having to say a word. Someone who cares to look beyond those first layers - the layers that deceive.


But… has she just done it again? Is it a predetermined pattern that she will simply fall and find another piece of her soul taken and damaged? Probably.


Will it be worth it? Yes.


Is that what she said the last time it happened? Absolutely.


Will it be different this time? Yes, because John isn’t Alexander. Yes, because John isn’t Phillip.


It has to be different this time. It has to be different, because she has no more shards of her soul left to give.