Bumbleby - play me foolish

Chapter 1

This is everything you've been waiting for.

Blake's been dreaming of this moment from the second she learned of its existence - no, since the first time she sang as a little girl.

Posters of this competition were plastered everywhere along her university's walls, boasting of fame and fortune and greatness: two weeks of blood and sweat and tears and the greatest of their generation that compete tooth and nail for the top prize. A prize that everyone has worked their entire lives for. This was where legends were born.

It's everything she's been working for, and it's finally come.

This is her moment, this is their moment.

--

(The founder of the annual Sanus International Jazz competition was a shrewd and obtuse man.

A small, thinly built man of sharp features and an even sharper tongue, Sanus was as ruthless as he was a genius to anyone's standards.

The local kids spun tales that he ate nothing but ice and cobblestone rocks; that's why his heart was so cold - the type of man to pop a child's ball if it rolled onto his lawn with a frown.

Legend says that his coffin was built out of the wood salvaged from his cherished double bass: an instrument passed down as an heirloom through his family which was worth its weight in gold.

It really belonged in a museum, but Sanus would have burned it before giving it away - now it rots in the ground with the tar that he called flesh.

He was never a kind man, nor funny, nor charming. He never married, no children to waste time over or anyone to live in the memory of. He lived through his music, notes on a page, an accompaniment part for double bass and a ghost of a band. His passion was music, nothing else, and he lived on through this competition.

In actuality, Samus did have a child.

The competition was as much of his blood and flesh as any son or daughter. The new generation will eventually replace the prior, a fact that he despised. Best to make them fight like hell among themselves for it.

Then, he would be satisfied, sitting back into the lone chair in his lonely house, with nothing but wood and strings to accompany him. His instruments may not speak nor himself have much to say, but his music sang for him.)

--

"Hello, everyone, we are the representative quartet for the Menagerie Institute of Music,"

Blake's voice fills the dead silent concert hall through the mic in her hand. She readjusts her grip on the metal, takes a deep breath.

The spotlights were blinding, and 5000 people stared at her expecting a performance of a lifetime. The air was too thin, too dry, too foreign - the air that she'll have to learn how to flourish in if she wanted to win. Damn right she's going to win.

Nerves were something of the past, left behind once sound checks were finished, basses were tuned, warmups were done. No, Blake was not nervous, nor scared, nor terrified - she took a breath and looked forward towards the 10 piece panel of judges before her and brought the microphone back up to her lips.

"We'll be performing three charts in our set; Blue Skies, That Old Black Magic, and Postage Due."

She glanced back to her band - hey all returned her gaze with a determined nod; Neptune on piano, Sun on double bass, Ilia on kit. They moved into playing position so seamlessly it was like they were born to, as natural as a breath of air.