Declassified: Avatar Next Generation

Chapter 42.2: If

Sam slipped upstairs and back without seeing Josh or Mella anywhere. Guess her distraction was working...whatever it was. She walked into the kitchen to see Nate organizing. Sam snickered. "OCD much over there?"

"I'll have you know that once I'm done, we won't have to spend twenty minutes looking for something. Again." All Nate had wanted was a bowl of cereal. The box ended up being way in back of the shelf, concealed by potato chips. And almost empty. "I even got you microwavable food. Directions are on the box." He smirked then got back to putting cans onto the shelf.

"Thanks for being so considerate." Sam knew she was bad at cooking, okay, more like terrible. But it wasn't going to stop her from trying. She would have to learn. Eventually. Sam started passing Nate stuff so they could finish faster.

"Always." He crumpled the now empty bag. That was everything. Shelves were stocked, fridge and freezer packed. "Now we have food."

"Yay food! And Mella's stuff is all up in the ballroom for whatever grand plan she has."

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The sweet sound of piano music was still going. Mella came to a stop outside the piano room and quietly slipped inside. Josh hadn't noticed. When the song stopped Mella spoke up. "That was really pretty, Mozart."

Startled just a little bit, Josh's head snapped to the door. "Oh. Thanks. Beethoven, actually." On the piano, notes of the first movement of 'Moonlight Sonata'. "I practiced this for months for a recital one time. Really rusty." He had found a whole bunch of classical sheet music in the piano bench.

Mella smiled. She was just going for another nickname besides Zombie or anything firebending related, but oh well. She had promised not to tell Nate about his music ability, so she wouldn't be able to use the nickname anyways. "Still sounded really cool to me, rusty or not." Mella walked closer to the piano and looked at the sheet of music. It made absolutely no sense to her. "How does this even work anyways?" she asked, tapping random keys on the piano.

Josh moved over on the bench so Mella could sit. "Well, sheet music is kind of like a diagram. The spaces and lines indicate which note on the white keys you play. There's also a mark that shows to play a certain black key." The piece on the piano wasn't exactly basic and was riddled with symbols. "C starts here," he pointed to a black note on the paper. "And ends with B." He played each key after indicating it. "If they're connected and all in a column, you play them together." He played one of the chords. "If any of that made any sense at all."

Mella sat down next to Josh as he explained music. Some of what he said made sense, the rest...not so much. "So the ones that look like that," Mella pointed at one of the chords, "have a bunch of keys at once? That has to get confusing fast."

Josh nodded. "Yes. Precisely. And it's like another sense. You just see them and know. Plus tons of practice and time. It gets a lot easier though."

"So...like drawing. But with music. That makes sense to me." Mella slowly tapped the keys of the piano. It didn't sound anything like Josh's piece though.

"Pretty much, yeah." Josh just sat back and watched her go at the keys. "Hey, so where'd you guys go? Sam said you were back." He didn't even know they had left.

"Grocery shopping. We were down to a very sad looking apple and mostly empty boxes of cereal. Didn't want to bug you and Sam while you were doing your flame show." she said, plinking away at the keys for a tricky chord. Mella had accidentally walked in without warning them and almost joined the Flamebrain club. It wasn't about to happen again anytime soon.

"Good point." Firebending practice had a tendency to get messy. "So Nate grocery shopping. How'd that work out?" Their designated driver had little patience for 'trivial' things like grocery shopping. One time they'd tried to go to the theaters with him. Never again.