Irhaboggle Pride (2024) Pride Fourever

4/4 Time

"Do, re, mi, fa! So, la, ti, do!" Mag sung the scales as her fingers scaled the ivory keys. She winced every time she missed a note, but for a girl born without sight, she wasn't half bad.

"Wow, Maggie, well done!" From the doorway, Marni rested against the threshold, arms crossed. Even though they both knew Mag couldn't see her smile, she could hear it.

"You don't need to sugarcoat it, Marni," Mag said, embarrassed.

"Oh, come on, Mag!" Marni sighed as she strode over to the other girl and sat beside her on the piano bench. "Give yourself more credit!"

It was their usual, affectionate banter, and Mag smiled. There was no sweeter sound or melody than Marni's laughter.

"Let's see if we can try a piano duet!" the fiery, spirited girl said suddenly.

"What?" Past Mag would've been surprised—maybe even alarmed—by the idea, but this Mag knew Marni all too well.

"I can help ya! Plus, I wanna show you that even with eyesight, you can still suck at piano!"

"First of all, you can't really show me anything," Mag blinked at her, voice flat as she struggled to hold in her amusement.

Marni's face went deadpan too. "Mag, you know that's not what I—"

"Second of all, you're a fairly decent pianist yourself!" Was Marni going to intentionally play poorly to prove a point? "Also, the way you phrased that, not the most inspiring," she continued to tease. "I think most music teachers are supposed to tell their students that they can learn a skill, not that the teacher lacks the skill too," she chuckled.

"Well, I'm only good when I'm playing a piece I already know," Marni said, and Mag could hear the flipping and turning of pages as the other, sighted girl placed a music book in front of herself. "Ok, Imma have to sight-read this now..."

"Have fun with that," Mag deadpanned again, and she heard Marni snort quietly. Mag's heart fluttered at the beautiful sound.

As expected, her piano duet with Marni went spectacularly... wrong.

"Ooops!" Marni laughed as her fingers slipped and stumbled across the piano keys, getting tangled together.

"Jeez, Marni, you really are awful at this!" Mag chuckled. "I don't need eyes to see that!"

"Hey!" Marni glowered at Mag, but she was laughing too. It was a song they both knew, and Marni even went out of her way to get a copy of the music that was made for piano, but Mag was still a faster learner and she only had her ears to help.

Mag said nothing, but she bit her lip to conceal a smile. That was admittedly truly. She'd heard every time Marni slipped up, not just because the music was suddenly, slightly off, but because Marni would pause, sometimes cursing herself.

"Dang it!" she muttered, and if Mag could've seen her, she would've seen Marni's head looking like a metronome as she looked back and forth between the piano keys and her sheet of music. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down.

"Well, here, why don't we slow down a little bit first?" Mag asked. Maybe Marni, in her anxious amusement, didn't notice it, but Mag could hear the tempo changing. Every note Marni played was a different length than the other.

"One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four." Mag patted the wood of the piano, counting rhythmically.

"Ok, Mag-tronome," Marni snickered. "Jeez, you really are just like a music teacher..." Even her body swayed rhythmically to the 4/4 time count. Then Marni began to hear the count in her head too. Ta, ta, ta-ah, ta, ta-a-a-ah... Quarter, quarter, half, quarter, whole...

Lost in the rhythm, guided by Mag, Marni's hands slowly made their way back to the piano, then they somehow made it through the whole song!

"Well done, Marni! Well done!" Mag clapped, grinning.

Marni shot her an embarrassed but grateful smile in return. "Thanks, Maggie." Man, but this was supposed to be, like, a competition!

Trying to swallow her pride, Marni returned her fingers to the keys yet again. "Shall we resume our duet?"

"Already?" Mag quirked an eyebrow, teasing, but she placed her fingers on the keys too. Whether Marni remembered or not, Mag was thinking about how they met. They were just two little kids in elementary school. Marni was one of the only students to not only not bully Mag for being blind, but she actively went out of her way to try to include the sightless student.

"Music!" Little Marni cried excitedly one day. "You can't see! But maybe you can sing!"

Mag of the present day chuckled at the memory. It would've been insensitive, had anyone else said it, but it sounded like a good point back then, and that was the birth of their friendship. Back then, Mag was the one making all the mistakes. Mag had the better, natural voice, but Marni had a voice teacher. In turn, she became Mag's (unofficial) voice teacher. Now here they sat, this time on piano rather than voice.

It's funny, Mag thought with a smile as she and Marni limped through the duet, so much romance is based on sight. Love at first. Beauty and attraction. Eyes as windows to the soul. Lovers holding each other's gazes. Oh, of course I understand why. I'm not stupid. But for me... Love at first sound? Of course, it was not as if Mag lacked a concept of beauty, standards were just different for her because she couldn't see. Instead, she could only fall in love through sound and action. There could still be gender cues and expectations, but perhaps for her, gender was never as much of a concern as it could've been had she been born with sight.
Of course, she wondered what Marni looked like, but the thought of never knowing didn't bother her deeply. It wasn't Marni's looks that Mag fell in love with, after all. It was her voice, her kind words, her playful laugh, and her siren song.

Oh, I have no doubt that you're beautiful to the eyes, too. But to my heart and ears? You are everything. And I think that is what makes our love so strong and so unique. Maybe others wouldn't understand it, used to faces and whatnot. But me? It's ok if I never see you, because I don't need to in order to know that our love is still real.

It was every bit as real—if intangible—as the music floating in the air all around them, in perfect 4/4 time.

AN: Inspired by the fact that the people I love most in the world are all online. I know what they look like, but I fell in love with voices and personalities long before I fell in love with looks.