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[font=Abadi MT Condensed Light]"This world can hurt you! It cuts you deep and leaves a scar, things fall apart, but nothing breaks like a heart... And nothing breaks like a heart."

The singer wasn't bad, and they seemed to understand what the town needed, not a Piano Man, but a mournful singing that resonated with the heart that needed something, anything, to stop the pain from ripping her apart.

"I heard you on the phone last night, we live and die by pretty lies. You know it, oh, we both know it."

You see, there's a town in Britain called Lugallow, it's an old Welsh town, even though it's name is Irish. It takes exactly three trains and one bus connection to get there, and there's one old inn in the middle of it and forest all around. This town, unlike others, is mostly filled with wizards.

"These silver bullet cigarettes, this burning house, there's nothing left. It's smoking, we both know it."

This is the town where once upon a time there lived a woman who called herself Amelia Crane, this woman was Elena's mother, there's a little plaque in the inn recording her victory in some kind of trivia competition, in fact signs of her having been there once upon a time are everywhere. A mural here, a friend there, a gravestone next to the old church. Least of which is an old house by the edge of the town, somewhat taken care of, but absent of any life. Like someone had been through to clean the inside sometime that'd remained empty for years. Elena'd already seen this house, and left it where it was to rust. Better to stay forgotten.

"We got all night to fall in love, but just like that we fall apart, we're broken, we're broken."

Sitting in the inn, alone, she drew more than a few stares but simply ignored them, and in return so did the people in the town. With simply a cup of cider to protect against the bitter cold that still pervaded the area long into Summer, probably because of the storm that'd forced the girl and a few other drifter and anyone taking the bus route to other Welsh towns to stay here, Elena simply watched, and waited for something to happen. While tears dripped into her mug of cider.

"Mmm, well nothing, nothing, nothing gon' save us now."[/font]

"Lacrimis victarum carmine fama est
Eumenidum maduisse genas; nec regia coniunx
sustinet oranti nec qui regit ima negare."

Those words were favorites of Parker's. And he liked to utter them, fondly, she supposed the expression crinkling the corners of his eyes could be called, as he adjusted her dress one more time. At Svana's urging, the girl had grudgingly picked the delicate garment to wear after several protests and attempts at letting her wear some less formal clothing. Her stepmother had insisted, unfortunately, but at least she'd gotten to choose—it wasn't an uncomfortable dress, silk soft against her shoulders, unlike some of the others that she'd been made to wear. Still, the sleeves made her arms feel claustrophobic, and she felt blatantly overdressed in the comfortable inn.

Anyway, the verse was familiar enough now that she could probably recite it before Parker had opened his mouth to say it, knowing just from the reassuring sparkle in his eye when he would tell her, remind her, that she was fine. And she smiled back, even if still a little nervous. "Thank you." Why exactly she'd agreed to this, that she wasn't sure. But Cel had gone from needing to be prodded and coerced and bribed into so much as poking her head out of the curtains to being able to agree with only a few hours of consideration. That, well, that was pretty impressive, at least for her.

There remained that little terrifying moment right after she emerged from the shadows, before the background began and before she opened her mouth. From experience, Cel had learned that this was a great time to suck in a breath of air and expel the nervous energy from her lungs. Sometimes she would imagine herself taking the jitters in her heart and shoving it into her voice, using it in expression and tone, but not today. The song she'd chosen didn't match the light pitter-patters of her heart.

Choice of song was just as important as technical skill or expression. You could be the best singer the world had ever seen, but no voice fit every song. And the young girl had fretted over it for weeks after she'd agreed to the performance, searching for a suitable song and staying up hours past dawn, until Parker reminded her, "Stop trying to find the perfect song, it doesn't exist. Just find a song that works, and go for it. Change it if you have to—no, not the actual song, I meant the actual style of the song."

Beginner's advice, really, but everyone needed pointers now and then. She found a song. She stuck with it. She messed around with the tune a bit, screwed up the style a lot, until she was relatively happy with it. Parker's sister Tamsin ran the inn with her wife Nesta and her brother Caerwyn, and as they were all very happy to have their young singer there, they'd offered her copious amounts of Butterbeer, with all the alcohol removed. Cel had accepted a mug, but saved most of it for after her performance. The warmth was nice, but too much would mess with her control later on.

Soft piano crept out from behind her, and she let her eyelids slide shut as her head tilted to one side, taking in the intro to draw her into the song. The microphone in her hands was less for functional purpose than aesthetics, but to give a good performance, she couldn't only depend on her voice to keep people listening, as entrancing as it could be at times. The previous singer had paced the—could it be called a stage? A performance area?—as he sang, but Cel had herself perched on a wooden stool, ankles crossed and hooked over the bar on the bottom of the stool. How unnerving it was that she was alone on the stage, instruments charmed to play without musicians behind them. She raised her microphone slowly.

"Don't be that way
Fall apart twice a day
I just wish you could feel what you say..."

As her voice began to carry around the inn, a thin hush fell over the audience, cups stopping mid-sip and voices halting mid-sentence. She hoped it was a good kind of silence. "Who is that?" someone whispered near the front, near enough for her to hear, but that cleared up nothing. She'd made her tone light and melancholy, overlayed with a hint of the heaviness that lingered in the room's ambience, adapting to the atmosphere around her. With the second half of the verse, her voice thickened just a little, a more confident push from her diaphragm with each note.

"Show, never tell
But I know you too well
Got a mood that you wish you could sell..."

Occasional drumbeats began to creep in as she let her voice rise and fall with the melody, the trademark deep trail of her notes and borderline vibrato making themselves apparent. The original song was thinner, lighter than the smoky lilt that pulsed into the room, but this was her song tonight, and the salty aftertaste of the last song called for more than the light drifting. Almost all the eyes in the room were on her now, but she'd started to sing, each breath controlled flawlessly, fingers tapping the beat lightly against the microphone. Cel stepped off of the stool, making sure that the movement didn't jar her voice.

"If teardrops could be bottled
There'd be swimming pools filled by models
Told a tight dress is what makes you a whore
If "I love you" was a promise
Would you break it, if you're honest
Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before..."

With each rise of the melody came a heart-wrenching push of volume, as if tugging the intrigued audience closer then gently pushing them away, like the ever-reaching waves of the ocean. Emotion was laid bare in the notes, coaxing the most stoic of souls to break just enough for the melody to seep in, deep. Clear notes pushed from some reservoir far back in her chest rang through the air, articulated with the controlled quivers of her runs.

"Hands getting cold
Losing feeling's getting old
Was I made from a broken mold?
Hurt I can't shake
We've made every mistake
Only you know the way that I break..."

Her volume built in a smooth crescendo, pulling back just enough before returning, clean high notes piercing the whimsical, blue cloud stirred into existence by the song. The drums switched, cuing her to inhale for the last chorus, guitar and piano building as well to match the rhythm of the story she'd created for herself.

"If teardrops could be bottled
There'd be swimming pools filled by models
Told a tight dress is what makes you a whore
If "I love you" was a promise
Would you break it, if you're honest
Tell the mirror what you know she's heard before
I don't wanna be you
I don't wanna be you
I don't wanna be you..."

A trailing note, sustained long enough to draw some appreciative applause from a couple of people nearest to her and clearly more into the whole performance thing, a majority of the rest with eyes fixed upon her. She let the note go with an exhale of the air still left in her lungs, went as far as lowering the microphone a little as she returned to her seat, before raising it again.

"...anymore."

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[font=Abadi MT Condensed Light]I can't hold on much longer, we're drifting down to the other side.

Mesmerising, how else would you describe something that tugged on your heartstrings with such sweet sadness that your own sorrow felt miles away, if only for a moment. Elena's tearstained eyes could make out someone who was barely older than she herself, and the girl slid out of her seat and stood by the corner she'd carved out for herself, clapping for the other girl.

It was the first action she'd made since ordering a drink at the inn itself, and as a result one of the patrons jumped a bit at seeing her move. Even a wizarding town didn't see blue hair that often either, so there was probably that. Many others joined in the applause but it fizzled out as normal conversation took back over the room.

Elena slipped closer to Celynne, and talked to her without looking but in a soft sweet voice that croaked a little from earlier, "It's rare I see someone wearing a dress in a place like this. Usually a drifter would wear something more utilitarian or strange, but I suppose nobody who sings like that could be a wanderer like me. Unless you're just exceptionally well dressed."

A wanderer? Elena wondered why she introduced herself like that, as if it was her largest personality trait, but when she thought about it, in a way, it really way. Chaotic, going wherever the breeze or her own willpower could take her, that was what a drifter did, after all.

The girl looked elsewhere out at the room, "I suppose the real reason I came over was to thank you for the music, it was beautiful. I'm Elena Jones."

Tried to pull us under, keep holding out for the other side.[/font]

Carmen.

Applause wasn't something she really expected from an inn, but then again she'd never actually been in one, so what could she say? Cel handed off the microphone to Caerwyn as she slipped off the stool and ran for the shadows again. Something about being in the center of the room made her feel much more vulnerable than staying nearer to the walls. Parker waited for her there with a smile and a congratulations, handing her a jacket that clashed strongly with the formality of her dress. "Go sit down and have some Butterbeer," he advised her.

Retreating further back in the inn as the usual singer returned to fill the space left by dying-out applause and murmurs of curiosity from the audience, Cel watched the instruments readjust themselves with a smile. Parker had struck up a conversation with Nesta now, their words inaudible under the comfortable cacophony of murmurs. What she didn't expect was another voice, young as her own—and so she jumped a little as she turned, smoothing down her surprise as soon as it appeared.

"Believe me, I wouldn't be wearing this if I had a choice," Cel groused, tugging it the neckline with two fingers. "Uh, thank you, I suppose. I don't think I could call myself a wanderer, though you could be surprised." Reacting to compliments—one of many skills that she hadn't learned. True praise was to be built off of, false praise was mocking, and criticism was for the growing. That much she knew. What to do with that information, how to actually handle it without offending anyone but also without seeming insincere—well, those were the among the few things that Svana hadn't forced her to learn in an effort to make her a presentable Pureblood. Inconveniently, that group of things tended to overlap with the handful of actually useful things that she wanted to learn.   

Cel took a good look at the girl who had spoken—blue hair, fair skin, someone that would've caught her eye at school. Probably did, at some point, but the post-performance haze of relief had sedated her mind enough that she couldn't be bothered to search. Strangely, the first thing that she noticed wasn't the vibrant color of her hair but the look in her blue eyes, overcast by shadows. When she first started writing, she realized that writing about the shape or the color or the size of physical features didn't add up to anything that anyone wanted to read. No, she should talk about the things that you would notice in a person—what she would notice in a person.   

And so she noticed the tone of intensity hiding meekly under those shadows, the traces of faraway sorrow left swimming in the corners, all sad smiles and melancholy memories. Yes, those were things she could recognize in a wanderer. She wondered, "Maybe I'd like to be a wanderer, if I could," aloud, and she said it in passing, the barest wind across the field of a mind, but she meant it in the way that a child looks up at the stars, in the way that a creature trapped at the bottom of a well looks up at the circle of brightness that tempts from above. A light at the end of an infinite tunnel, that she wasn't sure if she could escape, even as she strained against the thorns digging into her skin for a taste of the clear sweetness beyond.

Yes, she should like to wander.

Elena Jones. Not a name she'd heard before, but one that she could remember. "Celynne Gray," the girl returned, contemplating whether or not to offer a hand to shake—but she hated handshakes, and did this Elena care all that much about manners? As Cel slung on her jacket, all she could hope was that her story had been kept quiet and hidden as she'd requested it to be. Clearly that was untrue, given the amount of gossip that had already escaped them, but if the other girl wasn't a stuck-up Pureblood who liked to sit on fancy old couches and giggle over tea, which she didn't look like, there was a chance—a good one—that she could just say hello and meet a person. "I'm glad you enjoyed it, I try my best," she settled on acknowledging. The statement seemed fine enough, even if it really said nothing at all... that seemed to be most polite things, actually. She did wonder, though; she seemed like her age... "Would I have ever seen you at Hogwarts?"

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[font=Abadi MT Condensed Light]Well, there's broken silence, by thunder crashing in the dark (crash in the dark).

Elena nodded along carefully, lightning crackled outside, reminding Elena of the reason she was sticking in town for the night. It fit the conversation somehow, and for a moment she was distracted by a thought on the edge of her mind. Then it was gone, flitting away like the wind that whistled around the inn.

"It does seem a little more dressy than the rest of the crowd, although you wear it well." Elena nodded slightly, "Wandering to me is true freedom, and if you wanted I'd welcome anyone who would want to wander with me."

Taking a closer look at the other girl, Elena noted the other girl's thoughtful yet polite features, and felt a little swell of something like a kindred spirit, something sweet like violin music flowed around them as the singer took her position again, harmonising once more with Elena's dancing thoughts.

"It's lovely to meet you Celynne, and it really was good. Want something to drink? I've been getting cider." Elena looked around thoughtfully, "Yes, I believe so, I'm a second year, Slytherin, one of the chasers on the quidditch team. Also probably the most likely to disrespect authority."

Elena phrased the last one a little bit like a joke, but still serious in a way. Almost everything Elena said was actually the truth, just taking on more than a few different meanings along the way.

And this broken record, spin endless circles in the bar (spin 'round in the bar).[/font]

Vita brevis, ars longa.

The flash of electricity followed by the rumble of storms passed overhead, and her gaze darted to the side, out the window, for just a second before returning. Briefly she wondered how close it was, wondered if she remembered the gap between the lightning and the thunder, two illusions that would only ever intertwine in one place, and to a romantic's mind it would be a tragic metaphor, but some part of her screamed that it was nothing but a mirage that reached her eyes and ears on its own whim.

Elena's response jerked her out of her stupor, perhaps unpleasantly but not unfortunately. She hazarded a sweet smile of thanks. Maybe this was why she didn't like compliments—well, she loved them, maybe more than she should, but what was she supposed to do in response? Gratitude was something she had been hard-pressed to give, from... before, to Hogwarts, to now, if not by someone else then by herself. "If only I could," Cel murmured a little wistfully. And she meant it, with the faraway look in her eye of an astronomer's wonder for the universe beyond.

"I've been sipping Butterbeer before performing," she noted in reply. True, she could be asked to give a second song, but by then it would be a favor, not a concert. It would be a less controlled, heartbreaking song if it was her choice, because a casual stab at singing something to fill up the time with something good wasn't the same as a first impression performance. More wouldn't hurt. Especially considering she wasn't paying for it, and considering her lack of a conscience at taking drinks on the house. Come on, it was Butterbeer. And it was delicious, because it was Tamsin's Butterbeer.

"Looks like you could give my brother a run for his money," Cel snorted as she stepped away for a few seconds to pick up the mug she'd left behind on the nearest table at the time. Dorian had always been on the... disobedient side. It wasn't something she condemned him for; in fact, it was something she admired him for, what probably got him into Gryffindor and her into Ravenclaw. She only disapproved of what put him in danger, what he did just to spite their stepmother—all while telling her to stay safe. "I'm a Third Year, Ravenclaw. Nothing... nothing really interesting. Haven't really been keeping up with Quidditch, but I've probably passed you in the hallways or something before."

She wavered a little on the second sentence—if only they all knew—hand going to clutch the locket below her collarbone. With a start, the girl noticed that it had fallen out of hiding beneath her dress. Not really surprising, honestly; it probably just slipped loose while she was performing. She drew at the chain to tuck it in again.

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[font=Abadi MT Condensed Light]This world can hurt you, it cuts you deep and leaves a scar.

"Clever move." Elena hummed, unsure what to say about her brother, seeing as she didn't know who that was. Then she noticed something, just a glimmer, a glance she had to make, and her entire life lit up, "Wait! The necklace."

Elena pulled several bits and bobs out of her jeans pocket until she finally pulled out a little pane of stained quartz glass, almost impossible to hurt and she flipped it over, revealing a symbol of a firefly with a capitalised J behind it, "Your necklace, it's got the same symbol as this, my mother made it and I-"

You could see the frantic hope in Elena's eyes, the look of someone that had finally found the sign she was looking for. Any sign of someone that may just care about her, for someone who didn't care about family, or at least claimed not to, she really did want to find someone like her. Someone who might just want to help her, or at least act as a halfway house as she drifted.

It wasn't the most conventional childhood, but it was exactly the childhood she needed. Nothing conventional would work after the strange start.

Things fall apart, but nothing breaks like a heart, mhmm, and nothing breaks like a heart.[/font]

Ex arena funiculum nectis.

Cel's hand froze halfway through its motion, locket spinning with the sudden jerk of cessation. Another flash of lighting speared through the window beside them, its light illuminating the silver chain and the fine white cameo etched on the surface of the locket, quivering in fine air and stalled action. Her shoulders fell slightly, betraying her hope of tucking the jewelry away without notice, but her hands moved to the back of her neck, fingers curling to undo the clasp that hid there.

And so she held it in her palm, the round pendant a size of a dime, chain pooling like quicksilver between her fingers. A tiny piece of her mother's inheritance. She would've given it... back, if she could, but the notion was laughable... to give a ghost who could not touch her daughter's cheek a piece of jewelry. But with her introverted speculation came a stagnant sort of peace, and with this peace she frowned a little at the spark of frenzy that flared in Elena's eyes. She closed her fingers around it, brow furrowing in concern.

Cel peered at the bit of glass that the Slytherin girl pulled out, barely registering the symbol before a hand shot up to cover her eyes, the tellings of a headache poking absently at the corners of her mind. You'd better put that away before I flashback, she would have bitten out, trying to think of something other than the firefly signature, if this was last year, and even if it wasn't, she probably would have—but this wasn't something she would flashback for, because she'd already been down that particular alley of memory lane. The headache couldn't be kept away, but she could go on, and so the girl lowered her hand, hoping the motion would be taken as an attempt to block the harsh light of lightning outside.

It was the same signature, penned in miniature on the corner of each side of the pendant. She raised the locket to eye level, considering it for a moment, then looked back at the glass. Definitely the same signature. "Slow down a moment," she asked of the other girl, with a voice made to calm, practiced on herself more than on others. A sip of painkiller potion tied snugly to her belt—probably the only thing that fit the casualness around here—was enough for her to continue.

Clearly there was more to this than a brief mention in passing—the look in her eyes said enough. And she knew enough of the desperate feeling to sympathize, something that she hadn't been able to do a lot. So she did what she would've liked of someone else to her: looked Elena in the eye, tilted her head in question, and put it down straight. "There's more to this, correct? Explain. I'm all ears, and I'm the last person to judge."

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[font=Abadi MT Condensed Light]We'll leave each other cold as ice, and high and dry, the desert wind is blowin', is blowin'.

Elena's loss of composure had left her embarrassed and worried she'd just lost her friendship as well, but sighed and decided to tell the damn tale, from beginning to end. Calm reinstated itself and the frantic look in her eyes receded, "It's... I'll leave out the parts that aren't important, save you a lot of time."

"So, I'm from the streets of London, never had a family or a home or anything like that. I was sort of trapped there until I got my letter from Hogwarts." Elena rubbed her arm, and the hope faded a little from her eyes, replaced by the fear of long lost dreams and memories, then a scowl, "My father was a man called Byron Crane, and I've already tried that family but they left me disowned, and good thing too they were scoundrels of the worst kind."

Scoundrels, of those Elena knew way too much, for every good person she met she would meet four of those who just wanted to use her for their own ends. Maybe in some people's minds she was one too, another side of the coin, someone who tried desperately to keep her own freedom and do what was right. Maybe Elena had done bad things in the past for the wrong reasons... Fear was a constant reminder of what may happen if she goes too far.

"My mother's family on the other hand, I've found out a little about them here and there, a newspaper clipping, my dad's adopted grandmother told me what little she could before.. before she died too." Elena's flicked the stained glass back into the palm of her hand and out of sight.

Remember what you said to me? We were drunk in love in Tennessee, and I hold it, we both know it.

"I know that they're artists who almost never sell what they make, usually it has to be a gift so I can't find them that way. I know they live in Britain somewhere, I know their last name is Jones. I know that this symbol is their makers mark, and I know that they're good people. I just want to find them, but then again I don't even know if they'd want to find me."

Never sure, never happy with the results, why on Earth wouldn't they want you? The Cranes had their reasons but they surely couldn't hate Elena, still, abandonment cut deep, and so did trust issues. There were only three people she trusted in the entire world, and right now Celynne was becoming a fast fourth, you can't say this much of your history without trusting someone just a little. She hadn't left yet.

The storm continued outside, and a few patrons grumbled as they went home, nobody wanted to be in that kind of rain, "So thereby hangs the tale of why I wander without a destination, I'm searching for something and I don't know where it is."

Nothing, nothing, nothing gon' save us now[/font]

Aditum nocendi perfido praestat fides.

Leaning back a little, the girl found the wall with her hand and propped up a foot against it, eyes alert with understanding. She let the other witch talk, restraining her questions for later. Elena looked less manic than before, but these things were fragile, and she would know. There was a reason why she kept her own tale to herself, or tried to, at least, but this looked like something she could help with, and deodamnatus, she would if she could.

Maybe she had a thing for the broken. To her, they were tragic, but beautiful, and there were few things that could replace the potential that lay plain in the broken. But she was one of them, and she knew that being one of the broken was not beautiful at all. She'd heard a story like Elena's before, a little girl growing up in the ghettos of London with one cruel family and the other lost for good. Everyone she met seemed lost, in some way or another, and if she couldn't find her own map, maybe she'd find it in someone else's. Part of it had been in that of a stranger on a train, anyway. A big part of it.

There was too much strife in this world.

Touch wasn't something that Cel liked to use to soothe, as much as it was alleged to work. There were times when she was touch-starved, but others when a simply hand on her shoulder or a brush against her side could irk her beyond measure, and she had to shake herself into ignoring it lest she break. Instead, the young girl opted to gesture toward an empty table maybe a few feet away. "Let's sit."

Honestly, she never thought of herself as the comforting type, always more focused on the world within her than the one outside. Thinking of it, though, she'd done quite the same for Dorian, and some others she could name: Elijah, was the first name her mind landed on. Eris, a little bit, but not much. And now Elena Jones. Cel sipped at her Butterbeer, now growing cold. "I can't guarantee that they do want to find you, but it sounds like they don't know that you exist. If they're decent people, there's nothing to lose."

And she'd heard the whole thing now, but her mind turned sour at what she knew it meant. Well, the girl couldn't very well offer a few words of comfort and point her in a different direction. Still, the alternative, the helpful one, didn't please her very much. "Artists that don't sell what they make," Cel mused, turning the pendant in her fingertips, even as dread poked at her uninvitingly. "Then the person they gifted it to might know something, right?" And goodness, did she not want to talk to that person.

But she had to help. Too late to escape it, even as fear closed its clammy hands around her heart. No, not fear. More like panic. But her face remained composed. "You see," the young witch began, "this pendant belonged to my mother. And I would ask her, except she's dead, which means we can't. Except she's also a ghost, which means we can. Except I've asked her where this thing came from, and the answer I got was that it was a gift from her husband, who I suppose would be my stepfather, who is certainly not a Jones." Her smile hardened at the mention of her stepfather, eyes turning sharp and deadly—who knew a little Asian girl could look so menacing? But the moment passed and she softened again. Amazing, really, how easily the words of her past could fall from her lips. She forgot the mortification it was met with sometimes. "Which means that we've got ourselves a target... across the Atlantic Ocean."