#elsewhere

"Sorry babe," Spike shrugs "Life is risk. You take a chance, bam..pleasure, pain, joy, heart ache, recovery... wash rinse, repeat. The Lake won't last forever probably, but that just makes it all the more fucking amazing while we got it."

A wistful look. “Nothing ever lasts, does it?”

"My songs are angry, frustrated and a bit whiny if I wanna be honest about it... but there's fight in them. Look, if life doesn't take what we have away, death will- that's a fact. Its why you should hold on for ever daymned second of something good while you've got it. "

"So, your girlfriend dicked you? And not in a good way. You got to ask yourself if she's worth it. And if she's not, then, you SITLL have to ask yourself whatever else you got if it's worth giving up that too just to get distance. " Spike shrugs

A frown and she trots off by herself. Checking her phone messages.

TXT: Thinking of you from Jonas again

TXT: Please come back when you can. She's not going to the appartment from Siv

Someone chooses that moment to sing from nearby in a voice that's..oddly familiar yet not of this place

Lilting, "Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ooh, woah"

"Won't you come see about me?
I'll be alone, dancing you know it, baby
Tell me your troubles and doubts
Giving me everything inside and out and
Love's strange so real in the dark
Think of the tender things that we were working on
Slow change may pull us apart
When the light gets into your heart, baby" A fluttering sound accompanies the song

She turns to look...

Made of light and song, a familiaar looking figure, but one that's supposed to be in a window of glass! A gold finch...

"Don't you forget about me
Don't don't don't don't
Don't you forget about me" it bounces on the limb

"Will you stand above me
Look my way, never love me
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down
Will you recognise me
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down

Hey, hey, hey, hey
Ooh, woah

Don't you try to pretend
It's my feeling we'll win in the end
I won't harm you or touch your defenses
Vanity, insecurity ah

Don't you forget about me
I'll be alone, dancing you know it baby
Going to take you apart
I'll put us back together at heart, baby

Don't you forget about me
Don't don't don't don't
Don't you forget about me

As you walk on by
Will you call my name?
As you walk on by
Will you call my name?
When you walk away
Oh will you walk away?
Will you walk on by?
Come on, call my name
Will you call my name?

I say:
La la la...

When you walk on by
And you call my name..."

She recognizes it. And sees.. not a goldfinch, but a Chimerical made of glass following her, scolding her. "Stop it! Stop... haunting me! It's not fair!" Piper stomps a hoof. "It's not fair, and it's not right! Why can't you just leave me be?!" Her voice has raised to a yell.

The gold finch scatters back, a hurt look on its avian features

and a single glassy tear drips loose, like a bead fallen from its strand

"Go HOME. You belong to Sylvi! Not me!"

images play on the surface of the bird , of a recording studio, a mortal girl on viola who sees her chance to play in different ways than she did before and always wanted to Images of Linwood in a recording studio tickling the keyboard.....and the finch sings...

"I can be tough
I can be strong
But with you
It's not like that at all
There's a girl
That gives a shit
Behind this wall
You just walk through it" The image of the satyr walking through the place before it was a freehold, still seeing what it could be, SHOULD be...

"And I remember all those crazy things you said
You left them running through my head
You're always there, you're everywhere
But right now I wish you were here
All those crazy things we did
Didn't think about it, just went with it
You're always there, you're everywhere
But right now I wish you were here" Laughter in the basement as the party thrives, Piper in the middle of it side by side with Sylvi

"Damn, damn, damn
What I'd do to have you
Here, here, here
I wish you were here
Damn, damn, damn
What I'd do to have you
Near, near, near
I wish you were here"

She turns and runs. Fleeing from the Goldfinch and it's cruel reminders. Why should she have to return? Why is it up to HER to make things right? Her winter side rears it's head, telling her that she needn't work at anything, take any responsibility, that someone else will take care of what needs to be done. Piper seeks, and finds, the hut where she woke up that morning, and encloses herself inside. Fumbling for her phone, she texts... Sylvi.

TXT: I need space. please make it stop

There's a pause. Then finally the little bubbles on her screen bounce to show Sylvi's texting back.

TXT: ????

TXT: Are you okay? Where are you?

TXT: the goldfinch. from the window. call it back, plz. It should listen to you.

TXT: Call it back?

A pause, and then another text: I had no clue it could do that.

TXT: I didn't send it, wherever it went.

In the distance, Piper can hear... that voice that seems to have an element of her own vocals in it "Spending all my nights, all my money going out on the town
Doing anything just to get you off of my mind
But when the morning comes, I'm right back where I started again
And tryin' to forget you is just a waste of time

Baby come back, any kind of fool could see
There was something in everything about you
Baby come back, you can blame it all on me
I was wrong and I just can't live without you"

The music .. stops!

It's pushing too hard. She drops the phone and instead searches the room, drawers and pockets, cubbies and crevices, to see if she can't find another dose of the moon rock from the night before.

alas, none, but the remaining lyrics have not come out

Flopping onto the bed, she buries her head under the pillow and wills sleep to come. Or if not sleep, just silence.

The phone buzzes where she dropped it.

Pillow SMUSH

She picks up the phone, and in a fit of pique, chucks it out the door! To land where it may.

Maybe she broke it. Either way, there's no more buzzing.

"I'm telling you man, she needs some big loving..." Bach explains outside the door "And I? I CARE enough to volunteer"

"you're such a giver, man" JJJ can be heard responding "But maybe she just wants to be alone"

"If that's the case, I'll roll with it" Bach says "I'm like doctor strange..." ANd he mimes a movie line, with a twist "Rejection and I are old friends"

She pulls the pillow down over her head harder, and calls out, muffled, "Unless you have girl scout cookies, I'm not buying."

"It's cool," Bach declares "This will inspire my next broken heart song.. oh wait, I can make cookies! What sort?"

".....the coconut ones?"

"Yeah, sure.. I can do that... never trust a skinny chef... so ergo, you can really trust me"

JJJ laughs a bit at that "Go to it, man"

"Coconut COOKIES" A knock a the doorr