Velle: “Shall we continue in the W’drawing Room?”, in her graceful way of telling everyone what they are about to do.

But there is something wrong with the W’drawing Room. You are the first to enter, and you stop short when you see it. It takes a moment to even comprehend what you are looking at.

Where the far wall of the W’drawing Room should be, there is, instead, a wall of Glass. Little square panes of it, each about a Span across, set in a Lattice. The Glass is imperfect, distorting the Tableau behind it. But after a moment of scrutiny you make sense of what you see.

Three People stand in a room much like your W’drawing Room, as if another House was somehow installed onto the front of your Goodbye House, facing the opposite direction. The Three are staring at your Five in as much surprise as you are them. They wear a sort of Uniform, all of them the same, woolen Gray with accents of Pink-Orange and Teal. They seem to confer, but you cannot hear them through the Glass.

Velle begins: “Who…” then trails off and and puts her Mask on. Nolle is already wearing his, staring through the Glass.

Y: “There they are. Our Rivals. They don’t look like much, and they are only Three to our Five.”

The Three finish conferring and begin setting up some Equipment. Each one appears to have a musical Instrument, but you don’t recognize any of them. Well, you might, but Anise Vanda does not. In fact they’re a Keyboard, an Electric Bass, and a Drum Kit, which is much easier and less pretentious than describing them all as if you didn’t know what those are.

Are they all Musicians, then? Another House, with just three Members, all with the same Vocation? They’re looking at each other seriously, now, like they’re about to play. But if you can’t hear them speaking, it seems unlikely that you should be able to hear their Music? In fact, no. The Music begins. You hear it quite loudly. The Equipment is, after all, quite effective.

The Sound of the Three unites into a single, warmly complex drone, loud yet delicate and vulnerable. You can tell that it’s just as hard for your House-mates to act unaffected as it is for you. The Music is undeniably powerful, so much more sound than should be possible for just three people. If Rock existed, you’d credit them with inventing Post-Rock.

The one playing the Keyboard sings. You can’t make any sense of the Words, but you feel them all the same. One part that repeats sounds like, “away away so la.”

Sing