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Title: WIP: Music is the Food of Love
Author: Harper Kingsley
Summary: inspired by Twelfth Night. Duke Orsino sends Bastian to speak to the fair Olivia on his behalf.

Prompt: https://twitter.com/AuthorNikSky/status/1336499047033688065

MUSIC IS THE FOOD OF LOVE

Bastian kept her chin tilted down, but her eyes couldn’t help straying to Orsino where he sprawled in the window seat. The handsome duke was a surly sort, melancholy wrapped around a poet’s soul so tight that sometimes he lost his words. And then he had her play and play and play.

I would play him a thousand sonnets and a million lullabies, if only he would think of me as he does HER. And that was a hateful thought perhaps, to wish misfortune on the mysterious Olivia she had never met.

In her guise of man, the duke did not look upon her. Would not.

But this was the way she was. The way she’d always been. The way she’d always wanted to be.

Feminine wiles and fripperies were as foreign as the soil of the moon would be beneath her feet. It was not her fault that she had to pretend to be a man to dress the way she FELT inside.

Neither woman nor man. Simply herself.

Born Viola, twin to Sebastian. Now Bastian in memory of her lost other half, torn from her by the grasping white caps of the sea.

She’d been so alone without him. But dressing in his clothes made her feel close to him somehow, as though it were his face gazing back at her from the mirror. Smiling gently. Promising that he would make everything all right, even after their father died so tragic and ruinous a death.

He’d promised her he’d never leave.

But where was Sebastian now? Swallowed by the sea.… Read the rest “WIP: Music Is the Food of Love”