A gentle wind ruffled the curtains, and they fluttered in the bright sunlight. The gentle and lilting tunes of a grand piano filled the air just as much as the wind and the sun, adding its own beautiful layer to the atmosphere in the small room. The tunes were produced by someone very much in control of their craft, their hands danced across the tangents, fingers pressing down only barely enough to produce the correct sounds before racing off to grace the next tangents with their touch. It was the sound of someone skilled, someone with years and years of experience, someone with a keen ear for music. It was the sound of someone in love. Edward Heatherland was totally enraptured by the music, giving his entire self over to the spirit of the piece, hands moving with fluidity and seemingly exaggerated motions, his upper body almost dancing, not along with the music per se, but with the feelings and message it intoned. He had closed his eyes long ago, he knew perfectly well where the tangents were, and he had practiced this piece so long that it was ingrained in his muscle memory. There was nothing in this moment except him, the piano, the music, and his feelings.

The trilling and dulcet tunes of the allegro flowingly turned over into the ¾ time step of the minuetto, spirited and joyful, like the playful courtship of swallows in the spring sky, dancing, swooping, and choreographed by instinct rather by rational thought. And after what seemed to Edward only like a few heartbeats, but in actuality almost five minutes, he was over into the more melancholic larghetto. The tempo was down, the touches on the tangents were deeper, and the movements more deliberate, the temperament of the music betrayed his own sense of longing, hopelessness, and naïve desire to reconnect. But before it could completely take over the essence of the piece as a whole, he launched into the fierce and determined finale, presto, the notes initially more pressing, pounding, making their presence felt, the emotions behind laid bare. It was as if Edward was displaying his whole being before the world, his hands and feet demonstrating the depths of emotion his heart felt, made manifest through music written a millennia ago, but still as emotionally powerful as the day it was written. As the piece was approaching its end, Edward leant slightly forward, eyes still closed, and emphatically hit the tangents, producing the sense of urgency as well as vulnerability as the piece demanded, before he relaxed and returned to his almost caressing touches, but his heart was almost close to bursting. During the last part, he leaned forward over the tangents and with the dedication possessed only by madmen and lovers, he poured his heart out as he pounded the tangents to finish off the sonata. Out of breath and emotionally drained, his arms slumped to his sides.

“My God, Master Heatherland, I have never heard Chopin been played with such intensity and passion before.”

Professor Chantelle Winton rose from the chair at the back of the practice room in Countess Montroy Conservatoire she had been sitting in, and clapped her hands together emphatically as Edward finished the last few notes of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No.1 in C Minor.

“I certainly did not know you were capable of displaying such emotion while playing,” she continued as Edward shakily brought a bottle of water to his lips. “You have for the past two years shown yourself to be very skilled technically, but I have always wanted you to really connect to the music and produce a version that can be called your own.”

She walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“If you play like this at the final recital, I don’t think an A in Early Classics is out of the question.”

Despite feeling like had just run a marathon, Edward’s face lit up. An A in the prestigious Early Classics Course Module, which was heavily slanted towards recitals and semi-official performances with one of the several students orchestras of the Queen Marie’s Metropolitan University, was almost a guarantee a letter of recommendation to a full-time orchestra after graduation. This was extremely important for purely soloist majors like Edward’s Classical Piano, since each orchestra usually had only one or two piano soloists in full employment; even the highly distinguished and lauded Royal Cordelia Opera Orchestra had only four, and one of them was a fortepiano specialist.

“You really think so, Ma’am? I mean, there’s still the final recital in two weeks, and then the Year End Gala performances…” A tiny hope had been sparked in him, and his suddenly cheerful tone made Winton suppress a chuckle.

“Edward, you’re not a bad student, despite whatever your performance in Kubíček’s course is,” –the comment made Edward look away a bit sheepishly–, “you are truly dedicated to music and to your craft, and it shows when you’re playing. But this is the level of intensity and mastery of not simply producing the ‘correct’ notes, this is taking a piece and make it your own in a special way. And if you can replicate this during your final few performances, you are certainly ready to be considered among the upper echelons of our students.”

Her face became less maternal and more serious again.

“That is, if you can also keep this up for the final four semesters as well, but this would go a long way to help your overall Majors grade. Keep this up, Heatherland, and make your parents not regret sending you to Cordelia to pursue piano.”

Professor Winton’s words still rang in Edward’s ears as he slumped down on one of the benches in one of the QMMU park areas. Euryphaessa was shining down brightly, and he was tempted to take off his grey blazer, but thought better off it. He fingered the flag pin of Amaranth on his blazer lapel absent-mindedly, a cream coloured fleur-de-lis on an amaranthine field. Those last words by the professor had sent him on a bit of a mental trip. Currently he was considering the idiocy of humanity still being slaved to the Gregorian Calendar of Earth, while every inhabited planet had their own orbital cycle around their native stars, had their own speed of axial rotation, making it completely illogical to still use Earth’s calendar system. So, while the current date was Friday 17th May, 2874 (relative), it was closer to high summer on Aurora, and the middle of winter on his homeworld of Amaranth. But again, seasons were different, and Aurora had what could be considered summer for half of its fourteen monthly cycles, which were slightly longer than Earth’s due to the moon New Lysithea’s size and orbital distance, and then a long fall and long winter, followed by an extremely short spring. Amaranth was basically summer for most of the year, followed by a slightly colder summer, due to its extreme axial tilt and large sun, the red giant Aditya.

As he thought about Amaranth, he felt a pang of homesickness. Edward had grown up right outside the capital of Persephone, a sprawling city constructed on a series of atolls, connected by waterways, monorail lines and walkways that stretched across the highrises. It had the same quaint Neo-Georgian meets hypermodernity look as Cordelia, but much more colourful, with buildings painted and designed with the natural shapes and colours of the ocean that filled most of the planet’s surface in mind. He suddenly missed water-skiing with his childhood friends, walking along the seaside quays and their water-side malls and bazaars, and missed taking trips to the untouched natural reserve islands and atolls and hike through the rainforests. He missed his parents’ two-story apartment in the suburb of Cybelia too, he missed his mother’s Dionysian cooking, his father’s anecdotes and passion for football which they both shared, and own collection of history books that sat in his childhood room. Now all of that was seven to nine days away on a passenger liner, and only the Holiday Season was long enough for him to have time to go over there and back again in time for the start of the semester.

Then Edward felt another pang of heartache as he thought of Adea. He had only caught glimpses of her after their night out, and she had looked angry every time, and during PolHis classes the past day he had seen her sit alone, even Sandy choosing to keep her distance. He didn’t know what to make of it, if it had somehow been his fault, but he had chosen to avoid her as well. Arvind had been pretty annoyed the day after Edward’s trip to the Peacock, but had soon been enthralled as Edward (nursing his raging hangover with several mugs of tea) had regaled how the playground of the children of the Kingdom’s powerful looked and functioned. Edward had a few days later noted that he had Narissara Roxburgh’s contact info in his handcom, and from that he had managed to weave into existence the idea that Adea’s anger stemmed from the latter parts of that evening.

A pinch and a grumble in his stomach brought him back to reality, and he realised he had been spacing out for a good while, and while he didn’t have any more classes for the day, he was still obligated to practice on his own, but he was still feeling the aftershock of playing his absolute mind out during the Chopin sonata, as well as the nervousness he had had beforehand. Better go find some food, just too bad they don’t sell alcohol on campus; I could have used a drink right about now. He could have opted for the Vermilion Hall mess hall, where his student’s convent was, but he chose the closer and larger Humanities cafeteria, which had seating for some eight-hundred, and with a very large kitchen attached. Plus he was pretty sure today was seafood specials day, and being from an ocean-dominated world, Edward was very fond of seafood. The Humanities Common Hall was made in an Avant-Gothic style, with tall peaked towers and spires and grey brick, and had more in common with the Cordelia ward town halls than the rest of the QMMU architecturally, but the relatively dark wooden interior lit up by the many windows was similar enough. Walking along the many cafeteria stations with his tray, he realised he was hungrier than he thought, picking up a bowl of traditional Nordic white fish soup, a small loaf of ciabatta, and some pieces of fried Amaranthine tuna (which were monstrosities several hundred feet long that required entire offshore rigs to fish). Only after paying for it by the way of swiping his student card against the slot of a drone did he realise the huge cafeteria was basically packed. When he was about to give up, and was contemplating the idea of somehow sneaking his meal outside, he saw a familiar cascade of near-white hair.

“Um, very sorry for intruding, My Lady, but seeing there’s next to nowhere to sit, would you awfully mind me joining you?”

Lady Artemisia de Vere looked up from the book she had been reading while slowly consuming a bowl of bacalhau, and regarded Edward with wondering pink-grey eyes.

“Say, where do I know you from?” she said as Edward could veritably see the gears grinding in her head. “Are you part of the Scarlet Hall convent crowd?”

“Ah, no My Lady,” Edward said, feeling suddenly very silly for having asked in the first place, “we met briefly last week after Dr van Fluyten’s lecture, where you mainly had a discussion with Lady Sélincourt…”

The pink-grey eyes immediately became suspicious slits.

“I do suggest,” she said in a tone almost as icy as her hair, “that you might want to find another place to sit then, if you’re one of Adea’s clique.”

“No, My Lady, I can assure you, I’m not part of anyone’s clique. My name is Edward Heatherland, I just met Lady Sélincourt the same day, and haven’t talked to her since.” Well, we all know that’s a lie. “And if I might be so bold, Lady de Vere, there really isn’t anywhere else to sit. I promise I won’t disturb your studies, I’ll just eat my meal and go.”

Her eyes continued to stare into his emerald ones for what felt like an awkward eternity, but after what was in actuality only a few seconds, she sighed and made a waving motion for him to sit down at the table which had seating for eight, but which was empty save for Artemisia. Gratefully, Edward bowed his head and sat his tray down, put a napkin in his lap, and started to eat with as much etiquette he could muster, being in the presence of a duke’s daughter after all. Said duke’s daughter simply continued to read in a large tome. As the two continued to “enjoy” each other’s presence in total silence, Edward’s natural curiosity got the better of him, and trying as subtly as he was capable of, he strained his neck to look at what Artemisia was reading. He quickly realised the pages were in a language he couldn’t read, but he recognised the letters of the Greek alphabet. Apparently, he wasn’t being as subtle as he thought he was, for as he looked up, Artemisia was looking straight at him, with a very annoyed expression on her face.

“This is the Bibliothēke Historikẽ by Diodoros of Sicily, if you’re so awfully keen at finding out. He was a scholar and historian in the very last century before the Common Era, writing a general history of the Earth Mediterranean and Near East regions.”

“I’m sorry,” Edward said in earnest, “I didn’t mean to pry, I just saw that it was written with Greek letters, and wondered what it could be.”

An eyebrow as white as the rest of her hair perked up.

“You know Greek then?”

Edward bobbed his head up and down in confirmation as he tried to stall while he chewed on a bit of ciabatta.

“Yes, My Lady,” he managed to produce after some food-related equivocation, “my mother is Dionysian, so I grew up learning Elleniká, but I don’t know the ancient variant, but I do recognise the letters to be the same.”

Instead of scoffing or producing an annoyed response, Artemisia surprised Edward by producing the ghost of a smile.

“Well, you’re better off than me then. I know a language that has been effectively dead since the fall of the Byzantine Empire; hell, my name is even in that language, but I don’t know the version which is actually spoken today by millions of people across Human Space. Goes to show what a Classical education provides of value in today’s society.”

Edward wasn’t entirely sure what to say, so he only took a sip of water from his glass. That was apparently the wrong reaction.

“What are you hoping to get out of this, Heatherland?” she said as she slammed her book shut and affixed him with a fierce glance. “Is it to mock me? If so, there have been several before you with more insidious approaches, and I can assure you, I saw through them all. I have barely even met you before, and you make it your mission to harass me, I can’t fucking believe it…”

Edward had stopped eating now and was looking anxiously at the tables next to them, noticing that other students had indeed been eavesdropping and were busy whispering among themselves.

“I, honest to God,” he said, looking back at the now angry noblewoman, “have no idea what you’re talking about. I just needed a place to sit down, and I happened to recognise your face, and since there were no other tables open, I just asked if I could join your table. No ill-will was intended, I can assure you, My Lady.”

Artemisia blinked a few times in a similar manner Edward was sure he had just done.

“Surely,” she went on after a moment, leaning across the table to not have their conversation overheard, “you cannot be that dense?”

Edward slightly cocked his head, more confused than ever.

“Dense, My Lady?”

“I am a fucking clone, Edward,” Artemisia de Vere said, or seethed rather, through gritted teeth, “I’m a vat-grown lab-product, customised right down to my hair colour, level of IQ, muscle mass, and even my inexplicable love for tragic operas. I was ordered and paid for by my father nineteen years ago, quite illegally I might add, considering the laws of the Kingdom, to be his replacement for the heirs he lost because he was such a piss-poor excuse of a paternal figure to avoid them from killing themse…”

She shut up with a click of her teeth, and Edward couldn’t help notice her pale cheeks had turned rosy and her knuckles milk white.

“Anyway,” she continued after running a hand through her hair to buy some time to recompose herself, “I have lived with people talking behind my back for my entire life, lived with the ridicule that has been slung my way. So you’re just another one in a long line of would-be bullies; but I am sorry to say your jabs won’t find any purchase here.”

“So what, My Lady?”

“Excuse me?”

Had not the topic of conversation been so clearly intimate and a source of frustration for Artemisia, Edward might have laughed at her incredulous facial expression.

“My Lady,” he continued, intentionally keeping his voice low as to not embarrass Artemisia further, “I am the son of a Dionysian Gen-Two woman, and I have never thought of it as a source of shame in my life. Maybe, if My Lady will permit me, it is worse to be a complete Gen-Two, given the historical stigma that follows it, especially perhaps amongst the nobility, but I would say that should be a source of strength rather than weakness. If others denigrate you for this, what they really are doing is criticising His Grace your father. They are in reality calling him out for not being able to be a good paternal figure as you say, and the ‘jabs’ are really meant for him, not you. So what if you’re specially designed to be the way that you are? You should consider that a good thing, especially when many of us are random codes of DNA and some, as very cruel as it might seem, are ‘accidents’. You’re the opposite of an accident, you’re specifically and meticulously crafted to be the person you are, and while the thought of having no say in the matter is understandably infuriating, it is fundamentally no different to anyone else. If you’ll permit me, My Lady, if I was in your shoes, I’d let the insults wash off and over me, and I say this as a not particularly confident person, but they’re in the end not intended for you. And while yes, cloning is an abhorrent business, no one in this situation is to blame but your father for going down that route.”

Edward suddenly realised he had been caught up in the moment, and his rambling had been perhaps a bit too much and as the realisation hit, he froze up like a deer in headlights.

“Those are actually wise words, Heatherland.”

Wha-?

“I think I’ll take them into consideration.” Pale pink lips curled up into a genuine smile, and Edward was struck once again with the realisation that Artemisia de Vere was a very cute young girl. Shitshitshitshit.

She picked up the tray containing her empty bowl and glass, and seemingly effortlessly hefted the huge tome under her arm, which seemed very out of place for such a petite and seemingly fragile girl, even though now Edward understood she was quite the opposite.

She turned to go, to leave Edward in peace with the rest of his meal. But as she was almost out of Edward’s field of vision, she turned back around again.

“If you wouldn’t awfully mind, Heatherland,” she said in a low tone, “I’d like us to share lunch again someday soon.”

Edward on instinct half-rose from his chair to do a slight bow in confirmation.

“It would be my honour, My Lady.”

Wait, was she actually blushing?

"See you around, Edward."