The theater was old -- converted from a crumbling chapel with arched ceilings and amber-stained windows. Not a grand venue, but intimate. The kind of place where sound wasn't just heard but held.
Orion Marron sat alone onstage at the grand piano, shoulders slightly hunched, head bowed, eyes closed. The house lights were off. Just one spotlight fell across the polished black lacquer, catching the edge of a ring he wore on his thumb -- silver, oxidized, shaped like a broken compass and holding more history than most.
He began to play.
The melody emerged in fragments into the theater devoid of audience. Minor chords stitched into silence. Not mournful -- but unfinished. Like a letter started and never sent.
In the second movement, something shifted. The music softened. Hummed. A slow spiral built from repetition and slight dissonance. Notes hesitated, then resolved in a way that made your breath catch.
Somewhere in the back of the dark theater, Beatrix sat perfectly still. Her coat draped over her knees, gloves tucked in one pocket. Her cello case leaned against her leg, unopened.
She knew.
She always had.
When they were twelve, he stopped looking boys in the eye. When they were fourteen, she found the torn page from the novel he'd hidden beneath his pillow -- two men dancing in the dark, no words between them. When they were seventeen, she said nothing when he told their father he just wasn't "interested in dating."
She never asked him to say it aloud.
She just waited for him to say it to himself.
And now, this.
Then final variation of the piece was gentle -- almost warm. Like forgiveness. Acceptance. Like the ache of recognition without shame.
Orion lifted his hands from the keys slowly, letting the final note decay into silence.
No smile. Just a breath and a long, deliberate exhale.
He stood and walked downstage.
Beatrix met him just as he stepped into the wings.
He didn't speak.
She pulled one glove from her coat and handed it to him. "You dropped this."
He took it.
She looked at him and said only, "It was beautiful."
His voice caught. "It's the first thing I've written that truly felt like mine."
Beatrix's smile was small but real. "Then I'm glad I heard it first."
They didn't hug. That wasn't them. But the exchange of soft energy between them explained the love that only siblings can share.
They walked out together -- shoulder to shoulder -- into the cold night, saying nothing. The silence said enough.
The outline of a figure wrapped in the darkness of the theater, watched the exchange between brother and sister. -- Soon.
