FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Pixies and Performances

I stood at the top of a flight of stairs. They were familiar stairs by now, because at the bottom of these particular stairs I had my new job. I had been hired to play music for a very peculiar club, and for the last week I'd been practicing my entrance, getting ready for my first day playing music in a real life, professional job.

Today was that first day, and I was nervous as hell.

Here at the top of the stairs was the ground level of a sleepy little café. It wasn't all that special of a café, with its bare redwood walls and comfortable furniture: a few modern Ikea-looking chairs with big cushions, a table or two with simple seats, and a little counter with high stools. Basic cafe stuff. The whole thing reminded me of a calming, smooth jazz number of some sort. Not a challenging song to listen to, just comfortable background music for whatever customers were there. The cafe was tucked away downtown, innocuously placed between a knitting supply store and a laundromat, and not remarkable in any way. Even when I came in this morning, giving a friendly wave at the girl working the counter whose name still escaped me, I wouldn't have really thought much about this place just by looking at it. Except that it had this back door most people didn't see, that hid a staircase that most people didn't know existed.

It was what lay at the bottom of the stairs that worried me, and I stood at the top worrying about it too much. After a long moment of apprehension I started to slowly walk down, each step a little less tentative than the last.

Halfway down the stairs I reached a landing and took a sharp right where I could see the actual club in the basement. This area was familiar too. The room's paneling matched the redwood in the cafe above. but the club was a larger space then you might expect and I thought it took up more space than it had anys right to. The room had an open floor space with about twenty round, sturdy old tables with matching chairs. The carvings on the legs of the chairs and tables had intricate carvings that looked elegant and ancient despite being in good condition. Off to the side I took note a full stocked bar with plain stools that were just as old as the tables and chairs. On the far side of the room, dominating the stage sat an old black piano, tall and dark like an executioner, silently threatening me with my own fate. The dim lighting gave the whole place a smoky sort of feeling strait out of a noir detective film. In all these chairs and stools and dark lighting sat people. Lots of people.

The people worried me. This last week, I had mostly come early in the day so I could avoid running into too many people while I practiced my entrance. I had really only met the other club employees so far, and I wasn't used to seeing so many people down here. And worse, they were all staring at me. They all seemed to be looking at me before I looked at them, and that unnerved me. The bouncer for the bar, a big bald guy named Marty, stood at the foot of the stairs, and he relaxed as soon as he noticed me. The customers at the tables stayed tense, most of them had stopped talking, none of them dropped their gaze, and that sort of intense silence that you get in the middle of a symphony when all the instruments pause mid song filled the room. There was a weight to it, pulled tight and ready to spring. I'd been practicing all week for this. I took a deep breath and kept walking.

On the first step, I just faintly noticed a now-familiar itching sensation, the kind that made you wonder if your skin belonged to you. With each step downward the sensation increased, spreading over my body and grow in intensity. At first I could barely notice it, and then it made me uncomfortable, and eventually it felt overpowering. I made it half way between the landing and the tables, and the itching became almost painful. I had to do it. I reached up to my own face and flexed my hand. I felt claws slice out from the ends of my fingers, and I gripped my own face. I felt skin part and crumple like old newspaper under my new claws, without blood and without pain and I pulled. Hard.

The skin all over my body tore easily like the skin on my face, and in one whole piece it all came out from under my clothes like a tablecloth pulled out under the dishes. The papery skin floated mid air for a moment before evaporating as if burning in an invisible inferno. The skin didn't even leave any pieces, it just vanished. What I had left somehow put everyone at the bar at ease. They visibly relaxed and looked away, but I still felt really uncomfortable.

I could feel fur where bare skin used to be, rubbing up against my button up shirt, and I knew from the last few times that I had changed that it looked just like the natural hair that used to be only on my head: jet black and smooth. I flexed my fingers and felt glad they really hadn't changed much; they were still delicately thin and long and nimble, and the new hair involved stayed short enough to stay out of the way. I took the last few steps and noticed the change in my muscle mass, as I somehow I felt both lighter and heavier at the same time. I had more weight to throw around but more muscle to move it. I also noticed how easily I kept balance with my new, thick ropy tail.

I casually rubbed my lower back, relieved that the tail had come out just above my belt line without ripping my shirt or pants. I wore a nice button up shirt and slacks today, complete with suit vest, so I didn't want anything to get torn. The room suddenly seemed louder, looked much brighter, and new smells I couldn't even begin to figure out assaulted my new nose. I still felt a little overwhelmed by it all, and the spell that caused it only took effect down here in the club. I was glad that I had practiced the transformation by coming down here every day.

It felt strange to think I was beginning to be comfortable with changing into a werecat.

I stopped focusing on my transformation to look at the club patrons again. Now that I had transformed, the magic that hid them from everyone else let me see. Before they had all looked like your average people around town, wearing normal kinds of clothing, with normal hair and normal skin tones. But now they looked anything but. A lot of them seemed to have changed only a little: their clothing went from modern to something more like a Lord of the Rings movie and their hair all became long and braided in complicated patterns. These people kept their shapes, sizes and skin tones, but gained pointed ears, and seemed to glow. Each one's head put off a halo of light like some kind of weird living glow stick, all of different colors and intensities. I hadn't seen anything like that in the last week, and it took me a moment to process.

The others in the club that changed more dramatically in size or shape, and each in a completely different way. Marty the bouncer looked like that. Before, he looked like a pretty hefty guy before with lots of muscle and height, but mostly a regular guy. Now he looked like an almost literal mountain. He had gained a whole foot and now stood at something like seven feet tall. His skin had turned all to stone, every inch of it became craggy and hard, but it somehow flexed when he moved his arm. His eyes lost their pupils and were solid and milky white, like polished marble. Before, he'd looked like he belonged in a biker gang and he might punch your lights out if you insulted him; now he looked like he belonged in a cave or under a bridge and might eat you for trespassing.

I gave Marty a friendly but nervous nod, and started towards the bar.

Honestly, I had been expecting the large crowd and the sudden transformation. My boss had told me all the details of his spell, and had even been the one to suggest practicing the transition of human to werecat before my first night.

"Tarot!"

Just as I wondered where my boss was, I heard him call my last name behind me. His voice in and of itself described him as a person. First of all, he pronounced my name correctly, with a silent 't' so it rhymed with 'sparrow,' and not 'carrot,' and secondly his voice was both gentle and yet it carried. You could hear him whisper from across a crowded room if he wanted you to hear it, but it never seemed to be yelling. He always had proper diction but didn't make you feel inadequate for it.

I turned to the voice just in time to see him before his usual greeting, and even as he walked up to me I could feel his presence. Standing next to him gave you an inexplicable sense of how fragile you were. He wasn't large or powerful looking, but his physical strength reminded you how easily you might break. It always felt like even the inanimate objects in the room were paying attention to him, waiting for him to ask for something.

Physically speaking seemed to be in his mid to late forties. Silvery hair, wrinkling around his eyes and mouth, and yet acted like a guy my age. He wore nice business clothes that made him look younger, but something about his word choice told you he must be older. Overall, he reminded me of a piece of classical music and a disco somehow being played at the same time on a violin. The resulting confusion yet appreciation was basically my reaction to him.

"Hi Mr. RE," I managed to say before he got to me. He had asked me to use his initials without telling me his whole name, and at this point it might have been to late to ask.

"Welcome!" he said as his hands landed on my shoulders. He proceeded to kiss both sides of my face, and I noticed again how strong he was. I could only just notice it, but instead of moving himself to reach my cheeks he ended up moving me. Even with the extra muscle I got from transforming, I got pulled back and forth like a human-shaped helium balloon. He could probably pick me up with little to no effort on his part, regardless of my size.

"That was a spectacular entrance my boy; the practice really paid off," he said.

"T-thank you sir," I said, flustered from the greeting. RE smiled warmly before putting his arm around my shoulders, leading me towards a table.

"Glad to see you didn't rip your nice attire this time," he said. "Like I told you, after the first time it will get easier. As my spell becomes used to you, you will get used to it. Eventually you will even be able to trigger it outside this place whenever you like."

I nodded at the reminder. Last week was the first time I'd transformed, and it had definitely been an event. It had been unpleasant, completely traumatic, and had resulted in a pair of jeans and a shirt being shredded past recognition, all not in small part by the fact that RE hadn't warned me. He'd triggered it as soon as I had accepted the job, but looking back I had a hard time blaming him. Sure, I was still kinda mad, but it made sense now. I would probably have thought he was crazy if he'd told me what he was going to do. 'Yes, I'm performing a spell that is going to turn you into a werecat, don't sneeze or the nose will come out wrong.'

I'm sure I would have run away and never returned, but at least it had been pretty easy every time since.

"I can see what you meant by 'helping the tensions with customers' with the whole transformation thing," I said noting how everyone seemed somehow more relaxed here when I had fangs, claws, and a tail.

"It's a cultural thing, my boy," he assured me. "Magical races have been hunted down by humans en mass for most of your recorded history. My spell makes them think of you as one of them."

I nodded again as I thought about it. In that case, it made sense. With that kind of cultural history between the two groups, changing into a werecat functioned like a secret handshake, or wearing a rainbow shirt in a pride parade. It made me a member of the group.

"Speaking of hunting down, here's the boy we were just talking about!" RE called to someone else as we approached a table. I looked up to see he had led us to a seat next to a single male occupant. He was one of the glowy people, with a light aura and pointed ears. His glowed a subtle orange, wore his straight golden hair tied back, and he looked about as old as RE in his face. But as I looked at both this new man and RE, I got the feeling that both of them were much, much older.

"Tarot, this is Mr. Aedleann. He's functionally our Tuatha representative" RE said to me.

"Tuatha?" I asked.

"It means 'people,' in Old Irish. Basically what you'd think of as elves," RE explained. "Mr. Aedleann is not an official leader, but he is a fairly public and important figure for his people, and he lets us know how the other Tuatha feel about what we do here in our establishment."

That caught my attention. If there was one thing I'd learned in high school, it was how to figure out who was important and spread out the polite speech like frosting on a cheap cake.

"It's nice to meet you sir. I'm Justin Tarot, the new musician" I said, extending a hand and bowing just a little bit. He shook my hand politely and firmly, but didn't raise from his chair.

"Oh, I know who you are Mr. Tarot. I'm quite aware of you and your abilities." he said. His voice sounded smooth, quiet, and his t's and p's had a staccato quality to them that was not altogether unpleasant. It paired well with the slightest hint of an accent that might have been an Irish brogue. His beautiful voice didn't make what he said any less creepy.

"You already...?" I trailed off.

"Yes, when RE needed a musician, he came to me. As the local representative of the Tuatha community, I can learn of what my people take note of, and the one thing we will always pay attention to is a young child with artistic talent, such as you were."

"I see," I managed, hopefully without sounding too scared.

"It's an old habit, you understand. We rarely ever steal a child anymore, even one as exceptional as you were," he said as if it actually smoothed anything over. "And you were exceptional," he cooed, "I do hope you've managed to improve." He interlaced his fingers and placed his chin on his knuckles as he smiled. It was so pleasant looking, and yet so unnerving at the same time.

I put on my best 'pleased' face despite the growing unease I felt. "I hope not to disappoint you," I said. "I should probably get going if I'm going to play tonight though." I turned to RE, who had kept out of the conversation and nodded, before turning to leave.

"I'll be watching," Aedleann said as I made a subtly quick exit towards the bar.

I could almost feel Aedleann's eyes sizing me up as I took a seat as far from the other occupants at the bar as possible. I noticed one guy who looked human except for his blue skin and fiery gold eyes, and had to force myself to stop staring. I could feel the tension building in my head. I tried to focus on the countertop and block out all the noise, but it just grew. Every clink of glass, every dragged chair leg, every muttered word built up. Smells that seemed impossible to describe or understand clouded my thoughts, demanding to get attention and be noticed amongst everything else. My fur felt stuffy and uncomfortable, my tail seemed to be jammed awkwardly against the stool, and I could feel my new teeth grind into each other in a new, distracting way. The cacophony of sensations threatened to overwhelm me. And then I felt a hand gently touch the sides of mine and I looked up. At the other end of the hand Fleur the bartender gave me a gentle smile.

"You ok?" she asked.

I looked at her for a moment. I'd seen her on the street once this last week, when she had magic disguising her. She had looked like your average blond haired, five-foot-nothing sized girl. In here where I could see the real Fleur, she still looked like your average pretty blond girl, except now she was more like two foot, twenty pounds. She also hovered at about eye level, suspended by a pair of iridescent dragonfly wings.

And yet, her face still looked human. Learning about these new magic creatures, I had kind of realized that anyone I saw on the street could have been some weird magic being. But Fleur and some of the other workers I'd interacted with reminded me that they were still people. As I thought about that, the noise seemed to die down and the stress subsided enough to function.

"Yeah," I said, "I'm ok."

Fleur looked at me sideways, like she didn't quite believe me, but she shrugged. "Did you want anything?" Her voice had a singing quality to it that was almost flirtatious, kind of like dancing music.

"I don't drink right before I play," I answered wearily.

"What's with the look then?"

"It's called, 'I just found out I got stalked by elves as a kid.'"

Fleur giggled a little to herself. The sound of it jumped up and down like a lick on a flute. "Ah, the Tuatha?" Yeah, they're like that. I like kids as much as the next Pixy, but they take it a little more... seriously."

"That might be an understatement," I said to myself, but Fleur still laughed. "Are there usually so many of these Tuatha guys around?" I asked.

"No," she answered, "but they all heard we have a new house musician tonight and had to come see." She smiled good-naturedly and winked. "Don't worry, once they let everyone else know how good you are, we'll be back to the normal crowd. People listen to what the Tuatha have to say about music."

She meant it in a nice way, but it just added more tension.

"So basically if I flop today, everyone who might ever come to the club will know it." I muttered. I looked up at the piano, still standing like a monolith in my path. I was hired to play music. I could feel, even now, eyes watching me, and the conversation with Aedleann still festered like a splinter in the back of my mind. I looked longingly at the stairs. Up those stairs, everything made sense again, and things like stalker elves and werecat transformations didn't happen.

On the other hand, I loved to play music and getting a job doing what I loved had been such a breakthrough. How many college kids got to do what they loved for a living? But I was so determined to play music as a job I'd even made bets with friends and family back home that I would succeed. No other position I'd auditioned for had ever called back, so despite the crazy patrons and the unfortunate 'uniform' for the club, I had a job to do. I turned towards the piano.

"Right..." I said. I got up and started to walk.

As I made my way up towards the stage, I could feel more and more eyes watching. More and more people looking and noticing. But despite that the eyes started mattering less and less. I started to pump myself up, get myself ready. As a performer, I knew how to play a crowd. I might not have been confident talking with Tuatha elves or navigating a tail, but I could play any damn instrument you threw at me at any time. I could feel a different kind of transformation come over me as I made it to the stage. I left behind my worries as a person, and putting on my confidence as a performer. By the time I made it up to the little backstage area, I walked differently and thought differently. I could play anything on any stage.

I grabbed a violin, a guitar, and a saxophone, and put them all on stands on a section of carpet. I paused for a moment, and grabbed a small bass drum with a pedal before I dragged them out on stage. I noticed a few people looking up, but I didn't pay them much attention as I set the three instruments up on their respective stands across the stage and placed the bass behind them. Then I sat at the piano bench, adjusted for comfort, and started to play.

For the moment, I didn't play an actual song. I just picked a few jazzy chords and started to improvise, piddling up and down in each key. I kept it simple, moving up and down on the keyboard in kind of a playful, staccato then legato, jumpy then smooth style. It served three purposes, the first being that I could get the 'feel' of the piano under my fingers. The old black stand up piano that seemed worn down in the nicest way, giving each key a smooth feeling to it. The Piano's voice played bright and warm sounding, and it still had great volume control so I could get some amazing dynamic contrast from it. The piano's were soft and the fortissimo's were loud. It was perfect.

I also played around to warm myself up. Part of my practice in the club this last week had also been learning how to play with retractable claws, and it still took a little bit of adjustment if I wanted to play a complicated piece, but I'd managed to get the hang of it. Navigating strings and keys and valves with new fingers had taken a while to get used to.

The last reason for improv playing was much more complicated. I actively tried to read the crowd, and with new senses it was a new experience. The first thing I noticed trying to read the people in the club was I could hear them so much better. Not just the normal murmurings of conversation and clacking of silverware, I could hear them breathing like they were in my ears. I could hear a few heartbeats from the people at the tables closest to the stage and for a second I wondered if I was imagining it before I remembered my new ears. I remembered the first time I'd transformed I'd spent the rest of the day with a huge headache from the intense sound, so I started listening like never before. I could hear each note of the piano with more accuracy, and the audience's general reaction to it. I changed up the style a little, only to find I heard a few disappointed murmurs, so I went back to jazz. I started shifting keys a little, doodled my way to the right place on the keyboard, and after feeling out the crowd a little more, decided to start playing my first real piece of the night.

'Scar,' by Missy Higgins, was a fun opening song. It's light and happy despite its themes of people trying to change you. In a funny way, I chose it because of my own transformation on entering. I figured 'Werewolves of London' would be hitting it a little too firmly on the nose.

As I played the intro, I added my own little riffs and extra cord changes to spice the song up a bit, keeping it in that jazzy style the crowd loved. As a pop song, it wasn't very complicated, but I made sure not to get it too complicated. Even as I started singing the first few verses, I made sure not to sell it too much. It was the first song of the night, and no one likes a showman who does his finale first. However, I couldn't help but feel the song emotionally in some parts. Lyrics like 'A triangle trying to squeeze through a circle, He tried to cut me so I'd fit," kind of resonated with me. Like most people, I'd had friends and family try and get me to change things about myself that they wanted changed, so the song spoke to me on that level. But being able to make connections to a song made it that much better.

As I played out the instrumental bit at the end of the song, I tried feeling out the crowd again. All of them were focused on me, although most of them looked less impressed and more intrigued. Aedleann worried me most, being the important Tuatha representative, and he seemed much more involved. He had a grin on his face that looked like as pleased as a cat playing with a mouse. RE was paying close attention too, but he seemed like a less sinister sort of pleased, more like an approving grandfather. All in all, I figured it was time to introduce myself. The song ended in a few last rolling chords. I let the smattering of applause die out, I got up, took a bow, and spoke.

"How is everyone doing tonight? My name is Justin Tarot," I said. I projected my voice without getting into a yell. The club was big enough I had to try, but not so big I had to scream. "For tonight's show, I'm going to start off with some requests. Whatever you want to hear, and on whatever instrument I have on stage, just say so and I'll play. Just know the saxophone is jealous and won't let me sing if that's the instrument you request."

I got a few chuckles from the joke, but was surprised at the speed the first request came.

"Play something happy."

The first voice came before the light laughter had died down. It had come from a Tuatha woman in the front row, looking smugly at the stage.

"Any particular instrument?" I asked back.

"How about the violin?"

She seemed confident that she'd already stumped me. Her kind of request would always annoy your average musician, there wasn't much direction in just the word 'happy,' but I suddenly remembered my audition for this job and realized that RE had made similarly vague requests, asking for emotions instead of specific songs to prepare me for this. Out of context, it still would have been a hard request, but after warming the crowd up I had a good idea what they wanted.

I grabbed the violin and quickly tuned it. I was surprised at how easily I found the right pitches now that I could hear even the slightest variation. I quickly positioned the little bass drum with my feet and started singing.

'Uptown Funk ft. Bruno Mars' by Mark Ronson immediately came to mind when I thought 'happy.' It had a powerful bass beat, and a bouncy, funky kind of tune, making it perfect for this crowd. And I'd already played it on at least half a dozen other instruments since it had come out just for kicks and giggles. So as I started up on the do-do's and the thumping bass line, I knew what I was doing. I brought the violin in instead of a guitar, a quick repeating lick that made you feet tap, and started singing. It wasn't all that complicated of a piece to play really, but that didn't matter. A good musician can play a complicated piece and make it sound good, a great musician can take 'Marry had a Little Lamb,' and play it well enough to break strings and please crowds. It's not the number of notes, it's the way you put them out there. When I got to the quieter bridge section that I noticed the crowd's reaction. The instrumentation was so different from my last piece, and the song was so catchy, that they couldn't seem to help loving the performance. I could hear toes tapping along with the bass, and I could see heads nodding along with the beat.

I had them hooked.

The rest of the requests went well. A younger-looking Tuatha asked for a mournful song on the guitar, and I came out with Augastana's 'Boston.' Someone asked for a silly song on the Saxophone, and I played The Muppets 'Mahna Mahna,' with the piano on the doo-doo's. The blue guy at the bar from before asked for a creepy song on whatever instrument I'd like, and I think I surprised even myself with 'I Can't Decide' by Scissor Sisters. It sounded peppy and happy, but with lyrics about murder, it kind of creeped me out to sing it. I was only asked for two specific pieces, both of which were really old classical ones, and I felt like I impressed with them. Mostly I'm glad that I remembered which of Chopin's Nocturnes was which. Just as I was about to finish the requests for the night and go onto a planned set when Aedleann finally spoke up.

"Play something that is important to you."

I looked at him in mild shock. What did I do with that? I looked to RE, standing near the bar. He looked just as pleased as ever, but there was something else in his eyes. I could tell that he was rooting me on. He knew something I didn't really advertise about myself: I like taking risks. He knew it and he knew that I could knock 'em dead. I just had to get... personal. I thought about it a second more, and sat down on the piano. One song came to mind.

When I was in elementary school, I had been an awkward kid. I was still kinda awkward, but back then it was bad. I couldn't interact with people very well, and most social situations made me either cry or run away. But I could play the piano. During my sixth grade year we did a school wide talent show, and I really wanted to show what I could do. So I decided to take a song from a video game I loved and play that. I made a piano arrangement of 'Simple and Clean' by Utado Hikaru from the Kingdom Hearts video game, and when I played, it was a huge hit. The next day, people noticed me and talked with me. People said hi to me that I had thought wouldn't even know about my existence. I was suddenly popular.

So the song kind of stayed with me. I'd refined it over the years, and even used it to confess my feelings to my high school crush once. It's kind of a dorky song, coming from a video game, but it still meant something to me. The song had a lot of mournful elements to the music, but hopeful lyrics, lines like 'regardless of warnings, the future doesn't scare me at all. Nothing's like before,' really fit the situation for me right now. The theme of simplicity and honesty and a need to uncomplicated things really mirrored what I'd felt today. This club was so complicated, and I had to prove myself under such stressful conditions, and I really felt like as I played the song I kind of cleared those away. Out of all the songs I'd played that day, I sold this one the hardest, putting my heart and soul into every crescendo, building every moment up and really hitting the high notes with all the power I could muster.

By the time I finished, I didn't even notice the crowd any more, and as I hit the last chord, I realized why. They were so quiet. I could barely hear their breath, there wasn't any toe tapping, even the few heartbeats I could hear seemed to be suspended for a moment. In that instant that I felt panic rising in my throat.

And then they started clapping.

This wasn't a slow, building clap. Instead it rushed up at me from all of them all at once, releasing a cacophony of sound. Everybody in the room stood with the applause, and my breath stopped in my throat. It took me a moment to collect my thoughts before I got up and bowed.

"Thank you, thank you all so much!" I said. The applause kept going strong as I bowed again. I felt a strong arm on my shoulder as I rose again, and I heard RE's voice behind me.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Justin S. Tarot!" He announced, his voice boomed over the crowd's applause easily. He pulled me back stage as the applause started to die down before he gave me a big bear hug.

"Ah, my boy! That was more then well done!" he said. I would have said something in return, but I couldn't breath under his hug. Even as he put me down, I had to take a moment to recover.

"Yes, it was very impressive."

I turned to the gentle voice to see Aedleann enter the backstage area. I turned faced him and gave a polite bow.

"Always a pleasure to hear high praise," I said politely. "Have I improved?" I asked the question with only a hint of a arrogance. I still felt high on success, and wasn't back to my usual shy self yet. Aedleann smirked in an amused fashion, and I felt a twinge of self-consciousness. That's all it took to make me worried again.

"I dare say you did, child," he answered, and I felt a little tension leave my body. "You should know that I'll be spreading the word that the new musician at RE's club is quite... exceptional," Aedleann added. I could almost feel RE beam with pride behind me, and I knew he would have his most pleased face on.

"Thank you, Mr. Aedleann," I said. "I'll try to live up to your high praise." I felt RE's hand on my shoulder again and I realized that I'd done it. I had impressed the boss, the critic, and the crowd. I bowed again, a little more dramatically. "Now if you'll excuse me, Mr. Aedleann." The two of them nodded, and I left, heading back to the bar.

The rest of the night went smoothly. I had a break between sets and got to mingle some. I found out the blue guy with the gold eyes was a djinn, that Marty the bouncer loved Bruno Mars, and that the club had a great Reuben Panini. I eventually got up and did a planned set this time, focusing on lyrically complicated rap songs that I put to complicated melodies. And as I finished my version of 'Alphabet Aerobics,' I realized something.

I realized the mood had really changed from before. The crowd didn't just look at me any more, they understood me. They were participating, enjoying themselves, and seemed to have stopped trying to judge how well I played. More importantly, I felt comfortable. I saw the strange creatures around me, blue faces, pointed ears and auras of light, and it didn't seem so alien any more. It seemed a little more friendly, and a little more normal.

I thought: I was really going to like this job.