CybrOpera, part I: 'Duet'

Julian sat down on the filthy street corner and pulled his guitar out of the case, shaking his head. "I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered as he tuned slightly, glancing up at the passersby giving him disdainful looks, "People don't actually make money doing this..."
  He started playing a mellow Rennaissance arrangement, letting the music blend with the clicking of high heels and the ringing of cell phones from above him. He noted their movement. It was mostly unmindful striding, lost in their corporate world, but a different sort of movement caught the corner of his eye.
  Julian couldn't see clearly through the forest of legs, but someone had sat on the curb opposite his. They lowered an ugly case beside them and swung their feet over and onto the street. With one part of his mind Julian observed this, letting the other part of him concentrate on the music at hand. Within a few moments, though, all of his attention was focused on the person across the road-- they were mimicking him! He felt a dampening annoyance as this person matched his motions.
  "Christ. Great to be a trendsetter," he frowned as his fingers automatically transitioned to a more upbeat Baroque piece. Perfection in the form of Bach, as always, but he was slightly distracted, muttering to himself, "It's too big to be a guitar..." he squinted, "What the hell kind of instrument is that shape?"
The stoplight turned and the sudden influx of legs left, leaving him a clear view of the person on the other side of the street. Julian raised his eyebrows. Wow, he thought, what a stunning creature that is...The evening light was making her golden hair gleam as she calmly prepared her hand-harp to begin. Even from such a distance Julian could see the slight frown of concentration on full lips, her hair casting a shadow on the curve of a perfect cheek... the notes died as his fingers paused on their strings. He watched her with fascination as he took one hand off of the guitar and reached into its case for his sketchbook.

  His mild annoyance left him as he sketched rapidly. The streetlights buzzed on and she played as he sketched. Julian tried to remember her features as they had been in the glow of the skyline sunset, but her face was swathed in shadow by the harsh lamplight as she bent over her harp. Though set back with the poor timing of the lamps, he had to admit that this allowed him to trade an attractive figure study for a composition of dramatic light and shadow. The girl's body stayed hunched over as she stroked the strings of the instrument, listening to her music as intently as Julian was sketching her. So still except for her hands, Julian was able to capture her in a few swift movements of his pencil. As he started the details--were her eyes?-- yes, they were closed--he imbued the image with his own interpretation; the semi-portrait he drew seemed ready to cast off its pencilled inertia and ascend to the heavens from which it had surely come.

  Julian realized as night fell that his opportunity for earning any money was drawing slim, and slid the pencil back inside the sketchbook's leather binding. He flipped the guitar over, in the light and satisfied mood that drawing from life always gave him, and his fingers danced their way into a forceful, sexy tango. He watched his own fingers, noting their shadows as they were threatening to disappear into shadow, and then closed his eyes, letting the music seep into the night. A small wave of guilty pleasure slid up his spine as he opened his eyes and saw the harpist watching him.
  After a moment's silence from her side of the street, she joined his tango in a quick countermelody that blossomed into a full accompaniment, sometimes holding back so he could ride the crests of her chords and sometimes crossing over into his part and back again. Julian couldn't decide whether she was testing him or enticing him-- he felt the pressure of both, and turned it back on her, making her follow his lead as he rose into great crescendos and leapt to new keys and chord changes. She followed him without looking at her harp once. Her hands moved over it with a speed that, Julian noted, had not been demonstrated when she began her playing. Had she been posing for him or challenging him, he wondered.

  His brow furrowed as he made his fingers flit across the strings, quickening the tango into a whole new experimental arrangment, and grinned as she rose to the challenge. Such virutoso talent couldn't possibly need the slow preparation she had taken before she began playing - was it a ploy for money, perhaps? Playing the novice for the pity of the passersby? Perhaps she has simply been taking in her surroundings, noting him and wondering if she should still play in the vicinity... or was he just being vain?
  She definitely noticed him, that much was obvious... Julian smiled broadly, throwing out traces of blues and jazz in their Spanish experiment. He loved this.

  Echo liked it. Striking up a musical conversation with this stranger was exhilarating beyond words. It was strange for her to think such a thing. Echo pondered this, changing her key to match his and falling in with his new tempo, following it and occasionally giving him a taste of her talent with a quick flourish above his own melody, and she decided that her first instinct was right-- this was better than speech. She felt guilty even thinking it, as a lawyer's tools are her words, but she felt it was true. Speech was imperfect. There were too many rules about what to say and when to say it, and silence was just as bad as the wrong word in a verbal society. Music, though just a hobby, a gift she was given so long ago in the sterile labs of ANcorp (though she had no memories of that place, just theories and dreams), was a language that could transcend misunderstandings and falsities. And this stranger understood it. And he seemed so interested in her... so few people in this large city had an actual air of interest. He was even drawing her earlier. Echo was intrigued, to say the least, and when he started throwing out an improv medley of styles and tastes she was fascinated. She began imagining his personality as she matched him and sometimes rose above him - did it match his music? Would he always remain a mystery? ... Experiences like these came too infrequently to forego a second of it.

  The pool of yellow light the lamp cast shrank as night closed around it. Echo had been lucky enough to sit beneath a light-- though she didn't need it-- but she wondered about the man across from her as the shadows crept onto and finally devoured him. Did he need light to play? It was a matter of muscle memory, Echo decided, and as long as he knew where all of the frets were... she focused her concentration on the harp again, not wanting to slip up and stop the unspoken conversation. It was strange to sit in a street where there was no neon glow to see by or corner shops to light the way home. She wanted to ask the stranger--he was still there, she could hear his beautiful music coming from somewhere--how he felt about the dark and the things that could lurk in it. She did so by changing the song again, making it mournful and soft, like a dirge. It was the music that reminded Echo of her own fears and unknowns that could be as close as the nearest pool of shadow. When his guitar responded, however, it was closer than she had remembered.

  The night became opaque around him, especially when the beauty under the lamplight lit his sight. He didn't need light to play guitar - how many times had he musically brooded out on his fire escape? His fingers almost played more beautifully when the visual wasn't distracting him. He focused totally on that gorgeous vision playing her harp, feeling his breath catch a little. He wanted badly to walk over into her light and see the seeming perfection of her face - see if her conversation in words was as flowing as this exchange. He doubted it, but hey, she might just be the angel she looked from across the street. Her song changed, taking over the melody and casting a beautiful, soft sadness into the darkness. He stopped and drank it in, feeling its questions and nuances before he softly began to play in her accompaniment.

  He was purposeful in his message now - experimenting was over, for the moment - and he sent sweet, strong harmonies across the sea of darkness. He played to touch her with his music - he imagined his melodies stroking her cheek and laying a gentle kiss at the base of her neck. He closed his eyes and poured emotion into his playing as he hadn't done in months.

  Echo's music faltered and stopped. It was getting too personal-- his honest response to her question flustered her. She had begun to play to him out of curiosity, because it was so rare to find someone with clear eyes and an open mind in the city, but she had hoped to use the music as something to hide behind. The simple reassurance that came from his guitar to accompany the melody of her insecurities was too much. No one had ever been so frank with her-- words or not-- and Echo packed the harp away hurriedly, her hands losing their grace in her rush. A new threat came with the stranger, and it was that of revealing too much of herself to him. It was a dangerous world to be honest in.

  Feeling he had taken it too far, Julian stopped suddenly. She was packing up and leaving. No.
  "No," he whispered, "Come on..."
He stopped dead, willing her, coaxing her with his mind to stay. He mentally promised to back off. He mentally promised to be nice and stay with the music.

  Julian frowned in the darkness, thinking hard at her. The latches of the instrument case closed loudly, making their snapping bounce off the old stone walls and travel down the street into nothingness. The girl didn't look at him once as she clumsily packed away the harp and stood to leave, grabbing the handle hard and heaving the box into her arms. She made a few steps towards one edge of the circle of light, but as she did, the casing around her harp broke, its hinges breaking cleanly away from one another and one end of the case tumbled to the ground.

  Julian quickly dumped his guitar in its case and jumped to his feet. He strode through the darkness and before she could run he was kneeling next to her, lifting her case in his arms. He smiled disarmingly and held out one hand awkwardly under the instrument.
  "Um, hi... sorry to be forward, but I really wanted to compliment you on your playing before you go. My name's Julian," his smile turned to a grin, "I'm really impressed."
  "... with your playing, that is," he paused, "I'm sorry, I probably seem like a creep to you..." his dark eyes went to the ground, "Um, I..." he stopped. His eyebrows furrowed. GREAT, Julian! Great. She thinks you're an idiot. Good job. "Umm..."
His usual suave attitude somehow deserted him and he just looked at her, at a loss.
  [Thank you. I liked your playing too.] She paused. [And thank you for saving my harp.] She made a motion as if she was halfway to taking the case from his arms, but drew back. For the first time since she had spoken she looked up at him, but her eyes did not stay on Julian for long. Like a cornered animal her attention darted to all possible escapes and she repeated her failed attempt to take the case. [It's late. I have to go.]

  A jolt of disorientation hit Julian-- the girl's mouth did not move or even open when she spoke. And the way she was acting... her attempt to leave seemed to him more motivated by a wariness of external dangers rather than Julian's poor social prowess. Yes, that must be it, he decided-- she was shifting from side to side very slightly, moving from one foot to another lightly, ready to run if she needed to.
But what could frighten this strange girl?