This was foreign territory and her whole being crawled with unease as she looked around. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, then focused on bright unnatural lights far in front, the hive of activity. She had accidentally and against her will found herself in this crowded underground place, and now the door from which she could have silently passed out again had been swallowed up in the dark nothingness. Her only option was to move forward towards the swarm of manic partiers, clubbers, audience, or whatever they were. The gaudy lights exposed a small band of teenagers on a raised surface (it couldn't exactly be called a stage) facing them.
The place felt musty and damp, like some abandoned pre-historic creature's hole overrun by cavemen. They had a smoke machine somewhere to banish this feeling and replace it with the desired effect. It was strange that no one else coughed or rubbed their eyes in irritation; she supposed that they were accustomed to it. After all, there were no other accidental new-comers like her. Just another face in the crowd, she was drawn towards the lights and closer to the front now, close enough to see those at the front as the noise started up, eminating from their musical instruments.
As the haunting notes seeped out and covered the room, the onlookers were subdued, and one of the kids, who she subconsciously registered as a scruffy boy, introduced the song he'd written for someone who meant the world to him, and looked lovingly at the subject of his affection: the girl with the guitar to his left, centre stage. All eyes were on this girl now, so she could not have been aware of the particular pair of eyes whose expression had rapidly changed from that of a terrified woodland animal to someone on whom keen recognition was dawning.
In a flash, the girl on stage, whose hair matched the onlooker's hair except for the fact it was straightened, had brought a stream of childhood memories. For years they had been best friends and fervently promised to remain so, and the one in the crowd had fought for it, won, and then let go for her friend's sake alone. She faded into a new life, away, in the distance.
They had been so similar, with an affinity between them from such a young age hard to match between friends. Worlds apart now, worlds! The one, swept into this damp cave by an ill wind, eager to escape. The other, not only a frequent in this glorious array of pulsating noise and rythm but the centre of it also.
She lingered to watch, and the sorrowful tune was furthered by the mournful voices which arose, singing with it. "Rapscallion" was the only word which graced the observer's mind as she observed the boy blow back his overgrown fringe. The girl smiled shyly at him as she sang the echo. A feeing threatened to overcome their observer which overruled all cynicism or other sharp, flippant thoughts. It was a dull, unfocused, throbbing feeling which hamonised with the sounds in the air and the all-engulfing darkness. Her long-ago friend had attained something so rich that she felt she would always be barred from... and it came from the rapscallion whose gruff, raw voice attempted to keep time with the drumbeat. Their backdrop was a wall of deliberately haphazard posters pasted this way and that to frame the singers, meaning they could not have appeared more urban.
Turning away, she retreated back into the darkness from which she came. Outside of the door, things were quieter and the air so much fresher and clearer. She turned her face up towards the stars and the moon which quietly accompanied them and she felt revived.
