A bard's game!

Song for the Page: Mele Kalikimaka - Bing Crosby, The Andrew Sister

TRANSCRIPT

It hadn’t been so bad earlier. When the snow started falling, they’d been playing a composing game. Diana had been the one to suggest it, remembering games played years ago, and Merlow had enthusiastically leapt onto the suggestion, his own memories a little closer to the surface and filled with the voices of ten eager bards, not five.

Despite the numbers being cut in two, despite the faint ache nestled in his breast, he’d enjoyed the game tremendously. Five voices worked wonderfully; two would have worked wonderfully, if two was all there was at hand. But five gave the songs they created depth and nuance, lyrical harmonies to established melodies.

The game went like this: one bard started with an invented line of lyrics. The others listened, and chimed in when they felt they had something to offer the composition, dropping out only when the first bard sang the final verse of their song. The last bard to join in began the next song, rinse and repeat. They’d started with Diana and a cheerful song about potatoes, since she’d been the one to suggest it, and Feliks had finally added a snarky harmony line with notes wrong on purpose at the end of it, so they’d gotten to start the next round with a relatively mournful verse depicting a sailor trapped on land.