The Band

EXXE
The first notes tingled down her spine, panpipes, soft otherworldly strumming on an electric guitar. Exxe turned to the stage, brushed an auborn curl from her face, distractedly rubbed the goosebumps on her bare arms. The soft beats of a drum, boom, pause, boom. Her head was still thrumming from the thrash metal and she felt slightly sick and lost. She was out of place at the gig, was sick of the loud music and the dark clothes, the crowds of older teenagers, the funny stoned looks and the cold night wind full of the smell of maruijana. Maybe she was tired, but the start of this song made her tremble slightly. Something different, beautiful abstract words flowed in dischord over the instruments, like a husky whisper in the ear, with all the warm breath. A girl was strutting forward, fingers dancing over her guitar strings, pale dreads swinging defiantly. There was another guitarist, further back. Deep rythmic base, a beautiful undercurrent.
Then she thought she saw... yes. A solitary dark figure, hanging at the back, almost in trepidation. But it was his voice, his voice shivering on her spine, soft and rich in its strange almost-chanting. When he stepped forward slightly and the slight light fell softly across him, she sort of stuttered. Eyeliner was smudged dark and thickly around his closed eyes, big and smouldering on his pale little face. That was the first thing she saw, his eyes. Head down, he whispered softly into the mike, words out of a dream she'd never had, beautiful, ghostly. He wasn't like anyone she'd had anything to do with before, older, skinny, delicate looking, with his dark makeup and tentative smile, long hair, proud pretty vocals and rock music.
Then it was over, in a shower of tingling notes like raindrops, and amid the thunder of cheers and movement around her and the giddy rush, she realised how gorgeous she thought he was.