Chaslyn Brockert
January 24, 2015 3:02 PM
Practice makes perfect. by Chaslyn Brockert
Chaslyn walked into the music room carrying her flute case. Her flute teacher had told Mother over the summer that the third year's flute playing was mediocre and Mother had went ballistic. Not at the teacher, of course, but at Chaslyn . Her mother rarely fought with teachers, it was always her that needed to do better. That wasn't measuring up. Mediocre was never good enough for Mother, Chaslyn had to be perfect.She remembered how her mother had screamed at her, berating her and her trying desperately not to cry. The Crotalus knew how that would just make Mother angrier. She'd never felt like such a disappointment and nothing seemed to be working out this summer. As soon as Chaslyn would make progress in one thing, she'd slip up in something else. She'd even fallen off the beam at a gymnastics meet, failed to medal, and been in even bigger trouble, after a night of practicing the flute and trying to not be mediocre.
And even with that, her progress on the instrument hadn't been enough and Mother had pushed her even harder on both the flute and the beam. Still, even with all that practice, she had failed to meet her mother's standards and now had to make up for it.
It wasn't as if Chaslyn disliked playing music but she had to admit, she didn't have the passion for the flute. Her real love was for ballet and thus she had a tendency to practice it more but with everything else, she hadn't gotten to as much as she liked. She wished she could go do it now instead. Or find Liac. Or take a nap given not having had nearly enough sleep since being back at school. Not that she'd gotten enough over the summer either. She hoped she'd be able to concentrate in classes. Chaslyn didn't even want to think about what would happen if her grades slipped below an O in anything.
She took out her flute and set up her music. The Crotalus took a deep breath and began to play. Unfortunately, she heard footsteps enter and this shattered her already shaky concentration. An unpleasant sounding note came out and all the portraits in the room winced and shouted out their advice. Which honestly was kinder and more constructive than her mother's. Still, Chaslyn was mortified that someone had heard her make such a dreadful mistake. "H-Hello?" She called out timidly. What she really wanted to do was run and hide, but that would be rude and this person could be someone respectable whom she couldn't afford to offend.
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Chaslyn Brockert
Practice makes perfect.
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Chaslyn Brockert
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