prompt for December 11 - 14 fickle Valar

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Cacophony

Maybe ‘time’ wasn’t such a good idea after all. He’d only done it to keep them all together. Before, the Music had been rather like an Arbor Day program at a kindergarten, with Valar randomly leaping in whenever the urge came upon them to do a little more praising. For a while everything had been fine and they had quickly picked up the time signatures on the celestial music.

In the first intimation that not all was well, Manwe, Orome, Aule, and Tulkas formed a barbershop quartet. Not to be outdone, Vaire, Nessa, Este and Irmo started practicing polyphony in earnest and complaining that the quartets needed to get together to practice eight-part harmony more often.

Ulmo played long drum solos.

Namo found a willing group of maia and formed a family pop rock group. Eru threatened that he’d hurl an asteroid if they didn’t expand their repertoire beyond “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy (I’ve Got Love In My Tummy). Now they alternated that with “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” and “I Think I Love You” until he wanted to scream.

Nienna sang like Edith Piaf and wanted him to create absinthe, except when she sounded like Billie Holiday.

Yavanna could never decide if she wanted to be Maria Callas or Brittany Spears.

Varda’s costumes were too Vegas and the bits of glitter were beginning to fall off and stick to the cosmos.

But the worst, the absolute worst, was Melkor, who’d been created with a strong voice but a limited range. Eru had envisioned him as the do-wop background track to keep the rest in time, but he wanted to be the lead singer. The Gregorian chant phase hadn’t been too bad, but he’d segued right into channeling Adrian Leverkuhn, and took to declaiming loudly that atonality was “The Future of Music.”

Melkor’s latest glissando scream shattered Eru’s last nerve. The Valar were supposed to stick to one musical style, but their fickle tastes made that impossible. Quickly creating an enclosed universe, he bundled them inside and told them to play out their own creation.

Silence. It was finally quiet.