PeaceMaker

Annabeth thought about his question for a second. She didn't really have an answer, but that was not going to be acceptable in the prince's presence. 

'Talk until you find a reason why,' she thought to herself. 

Slowly she looked up to the prince, her lips pursed into a thin line. She began to make her comments as to why she thought of this piece. "Maybe because it was the first one that came to my mind," Annabeth began. "As I said earlier, I didn't really have time to think of this piece before creating it, so I just used the first idea that came to mind and ran with it."

Dominic's eyes remained on hers. His eyes were not going to back down, he was curious. He wanted to know what was going on in her mind, why she chose that piece and why she chose that way to execute it. Annabeth caught his gaze. She knew her answer was not enough for him. 

"To be honest…" Annabeth muttered. "I have no real reason as to why I chose this piece but I do have a reason as to why I used those elements that I used in the piece." She bounced back at Dominic with a confident stare. "I hope that will be enough to answer his highness' question."

Dominic grinned. "Go ahead."

Annabeth let out a deep sigh. "I didn't want to be like the other performers that were here if I were to be honest," Annabeth began, "they danced, they sang. I expected all those things to have happened with them, so my family came up with other things we could do that would be different, that would stand out, that was playing an instrument."

Dominic made a slight, 'hmm' as confirmation that Annabeth could continue with her story.

Annabeth let out another sigh, clenching her quivering fist. It was a bit hard. To speak under all of this pressure that is. She knew that others before her had gotten easy questions about their family and all got to suck up to the king, the princes, and the princess to bring a smile to the King. It bothered her, why she was the only one that was given all of these questions, why she was the only one whose questions didn't revolve around giving pleasing answers that they knew the king would like to hear. 

She knew it was because she had caught their eye, the prince's eye to be specific. That was a good thing, so why did it now feel like it was something bad? Why did all the pressure feel like it was pressing down on her, trying to flatten her to the ground? 

The stares from others in the room were all pinned on her, the stares of her parents included. She didn't want to let them down. No matter how much she thought that they were pathetic, how much she hated this act, how much she wanted to walk away from them, her name was on the line here along with theirs. She had to do well.

Annabeth looked back at Dominic's eyes. She had to be honest.

"Actually… I have a story to tell," Annabeth muttered. 

Dominic's head coked to the side, "Really?"

Annabeth nodded, her eyes gaining their confidence. "I promise it is related to your question, your highness."

Dominic grinned. "Go ahead then."

There were a few murmurs in the crowd from the eyes that peered at her. She blocked out their words. 

"Based on the idea that we wanted to stand out, we were given instruments to play, but my parents have never been one to make things easier for us. They aren't the ones to simply make us play an instrument either," Annabeth began, the stifling feeling that wrapped around her neck finally letting her words to flow out better. "I play the zither."

There was a gasp in the crowd as they looked at the instrument before them. It was a Harp, from the family of string instruments, but not a zither.

"Does this mean that your instruments were mixed up?" Dominic asked. 

Annabeth nodded. "Please do not take me as arrogant, your graciousness and his and her highness, but we were pretty set on winning from the beginning and we were not going to let it go to anyone else but us from the very beginning. We had to win but it couldn't come easy to us as if this was in the real world as actual instrument players, nothing would come easy."

"So she switched the instruments?" Dominic asked. 

Annabeth nodded in reply. "About a few weeks before this event, she switched our instruments, making Jena who played the violin to play my zither and making Maria who played the harp to play the violin and me, who played the zither to play the harp. It was a way to make us learn something new, to make something out of the resources we were given."

Annabeth touched the harp in front of her. "She figured we had grown too familiar with our normal instruments so she wanted us to try something new, to start from the beginning and be able to make something new from what we were given. It put us on edge, added the feeling of nervousness to the mix. The switches meant that our usual areas of control were now flipped. Jenna who was used to using her shoulders and only one of her hands now had to learn to sit while playing and use both hands."

"Maria had to learn to stand while playing and focus all her playing to one hand and the other to simple movements and I needed to get used to the weight on my shoulders and moving upwards up and instrument that was my height when sitting," Annabeth chuckled, "she figured that if we won using different instruments then we had won twice, once for our skill and the other for actually winning."

Dominic smiled. He liked her honesty. 

"I found it harder on the other hand as I struggled with playing the harp. I didn't like the pieces I was given to play and didn't like the way the harp sounded when I played those pieces," Annabeth smiled, there was a bit of a slow sigh accompanying her smile. "I wanted to be out of my comfort zone, to do something different so I never planned to play the piece that I was given to play for today." 

Dominic leaned back into his chair. He could feel the reasoning behind her playing choice now. 

"I chose the idea of your highness and his graciousness to pick the piece for me to play as I wanted to feel the rush of playing to harp, to strike new innovation in me that would motivate me to keep playing it," Annabeth smiled, "I love to create music along with playing it, so it felt like the best combination to me."

"Shouldn't that also mean that you knew there were other ways to represent war? There were ways you could have done it that would have answered to what I had in mind rather than what you came up with," Dominic commented. 

Annabeth nodded, "You are right, your highness. There were other ways to represent it, but those ways weren't my ways. I wouldn't feel like I was being true to what I wanted to play if I played according to the style that the word suggested."

Dominic smiled, amused by her answer. 

"I felt like there are other struggles in the world that could be considered as being in war rather than just being an actual physical war. There were issues in the world that were often overlooked, people that were in their own war that were not given enough light to, that were not noticed," Annabeth continued, "From the little kids struggling with the standards of society, to the women who didn't want to fit into the mold they were given from birth by their mothers and fathers and the world around them."

"I wanted to touch on all our struggles including the actual struggles that come from having been in war or experiencing the aftereffects of it. All of that was going to be answered by a piece that actually sounded like war but triggered different effects from different people as we all do not react the same to one thing. It was to unify the idea of war," Annabeth looked up at Dominic. "The war of the people."

Dominic grinned, his hands rising up and clapping. He loved her response. The people around the room, from those who were confused as to what was going on to those who understood and felt moved by it, clapped in unison. 

"To be honest, I always wanted to know how it felt to be in your shoes," Dominic grinned, looking down at Annabeth, emerald green meeting with Everest tree green, "the shoes of the performer."

Dominic chuckled a bit. "Most of the performances here, as you mentioned, were dances. A bunch of females performing the same as the person before them. Unless you were a completely different kind of dancer or knew how to captivate the entire audience in you, you would stand out as much as the color milk did in white. Barely."

Annabeth nodded in agreement. 

"I wanted to ask someone why they chose to do what they did but to do that, I had to find someone whose performance I actually liked and wanted to find out more about," Dominic continued, "it didn't seem like there was going to be a performance like that. Until you showed up.. I had finally found the person to badger with questions."