[ it's not a familiar name, but — she hadn't expected it to be any more familiar than the instrument in front of him. braccia is more advanced than ravka could hope to be, shining and splendid; now that he's allowed her to interrupt, alina skims her fingers across the piano's grand surface, a curious slide of her hands. a mapmaker, outlining something new and unknown to her, out of habit. ]

Not well. People like us don't get the luxury of music lessons where I'm from. [ she snorts, amused at the mental image it conjures. ana kuya would have never abided it — not in a world where people like she and mal were always destined for the first army's draft, a pair of expendable orphans in the eyes of ravka. ] With enough drink, I could be convinced I have musical talent. Lozhki, maybe? Banging spoons together can't be that difficult to master.

[ she holds out her hands, flipping them over to reveal the paint caked into the lines of her palms, splashes of sea-blue caked beneath her nails. ]

That isn't the sort of art I usually participate in, anyway.