Joy had never had so much fun. There was something magnetic about the king. He smiled, and the room shone with sunlight. He winked and Joy’s heart fluttered. He sighed, and Joy wanted to catch the exhaled air and cradle it.

  But he was a king, and Joy was the insane party guest who had shown up wearing the craziest outfit he and his tailor could put together in 15 minutes. So, theirs was a story that wasn’t meant to be.

  The king had danced with Joy for much of the night, but he had eventually left to fraternize with other more respectable sections of the party. Now Joy wandered the party dejectedly, feeling oddly lonely.

  In his wanderings, he found the refreshments table and was trying to get as much drink down without seeming too irreverent. It involved a touch of misdirection, a splash of charisma, and a little luck - all things that Joy had in abundance.

  The amount of drinks Joy had consumed was not a reasonable amount for anyone who wanted a functioning liver. But healers were truly the greatest things gods gave to this plane of existence. Joy could blackout and be healed to perfection the next day.

  Joy was not sober anymore and as he wandered through the party; he eventually ran into someone interesting. He literally ran into Ramses. The man was severe but looked quite handsome in a tight-fitting suit layered with shades of black and yellow. A mellow yellow that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else.

  Joy cried out, “Ramses! My hero, what are you doing here?”

  The other man looked down severely upon Joy and said “pretending to enjoy this whole affair. The clothes are right, the people are drunk, and the atmosphere is not conducive to my personal meditations.”

  “That’s way more words than I thought you would say.” Joy was slurring his words slightly by this point and burping. All these things seemed to annoy Ramses, but he made no move to try and leave Joy.

  “Yes. I guess that my showing in the knight tournament has given people a certain assumption of my character. I spend most of my days in the church of Sympathy trying to cope with my loss and try to help others as best I can. I really enjoy public service, and I am part of a barbershop quartet - the bass.” Ramses smiled a little as he talked about himself. Joy wasn’t sure why he was sharing so much, but he enjoyed the man’s smile immensely, it felt like something to be treasured.

  “Why are you in the knight tournament then?” Joy asked, he was curious since it seemed like Ramses had his life figured out. He seemed well balanced and kind, not the type of egomaniac that would join a contest about who threw the best punches.

  “My therapist recommended doing something just for myself to get through my current grief.” Ramses almost seemed to smile, “and I remember that she used to love this thing.”

  “But isn’t doing something because your long-lost love liked it circling back around towards not doing it for yourself?”

  Joy twirled in placed as Ramses thought on this. He didn’t seem to have an answer and politely, yet firmly, disengaged himself from their conversation. Joy wasn’t particularly miffed by this, but it still hurt a little.

  Joy felt a chord in his soul get struck as a fiery haired woman took to the stage. Her high heeled boots clacked onto the wooden slats of the platform the musicians were placed at, and she struck a pose as she pulled out a pair of maracas.

  A slow pulse emanated out from her as she shook them for the first time. Joy had never realized how profound an instrument the maracas were before they were held in Luna’s hands. A slow touch and noise came free in a wave. There was an ebb and flow to the instrument that could go completely unrealized if one wasn’t paying attention.

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  And Luna was good.

  The air around her shimmered as her instruments started taking a life of their own. A sweet voice added to the mix until Joy could’ve sworn he saw images start to appear around her.

  It was surreal as copies of the King and Joy stepped out from behind Luna as she sang. A sweet song of things that could never be reverberated around the room, yet the voice felt like it was solely for Joy.

  A copy of Joy started to dance with Luna as the copies of the king started to pair off and glide across the room. The Joy’s stood in a circle passing Luna back and forth between them. Ribbons of colors sailed into the air as they moved, always switching, never staying solely in one place.

  Applause erupted from the audience; the show wasn’t over yet, but they just couldn’t help themselves. The noise from the applause created a unique counter rhythm to what Luna was doing and the illusion shattered around her.

  The magic in the air was gone, all that was left on the stage was a beautiful woman singing her song with a pair of maracas. No one booed; however, the audience suddenly got much quieter, realizing they had ruined her performance.

  Luna was a wonderful showman though and refused to stop, she finished her song and bowed before taking a steady exit from the stage.

  Joy wobbled slowly towards her. Maybe he wasn’t in the best intellectual shape, but he could tell when a performance had bombed. With a shuffle here and a tumble there, Joy made his way towards Luna.

  She was chatting with some random guy in the corner, and she seemed unaffected by her bad performance.

  As Joy reached her, she disengaged herself from the other man, thanking him for the warm wishes and leaving him to talk with Joy.

  “Why’d that performance go badly?” Joy wasn’t one to mince words in his inebriated state.

  Luna smiled at Joy’s question. “Does music stop being a part of Music just because it is bad?”

  Joy pondered this for a moment and tried to turn his drink addled mind to answer this profound question. “I dunno!” He said cheerily with a grin.

  Luna seemed pleased with his answer. “Well, I want to become a part of Music, Joy. And to do that I have to be all encompassing. I cannot just be ‘good music’ I have to touch all of it. Or else my grand ambitions wills fail.”

  “But why does becoming a piece of a god matter to you so much. You will lose all sense of self; you will become a piece of something so much larger than you that you will become inconceivably insignificant.” Joy was pleased with how coherent the thought had come out.

  “Why are you so worried about mattering?” Luna shook her head sadly at Joy, “don’t you think it would be beautiful to be a part of something so much more than yourself. Don’t get caught up in your own personal ego, to be a part of something beautiful is rewarding in itself.”

  “But to enjoy those rewards you would have to be aware, and losing all sense of self implies a loss of that awareness!”

  “You’re not listening, Joy. I don’t care about enjoying it, I don’t care about my name crossing History’s lips, I have simply found a dream that is more important than my own life to me.”

  Joy tried listening, not to the words but to the intent behind them. He heard something stronger than steel and fiercer than all of Nature. And he knew somewhere deep inside that he didn’t understand, but he could empathize.

  He left the party with thoughts of dreams and the future roiling in his mind. But most importantly, one question resounded in his skull.

  Is there anything I care about more than myself?

  He enjoyed other people’s company. He even found himself spouting sermons of Love and the indomitable will of the human spirit. But did he truly care about those things more than his simple pleasures in life?

  He wanted to make other people happy. He truly believed that he could make a difference by being kind to those around him. And yet, wasn’t it all self-serving in some fashion?

  He was making them happy to pretend like his decisions mattered. His only reason for making a difference was because the thought of his life being meaningless sent him into a depressive spiral.

  But did it matter?

  Maybe it was self-serving, but wasn’t it worth it to be kind?

  There were enough selfless people in the world who tried to be more than themselves. And there were enough selfish people who only took. But couldn’t the world use a few more people like Joy?

  Just a handsome fella who wanted to bring happiness to people, even if it may have been for him.

  Joy swayed in the street, too drunk to be graceful, yet full of life in this moment.

  There was no need to be a complicated person. Sometimes a simple person was enough.

  Joy whistled as he stumbled his way back home.