"When did you first fall in love with music?"

Nora laughed. She assumed, being a musician, that she would have been asked that question countless times over the years, but he was surprisingly the first. Most journalists, or people who paraded around like they were journalists, questioned her love life, petty drama started by other famous figures, or whether she was proud of being able to reach the top of the charts. While she couldn't ignore those facets of fame, as much as she wanted to, they were the least interesting questions thrown at her. The first question in and he was already doing better than most.

Not that she gave him credit for doing his job.

"My moms showed me Purple Rain when I was about," she hummed, "maybe twelve? Instantly fell in love."

Porter stared at her. "The Prince movie?"

"He asks as if there's any other relevant Purple Rain." He chose to ignore that comment. "Look, it's not necessarily a good movie, but when Prince starts singing one of the greatest songs ever made every five minutes, you don't need to be a good movie. You could lay that soundtrack over The Room and I would suddenly be able to sit through the entire film."

"Weren't you a little too... young to watch that?"

A lot of shit she witnessed in her youth left irreparable damage, but musical dramas weren't one of them. Too many times she cried on her way home from school after being tormented by classmates and then put on that soundtrack to lift her spirits. She didn't understand how, but it worked. Purple Rain always worked. "I don't think anyone is too young to be introduced to Prince's artistry."

The location they were shooting at was not dissimilar to a maze but with endless halls that led to a myriad of rooms, beyond which Nora could never guess what lay. It strangely intimidated her, which felt incredibly silly since it was only a building. But relief flooded through her as they walked through a large archway and into an outdoor courtyard where she could finally breathe once again.

Murky gray skies with long streaks of clouds stretched wide above them, and her eyes cut across the breadth of her view like a tracking shot of the hidden stars. As she took a sip of her black coffee, steam rose from the lid, racing across her view as a cool breeze dashed past.

"So, you're all from Minnesota. As is Prince," he stated. "How inspired are you by your fellow musicians that come from the state?"

Nora shrugged. "Oh, plenty. Too much to even quantify. It's hard not to be when you follow in the footsteps of artists like Prince, Bob Dylan, Judy Garland, and Morris Day."

"I think Owl City is from Minnesota."

"Fireflies is a bop and I don't care what anyone else says."

"You'll get no arguments from me," Porter replied. A brown leaf with the smallest green center drifted over to them and fell onto his shoulder, which he promptly brushed off.

"Only when you're writing about how you think Winter is shit, right?"

He stared at her with a charming but frustrating grin that she wanted to smack off his face. "Winter was a pretty uninspired name, don't you think?"

"Obviously not or we wouldn't have named our first album that."

Picking the title of their debut album led to the first argument they had as a band. Nora wasn't sure how an argument about an album name could last an entire two weeks, but that should have been a sign that things weren't set to sail smoothly. Nora, Kinsley, and Erin all had strong contenders that went in completely different directions. In the end, Lockewood threw them all into a hat and picked the winner.

When Kinsley once said she got her way one too many times for someone who claimed to not have an ego and large control issues to match, that was one of the examples she gave, even though Nora's obvious rebuttal was that she had no part in Lockewood randomly picking hers. Anger didn't require logic, though, which meant those heated conversations often ran in circles.

"Moving along," Porter said.

"I'd actually like to stay on this," Nora argued. She would never admit it, but part of her liked to argue. She didn't know where it came from since her parents were excellent communicators who never argued for the sake of having the last word.

"We have all day. You can wait until I've got more material to ask me this tired question."

"Is it tired?"

"It is when it's been five years and I wrote an entire article reviewing Winter but you still insist on questioning my opinion as if I haven't put it all out there."

Nora veered off the walkway and onto a concrete bench long enough that she didn't have to sit right next to him if he joined her, which he did. (Of course, he did.) (They were supposed to be having a conversation after all, not a thinly-veiled duel.) She was tempted to ask if he had talked to anyone else since Monroe had taken her time with her makeup since they spent so much of it catching up. His process must have changed in the past few years as she couldn't remember it being so fragmented the last time he interviewed them. On one hand, she appreciated his slightly unorthodox nature. Or, at least, what she understood to be the usual process from her uneducated viewpoint as someone who knew nothing about journalism. Most sit-down interviews were draining and boring while being painfully repetitive. Journalists in the entertainment industry lacked imagination when it came to questioning artists. On the other, her brain couldn't quite piece it together, especially when his task was to detail their musical journey. There had been so many twists and turns over the years—most of them good; some of them bad—that gathering his research this way could only make crafting his article more difficult than it needed to be.

"Aren't you going to ask me more about my life?"

"I thought you wanted to talk about my criticism of your first album?"

"I've changed my mind." Nora took another sip. "Ask me about my childhood or something interesting."

Porter clicked his pen. "You've avoided talking about your personal life for most of your career, especially when it comes to your upbringing. But your interest in music clearly started quite young, so it's surprising that it hasn't come up more. Has this been a conscious effort on your part?"

It wasn't until about two years that she realized she was doing it. Part of it was a result of not having the time to think about how her career had changed her in such a relatively short amount of time. A bigger part was likely that those kinds of things weren't obvious to people unless they spent a long enough time around her to notice the before and after.

"Yes and no," she answered with candor. "I guess it was a natural instinct when we first started to keep things private. I've seen the way tabloids and social media have affected artists' lives, and the parasocial relationship fans have with those that they admire can be... questionable, to put it lightly, so the less fuel I give them, the smaller the fire."

"And how successful would you say that approach has been?" he asked. "For some celebrities, they've managed to stay under the radar and only appear when they have to promote an album or a movie. But you and the rest of Roslyn have been popular topics of conversation over the years."

That was the sadder truth she didn't like to think about too often. As great as her efforts were to keep her private life out of the public eye, it wasn't always easy. In fact, it was never easy. Some people got away with it, but she believed them to be the exception to the rule. Nowadays, the world had so much access to everyone's life that she sometimes wondered if she could earnestly claim ownership over any of it. The character of Nora belonged to anyone who had an internet connection.

"Let's just say I don't go out very often. Or check my Instagram."

"Except when you're singing karaoke with Stevie and Maverick."

"When in Rome."

"Or Minnesota," he said with a crooked smile.

Nora kept her mouth shut. She wondered how far his background had gone before interviewing them. Porter didn't often get his facts wrong, even if his opinions were less than interesting to her. Whatever information she divulged to him today was likely to be picked apart based on whatever direction his previous knowledge of Roslyn had given him, and Nora wasn't keen on counting that to be of her taste.