ECHOES, CAN YOU FIND THE CENTER IN AN ECHO?
She is quiet for what feels like an eternity, and, given Septimus’s age, he has quite nearly experienced one – but her eyes, the deep, beautiful gold of her eyes, which are more striking even than the chains that adorn her skin, speak enough, so he is willing to wait. It is not an uncomfortable silence, but it is an anticipatory one, and he wonders what she is waiting for.
He lingers, an antlered silhouette against the bright light of the streets – dark and observant, like something that could be seen in passing on a forest ridge.
When she moves, the dust of snow that gleams like precious stones along the curve of her spine and the rich waves of her hair tells him what she had waited for. (He wonders what he looks like, with snow to illuminate his dark tresses, the branching outlines of his antlers…) She is a performer, after all, and anything can be made a prop by a good one.
And – and, in his many years of travels, he does not think that he has ever encountered a dancer quite like her.
She smiles, something wicked but perhaps mischievous, when she turns to look at him. Her steps are slow and controlled, and he can barely hear the soft clink of her anklets and her golden chains. And then she is moving back towards the crowd, just as the music returns, another song that he has never heard before, in a language he never knew existed…
Oh, I could never tell you, she says, but I could show you, and he blinks, green-glass eyes widening a fraction, but has no time to debate what that might mean.
Septimus is no dancer. He has danced before, of course, in his innumerable years of existence, but he is not a dancer, like she is, and he is sure that he will look terribly clumsy alongside her fluid movements, whatever she has just offered to show him…and he is not sure that he will be able to understand it, even if she does. Understanding is not always an easy thing, after all. Sometimes it is hard. Demanding. But still his response comes immediately, without the barest scrap of hesitation, because his study has always been the study of sight, of watching the wild and the unknowable and trying to grasp meaning from them.
“Okay,” he says, easily, “show me.” But she’s gone into the crowd before she can answer, possibly before she can even hear his voice, a little strip of dark bay lost in the swell of moving bodies -
But for the sharp clink of her chains, he might have lost her. But for the sound of each graceful stride, the way that the gold metal crashes like a wave against itself, against the contours of her sides; and the sound of her dance is somehow still striking above the hum of voices, like the echo of a thousand little bells. He can barely see her, though he stands taller than most of the passerby, but he can hear her, so he follows -
and lets her wild laughter be his guide.
@Al'Zahra || fought with the tagging system for a while & finally concluded that I have no idea how her name works with it. ||
"Speech!"
She is quiet for what feels like an eternity, and, given Septimus’s age, he has quite nearly experienced one – but her eyes, the deep, beautiful gold of her eyes, which are more striking even than the chains that adorn her skin, speak enough, so he is willing to wait. It is not an uncomfortable silence, but it is an anticipatory one, and he wonders what she is waiting for.
He lingers, an antlered silhouette against the bright light of the streets – dark and observant, like something that could be seen in passing on a forest ridge.
When she moves, the dust of snow that gleams like precious stones along the curve of her spine and the rich waves of her hair tells him what she had waited for. (He wonders what he looks like, with snow to illuminate his dark tresses, the branching outlines of his antlers…) She is a performer, after all, and anything can be made a prop by a good one.
And – and, in his many years of travels, he does not think that he has ever encountered a dancer quite like her.
She smiles, something wicked but perhaps mischievous, when she turns to look at him. Her steps are slow and controlled, and he can barely hear the soft clink of her anklets and her golden chains. And then she is moving back towards the crowd, just as the music returns, another song that he has never heard before, in a language he never knew existed…
Oh, I could never tell you, she says, but I could show you, and he blinks, green-glass eyes widening a fraction, but has no time to debate what that might mean.
Septimus is no dancer. He has danced before, of course, in his innumerable years of existence, but he is not a dancer, like she is, and he is sure that he will look terribly clumsy alongside her fluid movements, whatever she has just offered to show him…and he is not sure that he will be able to understand it, even if she does. Understanding is not always an easy thing, after all. Sometimes it is hard. Demanding. But still his response comes immediately, without the barest scrap of hesitation, because his study has always been the study of sight, of watching the wild and the unknowable and trying to grasp meaning from them.
“Okay,” he says, easily, “show me.” But she’s gone into the crowd before she can answer, possibly before she can even hear his voice, a little strip of dark bay lost in the swell of moving bodies -
But for the sharp clink of her chains, he might have lost her. But for the sound of each graceful stride, the way that the gold metal crashes like a wave against itself, against the contours of her sides; and the sound of her dance is somehow still striking above the hum of voices, like the echo of a thousand little bells. He can barely see her, though he stands taller than most of the passerby, but he can hear her, so he follows -
and lets her wild laughter be his guide.
@Al'Zahra || fought with the tagging system for a while & finally concluded that I have no idea how her name works with it. ||
"Speech!"
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
