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 Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 5:04 pm
The gym teacher was out for a day and, on a whim, the substitute had divided the class into two halves. One half had gone outside to play softball. The other half, including Carlisle, had stayed in to learn to waltz.
Carlisle knew how to waltz. Well, sort of; he knew enough to not be a complete idiot when something viennese was playing. And he didn't trip over his own feet, which was impressive enough considering his athletic talents amounted to just about nothing. Music made enough sense to him, though, that he could dance fairly well for his age. But he'd rather learn things he already knew than, you know, go outside and humiliate himself playing softball.
"You're over there," said the anonymous teacher, directing him over to a winged girl with blond-ish hair. "With Casia." Alright, thought Carlisle, at least he was lucky enough to work with a girl. If he'd been paired with a guy (he observed two other male students being paired up) he probably would have had to take the girl's role. That was one thing he didn't know; it was a lot easier to lead than to follow, at least in dance.
He crossed the room and approached her somewhat nervously; it was awkward, meeting new people. "Hello," he said, brushing a lock of long black hair over his shoulder and holding out a hand, his right. "My name's Carlisle. You're Casia, right? Your wings are very pretty."
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 5:36 pm
The choice between waltzing and softball had not been a difficult one for Casia. Not only did dancing to music seem infinitely preferable to running around and hitting things with sticks, the part of the siren that was a little girl liked the idea of waltzing. The way Casia's life had been going so far did not seem to suggest a handsome prince or ballroom dancing would play a big role in her future, but neither did it suggest softball would either, and she might as well keep the option open.
The only problem with waltzing was that it generally required two people, and the siren had not had much luck with strangers as of late. Besides Merroth, who was just one person and who acted so different in class anyway that she was beginning to think she had gone zappy and hallucinated their entire conversation, most of the new acquaintances she had made her age were either grody, rude boys, or unsettlingly unfamiliar. Thus when the substitute sent her partner over, she regarded the unfortunate soul with considerable suspicion.
As he introduced himself, she relaxed slightly. She could be polite too, it wasn't fair, she reminded herself, to automatically distrust him. "Yeah, I'm Casia." she said, "Thanks. Groovy..." She paused, her eyes traveling to the glowing clock on his head. What did you call something like that? "Uh, groovy..." She gestured around her head vaguely and offered him a weak smile. Giving up, she settled for "...Hair." After all, it was nice hair. It just wasn't the first thing that caught one's attention.
There, that wasn't too hard. Anyway, all they had to do was get the class over with. "Sorry in advance," she added, looking embarrassed, "My wings could make this difficult." From what she'd seen of the dance in movies, she had the sneaking suspicion that wings just weren't made for waltzing.
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 6:45 pm
He didn't particularly like the look in her eyes, it suggested that even before they'd met she'd decided that something was wrong with him. Was it the stupid remedial math class? It seemed like everyone knew about it, or maybe that was just his own feeling that it was written across his forehead in red ink. The vague gestures confused him for a moment, then he got it. "Oh, thank you," said Carlisle, awkward. He let his hand fall back to his side. "And, um..."
Well, he didn't know if the wings actually would cause a problem. He'd never actually had to dance with someone who had wings that were, you know, constantly present or anything. "It'll be fine," he said after a hesitation.
The substitute began talking, but they were standing too far away to really hear what the woman was saying. He did, however, get the instructions to move into the first position- the sub and some boy were demonstrating what he knew to be an 'open' starting pose. It wasn't exactly kosher with what he had been taught (you always, always started closed) but he guessed that standing so close to another student might make others nervous. Heck, he was nervous and he knew what he was doing.
Carlisle held out his hand again- the left, this time, since you always led left. "It's an open start," he said, "which means we don't actually have to touch that much." Yet. All waltzes involved- he flushed bright red. Well, standing close to someone else.
"Not that you aren't pretty," he said suddenly, realizing that his comment could be taken amiss. "You are it's just that it's kind of awkward to do this in school you know?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 7:06 pm
Casia was not exactly reassured by his tone, but he was trying to be helpful. She nodded vaguely at his reassurances and peered at the sub, straining her ears to catch the instructions. They failed to be audible at all, so instead she awkwardly tried to copy what the teacher and the boy that was demonstrating were doing, but blinked as Carlisle took over, extending a hand to her. Apparently he had either caught the directions or he wasn't new at this. Either way, it gave him control over the situation that she couldn't have.
Nervous that she was going to make herself look stupid, Casia bit her lip and reached for his hand. He was turning red, but she could feel her cheeks turning red too, and she clamped her mouth shut and nodded as he talked her through the first step. Waltzing didn't look that hard, she told herself. If she didn't chill she was going to look like a moron no matter what she did.
The siren was so busy concentrating on not messing up already that his next comment caught her off guard. Letting out a weak laugh, she lowered her guard enough to shoot him an amused look. "You say that to all the girls?" Catching herself, she added, "Yeah, I know." She didn't know much about waltzes, but from what she had seen they usually didn't involve gym teachers. Taking a wild guess, she tried to distract him from his contagious discomfort and herself from her bad case of nerves. "So where do you usually waltz?" He seemed to know more about the subject than her, after all.
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 7:38 pm
Gingerly, he took her other hand and placed it on his shoulder, then slipped his hand around her waist; not around her like he was holding her, or anything weird, his hand was just there, lightly. "Okay," said Carlisle, glancing down at the distance between the two of them, "I guess this is all right. Uh, normally we'd stand closer but..." He paused, feeling rather incompetent. His teachers had explained it much better.
Clearing his throat, he glanced back up to find him the focus of a-- sort of happy look, was the best way he could describe it. And he laughed when she asked about his sort-of compliment, felt a little bit better about the whole waltzing thing then. "My aunt taught me. She drags me to balls and stuff all the time, and I had to be my friend's first escort when she had her debut and they have the second dance," he explained, feeling a bit of remembered pride at being offered that responsibility. Trying to keep the conversation going, he continued, "I guess you haven't, um, waltzed before. What do you like to do?"
Carlisle glanced up to the substitute again. Still fumbling with explaining the position to everyone else; maybe she'd breezed by before? Or something like that. "Uh, I know how to go on, if you'd like, Casia." He smiled, hopefully not as wan as earlier attempts, because he felt more comfortable when he could talk to someone.
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:01 pm
This did not prevent the hand from being there, and the light touch made Casia focus more on the fact she was not talking to a sort of dance instruction tape and instead to an actual person. Somehow, this made her more worried she'd mess up and she felt the itch to move away or at least do something to distract herself.
Luckily, he laughed at her comment, which made her feel relieved. Laughter was a weird sort of medicine, but it could untie the knot in her stomach. Her eyes widened as she heard about being dragged to balls all the time, as a daughter of first an artist, then a postal worker, Casia had the sort of mental image of balls that came from Cinderella. They were things that happened to nobility and seriously maligned steprelatives of nobility. "That's really groovy." she told him, focusing on his words to distract herself from everything else. As for the debut bit, that was only so much gibberish to her, and was duly shoved into the groovy comment's reassuringly vague criteria.
Gllad he had said something she could respond to, she clung to it. "Um..." What did she do? Not much, really. "I sing." A sort of obvious statement to anyone who knew what species she was. Fumbling for other hobbies, she added "I listen to music a lot. I like the Beatles and stuff." She couldn't think of anything else at the moment, nerves catching up with her. "What about you?" He couldn't JUST like waltzing, right?
The siren glanced over at the substitute nervously. Would they get in trouble for going ahead? "Uh," Did it matter? If she was going to be stuck up close to some stranger for a whole class she might as well learn something. And Carlisle seemed to know what he was doing. "Yeah. But teach me right, okay?" she looked at him seriously. He could teach her something totally different for all she knew, but was either trust him or waste the class from the sub's snail-pace progress.
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:22 pm
Groovy, he supposed, was a good thing since she didn't seem to be mocking him and she did look sort of impressed. Carlisle smiled again, glancing towards the sub to make sure she wasn't doing anything yet. Nope; still going around and checking the others. Well, they'd definitely move on (at least in their little corner of the room) in a second. Less than, maybe.
"Really? That's cool," he said earnestly. Yes! She was talking and it wasn't so awkward anymore, not really. Like, he'd still be glad when this whole ordeal was over but it seemed like it'd be okay, if they were talking, right? Right! Of course. "I'm tone deaf, but I can play piano kinda okay? I've never heard of the Beatles, but then Aunt doesn't like music."
He paused. "I don't think she'll get mad at us," he said, hopefully interpreting the uh correctly. When she continued, Carlisle just nodded, solemn as any saint, and said "I would never teach someone wrong." If he could help it, but that wouldn't help her at all.
"So the first basic step of a waltz and the only one you really need, anyway, since you're supposed to talk to your partner, is one of the two 'change' steps. Uh... This one's the left change. The right change is exactly the opposite, okay?" He was just rambling off how he'd been taught as he carefully stepped to Casia's left side, guiding with the hand on her waist so she turned with him. When they'd gone a full ninety degrees, he paused.
"Only you're supposed to bend your knees more," he said apologetically. "But it's easier to learn when you don't have to remember how deep to dip your head and stuff. That stuff can come later."
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:37 pm
A vague look of horror dawned on Casia's face. She wasn't sure what was worse, the fact he'd never heard of the Beatles or that he lived with an aunt who didn't like music, explaining why he went to balls because this clearly made him a maligned kind of guy. She opened her mouth to say something, but decided it might be a touchy subject and she shouldn't bring up sore spots to someone who was teaching her how to dance. "Oh? I know someone who plays piano." she informed him faintly. And since she couldn't help it, she added "I can sing some Beatles for you if you want." She'd offer to lend him a record, but people who didn't like music still conjured up horrible visions of Blue Meanies, who would probably do unspeakable things to Beatles music if given the chance.
His tone about teaching sounded sincere anyway, and though Casia couldn't help but give him a faintly suspicious look, she let him go on with the lesson and guide her. "Okay." she said as he explained things to her, concentrating as hard as she could on understanding. "So that and then we do it to the right...?" Waltzing didn't seem to involve much action, and it was strange to Casia, who was used to the spontaneous dancing that involved 60's rock at Anna's house on rainy afternoons.
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:52 pm
What had he said? The look on her face was a little worrying and he definitely wanted to make whatever was bothering her better, only he didn't know what he'd said. Or done? He was so worried about having mortally offended Casia that he almost missed her speaking. "Oh, that'd be really nice," he said, words tumbling out over each other as he tried to reassure her, whatever was wrong wasn't that bad. Carlisle didn't know that it was the lack of music and not knowing the Beatles; music was just not part of his life, except when Sade was teaching him piano.
"No, no," he said, "After that we keep going, into a box step, and then it's the right change step, and then box step again..." And he promptly launched into a demonstration of the box step, sliding to the left slowly enough that she could keep up, and then a pace back, to the right, and then back to where they started. "Uh, normally you go a little faster," he said. "But this is how I was taught, as good as I can remember it, anyway."
It was more instinctive than anything else, at the point he'd reached.
"Sometime, maybe you could come over and I'll show you my teachers; they waltz really, really well." Or else Aunt Bella wouldn't have let them be his teachers, he supposed.
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Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 9:09 pm
The siren racked her brains for something she could sing quickly and alighted on the shortest Beatles song she could think of. Peering over at the substitute again, because she was fairly sure that being caught singing could get her accused of fooling around, she was glad she was close to Carlisle for once. It was a lot easier to sing quietly when she was sure she was going to be heard.
"Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl
But she doesn't have a lot to say.
Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl,
But she changes from day to day.
I wanna tell her that I love her a lot,
But I gotta get a belly full of wine.
Her majesty's a pretty nice girl,
Someday I'm gonna make her mine,
Oh yeah, some day I'm gonna make her mine."
All twenty or so seconds of the song passed fairly quickly and had the added bonus of giving Casia the feeling she had fulfilled her duty in culturally educating Carlisle. They were more even now.
"Oh!' she exclaimed, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks as she realized her mistake. Biting her lip, she nodded and tried to follow along. When they had finished, she relaxed. It didn't seem too difficult after all, she had just jumped the gun.
She paused as he extended his invitation. She hadn't really intended to do anything that would extend their acquaintance past this one partner lesson, but she had to admit she wanted to know how waltzing was really done. Of course, he might not have really meant it anyway, so the siren erred on the side of safety. "Maybe." she agreed noncommittally. It gave more wiggle room to them both.
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Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:45 pm
He listened, attentively because she had an amazing voice and if Carlisle was anything he was an aesthete. The song was entrancing, almost distracting, and he might have stopped moving. Except he didn't, because he hadn't been moving in the first place- wasn't that odd? "That was great," he said, and then he muttered apologetically, "I don't know any better words for it." Then he shook his head- suddenly it was like his mind was full of cobwebs -and smiled at her. "Your voice is really pretty."
It was odd, but he couldn't exactly remember what the song had sounded like, or what words were sung; just a general feeling of well-being and something like joy had come from listening. A vague certainty that whatever he was doing was okay, or something like that, he couldn't really explain it. Carlisle shook his head one more time, feeling rather off-center.
"Would you like to keep going?" He wouldn't mention the uncertainty he felt at the answer she gave - he preferred yes or no. Maybe generally meant no, but without the assurance that perhaps the person really did have plans. It probably showed, though, he thought bitterly; he could never really keep an emotion off his face, as much as it galled him. "We can go on, we have enough room around us and stuff."
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 3:50 am
Casia felt a smug glow about her, of course her singing was good. The fact he had said it cheered her up somewhat, though she would never admit it, Josh and Thali not even complimenting her she had left her secretly uncertain. No one had ever ignored her singing before them and though she hadn't really thought her singing was anything less than cherry, it was nice to be reassured.
She was so wrapped up in these thoughts that she nearly forgot and stumbled out a hasty "Thank you!" She certainly didn't notice him acting peculiar. "Yeah, let's go on, please."
But once she had pushed her mind back into the here and now, she did notice the odd look on his face at her maybe. Unable to identify what had caused the expression on his face, she flapped her wings suspiciously. "What?" the siren demanded. If he had a problem with her he might as well say it aloud instead of just giving her weird glances.
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 2:39 pm
He didn't know what exactly to say as he stepped back into a right change, except he was sorry if he stepped on her feet- he hadn't, yet, but he might. Carlisle would certainly try not to, but it was best to only apologize after an offense had been committed, so he stayed silent on that. Instead he just smiled uncertainly and paused in the middle of a box step.
"What, what?" Trying to play stupid also usually didn't work for him- just about as well as keeping his emotions off his face. "Euh. Well, it's just, if you don't want to come visit, you can say so, you know. I promise I won't get, uh, mad or anything..."
Wow, awkward. Carlisle opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and shut it again with an audible click. A subject change might be a good idea, and since he didn't have an enchantingly distracting voice like Casia, he decided to try offering new knowledge. Without making eye contact, he asked politely, "Would you like to learn the whisk step? It's the one everyone thinks of when they think waltz, you know. It's a little hard, though, so I might not explain it too well or anything."
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 3:03 pm
Casia hesitated. "I don't not want to come." she said cryptically. He seemed like he had meant his offer, but she still didn't know if she wanted to take him up on it or not yet. After all, his aunt was a Blue Meanie and he was, well, a stranger. But she wanted to see the waltz done right, it was something to do on an afternoon and...
And it was pretty. Part of Casia, a part she was trying to bury, had always wanted to be one of those girls, who danced so well and sang to forest animals and weren't part of a species that lured people to their doom. She felt a guilty twist in her stomach, that was more of a reason not to accept in the siren's book. "Uh. I'm not sure though." Her face reddened and she looked at their moving feet instead of at Carlisle's face. "I haven't really decided to visit anyone's house since..." She couldn't even remember. Jane occasionally took her to visit people, but that was different. It was hard to decide to visit someone when you had trouble trusting anyone. "It's been a while." she said finally.
The silence stretched out and the dancing somehow made it even worse. When he offered to teach her something else, she pounced on it "Yes!" the siren breathed quickly. "Yeah, um, I'd like that. You'll do fine." Anything to distract her.
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Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 9:33 pm
He paused, trying to decipher her comment and failing. But he still smiled, and canted his head a little towards their clasped hands. The corners of his eyes crinkled a little. "I don't quite understand, but it's all right. Whenever you want to, I'll make time, okay?" If he was aware of what Casia was, he didn't show it, and almost certainly if he knew he really wouldn't care.
"This one is hard to teach," he said, glancing down. This would be so much easier if it were Erinne. It was hard to be awkward with someone who'd once worn your face, after all. "It's called the whisk, and it's the one where you spin around the dance floor, like in the movies. It's my favorite." But, oddly enough, he stepped back (still holding Casia's hand, for some reason) and drew her to an emptier space in the gymnasium, where there was a great deal of empty space.
He glanced around, checking for nearby people; finding none, or at least few and those only on the one side of the circle he was looking at, he looked back to Casia. "See, the good thing is, there's little difference in the steps between..." Blush. Wow, this was definitely hard to explain, "Well, us, I guess..."
Remembering his light grip on Casia's hand, he dropped her hand like it was hot iron. "The way I was taught... was kind of weird. We'd have to stand a lot closer..." Awkward. He felt so awkward. "Is- is that okay with you? Casia?"
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