A Case of Fate

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Ekain Da Huane
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Sun Jul 28, 2019 2:11 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
Did he fall?

Ekain leaned back in his seat, his focus beginning to drift away from the stuttering Anaxi. She had, at least, thanked him for his input; he supposed this counted for something, though he did not wish to reward the bare minimum of effort. Now, she had ceased even to look at him. This was not just an Anaxi weakness, in his experience: he had received this mincing, avoidant treatment from galdori of all countries, children and adults, students and politicians and other dancers, colleagues and even family. Her watery eyes were trained on the floor between them, in the dust-caked curls and blooms of vines and flowers woven into the carpet, and he supposed that it was because if she looked up, she would have to look at something, and there was nothing at which she could look without troubling herself or offending him.

Did he ever think that it would happen to him?

Gosselin’s voice barely scraped the skin of a whisper, and he did not feel inclined to strain himself listening. If ever she could manage to finish her question, he would have to choose how he wanted to respond this time. Sometimes, simply ignoring the question was sufficient to make the questioner slink off in shame. He could lash out, but he hadn’t done that in years, and he doubted it would take quite so much to drive this one away. She clung to his every word; she would know what she had done the moment she finished speaking.

Did he ever wish he could dance confisalto again?

A forbearant, kind response, then, one accompanied by another, brighter smile, a smile that still did not touch his eyes. He would say something pleasant, perhaps even thank her for her concern. He would tell her that it was always so comforting to learn that complete strangers, hueheze no less, were preoccupied with his mental state. Then he would pin her to that chair with his soft, steady gaze, and he would tell her how often he dreamt of performing even a demi-plié with both knees. He didn’t, not really; most days, he seldom thought about it. But that was what she wanted to hear, wasn’t it? It was like a ghost story, a warning tale without a practical warning: he had been ruined through no fault of his own, and it could happen to her, too.

Wasn’t that what she wanted to hear? What did she want from him? He turned his narrowed pink eyes back on her, unable to help the slight downward tug of his lips. Out with it, he wanted to say. His glance flicked over the rattling chair, and he did not even try to hide his disgust.

Did he ever wish he could dance confisalto with the mona?

The chair Ekain sat in creaked as he sat up straighter, and his fingers curled around the edges of his book. For one moment, she had caught him wholly off-guard, and his face went slack with surprise. When he regained control of himself, it was imperfect: there was a smile, half-incredulous, half-pleased, spreading across his face, full and genuine.

He leaned forward with another creak, peering at her down his long nose, bemused. He reached – tentatively, now – to caprise her field, the edges of his own lapping against it. The mona had a careful, intentional gentleness, a soft blue-shift curiosity. It was no longer the iron ramscott it had been, though it had not lost all of its cold, indectal quality.

It lingered almost as a warning. I am interested, but do not waste my time.

In a voice as low as hers, all he said was, “Do you?”
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Sun Jul 28, 2019 4:23 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
Madeleine imagined a thousand different answers in her head. She thought of him laughing at her – she couldn’t really imagine what his laughter would sound like. She thought of a cold, sneering thing, a sound that would crawl down her spine and make her ache somewhere deep inside – that would settle into her bones and stay there.

She thought of a cold sneer; that she could easily see on his face, settling onto his hard lips beneath that long, hawk-like nose. It would be a sneer for her; how pathetic, it would say. No true confisalto dancer would think of such things, it would say. It would wipe away all the joy of his earlier compliments, that sneer – it would wipe it clean from Madeleine’s heart, dig the words back out as if they’d never existed.

But anger was more likely, wasn’t it? She’d just gotten a taste of his anger – Madeleine still didn’t understand exactly why. She was sure it was her general stupidity that had prompted it, but she couldn’t figure out which words – which phrase – what she shouldn’t have said. Perhaps it was just her whole project; perhaps it wasn’t about what she’d said, but who she was. Perhaps it was just her that made him angry, and there wasn’t anything she could say or do to make it better

So, Madeleine thought. She would feel that hot sigiled heat again; she tensed a little in readiness for it. Somehow she didn’t think she would mind anger as much as laughter or sneering; at least, if he was angry, it meant he was paying attention. Laughter would too, of course, but nothing hurt as much as laughter; nothing crept inside you like laughter. She had thought she wasn’t sure what it would sound like, but she was – she knew exactly – and it was horrible

There was a shift at the edges of her awareness, a field caprising her own. It wasn’t – it wasn’t angry, or iron-hard, or a thousand other things it might have been. It was almost… gentle? There was something hard beneath it that Madeleine couldn’t quite name, but it didn’t feel anything like she’d expected.

Madeleine jerked her gaze up in surprise, and she saw he was – smiling? Not like the smiles before. Now Madeleine could see what had been wrong with them. This was a smile with his whole face – a smile that crinkled at the corners of his eyes.

Madeleine stared at Ekain Da Huane’s face, wide-eyed, shocked. In her field, wild and spiraling and uncontrolled, he could feel everything she felt – fear and nerves and longing and confusion and, slowly, tentative, dawning – faint tendrils of hope. The fear spiked first, surged, drowning out everything else for a moment. The little Anaxi drew back into herself, doetoeing her field away from his for a moment, looking back down at the carpet. She nodded, once.

Then –

Then, the edges of her field crept back out, slowly, filling the space around her once more. Fear, still, so much fear, but something else too – maybe it was hope too, but there was determination, beneath it, a little bit of iron of her own; deceptively strong, like the delicate-looking laces of a confisalto slipper, strong enough to take the weight of her body as it bent and flexed and leapt, strong enough to hold the entire shoe together.

Madeleine took a deep breath, swallowed, hard, and straightened up in her chair. She lowered Laurentius back to her lap again – let go of the cover of the book, her hands resting on it without clenching tight. Her shoulders straightened and squared, and her chin lifted, and for once there was no sheen of wetness in her puffy, red-rimmed eyes. Madeleine sat, straight and tall – drew herself up with all the grace and strength she had displayed on stage, all the energy that had been so lacking from every moment so far of their shared conversation.

“Yes,” Madeleine said, quiet but firm and clear. “More than anything.” She met Ekain Da Huane’s eyes, this time, and didn’t look away. If her throat moved a little – another dry swallow – if he felt fear flickering in her wild, uncontrolled field – she didn’t look away.

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Ekain Da Huane
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Sun Jul 28, 2019 5:47 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
Gosselin’s field doetoed, and it disappointed Ekain, de, but he had a reason to be invested, now. Now, he had a reason to be more careful; he had a reason to want her to open up rather than cower. Never in his life would he have thought that an Anaxi third-year would carry any relevance in the sphere of his interests. Yet there she sat, looking again to be on the verge of tears (embarrassing!), suggesting something that would have gotten her laughed out of every respectable school of confisalto in the sister kingdoms.

So Ekain thought, at any rate. He would never have conceived of it himself. The only sorcery he had ever seen involved in a production was of the static and perceptive conversations, the latter particularly in Bastia, though not always licitly or for – he felt – the right reasons. Nonetheless, the regulations about this sort of thing, as far as he knew, were limited and rather simplistic. Enough dancers were gifted conversationalists, but few among them were academics, and few among that slender group would have considered…

What, precisely? Ekain thought on it for a moment, tapping his chin with a nail. Regardless, all he had thought about for weeks was the mess that had been unfolding between the Temple – the Huane family, really – and Brunnhold for the past few months, and his own studies in magnetism besides, and this was more than a welcome diversion.

Gosselin’s field met his, and with some mild distaste, he caprised a wash of fear. He disregarded it in light of what he felt beneath it, a tenuous thread of something like determination. Those pale eyes, still lit up with the ghost of his earlier smile, still with a faint crinkle around their edges, that expression to which they were so unaccustomed, traced the line of her posture as she pulled herself up. Spine straight, good; shoulders back and down, good; upright, but grounded. She was sitting, and her breathing might have needed some work, but otherwise, she could have been en pointe.

There, he thought, was a fraction of the appropriate behavior of a young dancer. He sat back in his seat, tapping at his chin again, regarding her all the while. After a pause: “Mmm. You want this more than you want a successful career?”

His smile had only faded a little, and despite his words, there was not an ounce of red in the shift of his field. He permitted the mona at its edges to mingle with the mona at the edges of hers for a moment longer, warm and welcoming as Ekain found it possible to be. He tried to use the warm stability of his field to steady hers; from anyone else, it might have been a comforting gesture. More than anything, there was a challenge in his eyes, as if he were daring her to look away from them. Finally, he gestured languidly with a hand.

“I jest, of course,” he went on, sounding not at all as if he were joking. “But you know what they will say, don’t you? I hope you will meet it with your chin raised, areytetearah yaley.little sister Ekain breathed in deeply, his own posture relaxing somewhat. His hand fell gracefully to his lap, and they folded again atop Marchesi. He looked at Laurentius, then back at her face. “I seem to remember that both Conchobhair and Laurentius had a somewhat – odd approach to gravity. Now –”

Ekain paused, a faint wrinkle of consternation etching itself onto his brow and then disappearing. “You can’t be so foolish as to mean simple levitation of the whole body, can you? Beginner students will suggest that – to… lengthen a cabriole, or brisé, or – to keep one in the air longer, whatever the case may be, yes? It would look caricaturish, even if it were not cheating. But,” his thought process seemed to catch up with him, and he squinted at Gosselin, “that isn’t what you mean, is it? You want to dance with the mona, don’t you? As a – partner? To balance you?”

Ekain set Marchesi on the desk behind him, leaning forward in his seat again. More implications took shape in his head; they sharpened and grew distinct. The relationship between two dancing bodies in confisalto was meant to represent the trust between sorcerer and mona, and what Gosselin was suggesting seemed to him to be a representation of that trust in its purest form.

“How?” he asked simply, because he could not dare ask the question that he really wanted to ask: how might this benefit him?
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Last edited by Ekain Da Huane on Mon Jul 29, 2019 8:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Mon Jul 29, 2019 1:53 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
There was silence between them for a long time. Ekain Da Huane seemed to be thinking; Madeleine watched him, afraid to keep looking at his face, and even more afraid to look away. If she looked away – she didn’t want to look back down at the floor. It felt as if it would turn her brave words into a lie. And so she sat, as upright as she could. The posture felt good, felt natural; like dancing, even if she was sitting. He wasn’t upset; Madeleine was almost sure of it.

Madeleine didn’t quite know how to answer his question; her lips parted, slightly, but the words wouldn’t come. More than she wanted… a successful career? A career as what? As a dancer? Madeleine couldn’t imagine – she couldn’t – did Ekain Da Huane think she could be a successful confisalto dancer? Was that what he was saying? Madeleine’s breath caught and quivered somewhere in her chest, but she didn’t look away because he wasn’t looking away.

He didn’t make her answer; he told her he was joking, and Madeleine sank a little – just a fraction – disappointed and relieved all at once. No, she thought, he hadn’t meant it – like that. He couldn’t have. But that was all right; quite sufficiently was enough for Madeleine. She wasn’t sure if she wanted more; she wasn’t sure. More would be – she couldn’t deserve it.

But he was still looking at her, and it was – different, somehow, than how he had looked at her before. Madeleine didn’t exactly understand why, but she squared her shoulders against it. He called her – something, in Gioran, something she didn’t understand. Madeleine tried to remember the phrase, but it seemed to her an endless string of undifferentiably soft sounds, and it was gone the moment he finished it.

Madeleine was shaking her head the moment he mentioned levitation. “No,” she blurted, almost unable to let him finish. She nodded at the end of what he said, her eyes brightening. He understood; he leaned forward; he looked at her like he wanted to know what she had to say. Something unfurled in her chest. Madeleine bit her lip, took a deep breath, and settled back into her picture perfect posture.

How? He asked.

Madeleine nodded. It was the right question. She took a deep breath, thinking of that faint red in his field, the anger she’d seen, but – she couldn’t help herself.

“That’s what – ” Madeleine shook her head a little, looking off at the window for a moment, gathering her thoughts and starting over. “If you think about it – what does your partner do in confisalto?” Madeleine asked. “I mean – leaving aside the artistry, leaving aside the – the joy – I mean, technically, what do they do?” A small hand lifted from her lap, fingers extending: one “they lift you,” two, “they counterbalance you,” three, “they help you accelerate.” Madeleine’s eyes were bright and enthusiastic.

“And it’s – symbolic, yes,” Madeleine said, carefully. “But – if you look at physical conversation – if you look at what we can do with all sorts of things – the mona can do all of that, literally.” Madeleine took a deep breath, and pressed forward. “So I – it comes down to gravity and acceleration spells. And you’re right – it’s not – of course you could lengthen a jump, but…” Madeleine shook her head, slightly.

“What I’ve thought most about so far is counterbalancing,” Madeleine confessed. “It comes down to gravity and acceleration, really. In the end. And – acceleration has its own challenges too, and I have to learn more about it. But if you think about counterbalancing – if you think about a pose – what you do with a partner is to find the point where you can’t balance on your own and then push past it using your partner to ground you.”

“And so – what if you could do it with gravity spells?” Madeleine’s eyes were bright; her shoulders were back and open still, her chin lifted. No more hesitation, no more fear; even her breathing was smooth and steady. “And at first I thought – think of it like a fulcrum. Your body is balanced, perfectly, and you – lean forward, and so gravity pulls you down. And there’s only so much you can do with just strength – and normally you lean on your partner. So the first thing I thought was – ” A faint note of hesitation, because Madeleine knew – she really knew – that it was crazy, it was beyond crazy.

“I thought – if you are leaning forward, your hand extended,” her body shifted slightly, as if she wanted to demonstrate, but Madeleine stayed in her seat, “and you are too heavy in the front to lean further – you could use the mona to change your balance,” Madeleine swallowed, hard. “If you – made the extended hand lighter, for example,” she stared at Ekain, almost hesitating, almost pausing again, but then she pushed on.

“But that won’t work,” Madeleine said, frowning. “I mean, all the reading I’ve done says – seems to suggest – to change the mass of a thing in one part only would destroy it. I think it would - your wrist - if you made the hand heavier - you would need to stop it, somewhere, at some joint, and it would be very - very hard on the body,” she glanced down at her small slender hands, clasped them together. Her eyes flicked to his leg. “But,” Madeleine looked back up at Ekain, hesitant, “and – well you have to go back to Conchobhair because what he says – he talks about – gravity is three things, it’s the mass of the first object, the mass of the second, the distance between them and the gravitational constant,” Madeleine took a deep breath. “And you can’t change the mass of vita, and the distance between them should be about the dance, so if you can’t change the mass of the first object either,” she gripped her hands together a little harder, let them go, “then I think – I think – ”

Madeleine exhaled and the words rushed out. “I think you change the intensity of the pull,” she whispered. “Not just at one spot, but all along the arm, I think. You loosen it a little, so the body isn’t pulled down towards the earth on the extension, so the arm doesn’t overbalance the rest of the body, and you – you could balance,” she looked at Ekain with wide eyes, “… you could balance with the mona.”

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Ekain Da Huane
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Mon Jul 29, 2019 9:01 pm

the library • brunnhold
morning on the 6th of loshis, year 2719
For perhaps the first time in their brief, awkward, and altogether embarrassing conversation, Ekain found himself offering Gosselin his undivided attention.

Following the train of her thoughts was something like solving a puzzle, or – really – more like finding one’s way through a labyrinth with an equally-confused but terribly enthusiastic guide. When it had not been worth it, when he had found everything she could possibly say trite and childish, the endeavor had seemed impossible; now that it was worth it, it was merely extremely difficult.

It took an effort worthy of a magister, but Ekain managed to follow her.

It was strange, but when Gosselin asked, What does your partner do in confisalto? she gave him an answer that he would have given, though he knew now, at his age, having studied the dance for many years, having dealt with many other dancers, that it was an unorthodox answer. They help you; using your partner to ground you: it was not a question of what you did for your partner, or what the two of you did together. She did not waste time talking about symmetry or about the visual balance of two bodies in motion on a stage. Instead, she spoke of the balance of one body, and Ekain had, in the most private places of his heart, always wanted to be the only danseur on the stage.

Ekain Da Huane was not a fidgeter, but it was possible that as she went on, he sat somewhat straighter. He took his cane from behind him and set it in front of him, leaning some of his weight on it, folding his hands over the varnished white handle and peering down at her across it. It was possible that as she suggested this or that possibility in her fumbling, halting, tortuous manner, he moved a little closer, ponderously, hardly noticeably, to the edge of his seat.

He watched, and he listened.

Of course, when she spoke of altering the weight of an individual’s limb, he began to shake his head. He raised a hand dismissively and opened his mouth to cut her off. He could not help the faint flicker of discomfort that danced across his face. Experimentation he could condone for the sake of confisalto, for the sake of innovation – experimentation, and injury, even, for the sake of art, but he knew well enough…

Then, the Anaxi took a swift step back on her own. He inclined his head. He had not missed the way she had looked at his leg as she did, of course, and he felt a pang of irritation, but he did not let it seep into his field. It was a valid concern.

“Mass,” he repeated softly, hands tightening around the handle of his cane, “distance… gravitational constant.” He watched her steadily; as she fell silent, he blinked. “You have given all this a great deal of thought,” he said after a brief silence, blinking again, eyelids fluttering in a flurry of blinks, as if he were trying to reassure himself of the sight in front of him. “A great deal.”

Ekain’s mind whirled. Something else joined the curiosity in his field: it was a spark, a faint yellow-shift, a crackle of something that might, on anyone else, have been excitement. Not a whit of it registered on his face, but it was there, and among the mona, it was building. He was, in fact, physically on the edge of his seat.

He glanced away, down the empty, narrow aisles between the shelves all around them, as if to make sure their only company was the shadows and the drifting dust. Then his cool pink gaze settled back on Madeleine. “You are suggesting asking the mona, mid-dance, to alter gravitational pull, yes? But you would be speaking, tempering your spell, throughout the dance,” he said softly. “Have you ever seen the Ba Bieth? In it, Monite is integral; it is part of the art, as the dance itself is a prayer for rain. In fact, we rely on the shape of the rock all around us, in the canyons and caves in which it is performed, to make the voices echo. I believe you call this echo casting, but –”

For the first time, Ekain broke off. He seemed to himself to be talking rather excessively. This surprised him, but he did not have time to care. There was more he wanted to ask.

His smile grew by just a degree. “You have tried what you propose, then? Were you able to produce the desired results?”
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Madeleine Gosselin
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Mon Jul 29, 2019 9:51 pm

Morning, 6th Loshis, 2719
The Library, Brunnhold
Madeleine’s words stopped, and she didn’t try to continue them. She swallowed, hard, and let her last sentence hover in the air between them. She didn’t look away, either. Ekain Da Huane was studying her and Madeleine looked back at him, and – she felt as if she was waiting for a test to come back. She felt as if, at any moment, he would slide a paper across the desk, with marks on it, and it would say – good effort, sloppy citations here, the third paragraph needs work.

“Yes,” Madeleine whispered, when he told her she’d given it a great deal of thought. He looked away, and she did too, dropping her gaze to the book in her lap. But looking down meant her shoulders wanted to curl, wanted to hunch forwards, and Madeleine – she didn’t feel small. She took a deep breath, and straightened back up, and when Ekain Da Huane looked back at her, Madeleine was looking at him again.

Madeleine had never told anyone this before – not anyone. Madeleine had never ever dared to write it down. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in the confisalto class about it; hadn’t said as much as a word to any of her professors, whether of dance or magic. Not even Professor Udinese knew, because he’d never asked if she had any particular interest in the subject.

Madeleine nodded, slowly, when Ekain noted that she would have to speak aloud, to cast during the dance. She had thought of that, and she didn’t know – she couldn’t think of any way around it. It seemed like you would have to speak, you’d have to. She shook her head at the question about the Ba Bieth, eyes brightened. “Oh…” Madeleine was following along, eagerly, devouring every word, and she blinked, confused and wide eyed, when he stopped, wishing he’d kept talking.

The Ba Bieth. Madeleine had heard of it, of course, but she couldn’t – she’d never seen it. Well, they only performed in Gior, didn’t they? But as he spoke, even though it wasn’t that much, Madeleine almost thought she could see it, like someone painting a picture in her mind. She thought of the books she’d seen of Hox, of the place with the funny name where Ezre was from – maybe she could find a book with paintings or pressings of Ba Bieth. It wouldn’t be the same, of course, but –

Madeleine swallowed, hard, when Ekain asked if she had tried it. Her cheeks reddened, but she kept her shoulders square and her back straight and her chin up. “Not yet,” Madeleine said, and she wasn’t sure if she meant it as an excuse or a promise. “There are parts I – I’m ready to try, experiments I could… but I can’t find any grimoires in the whole library that have suggestions for using gravitational spells on – bodies,” the word felt very scandalous, and, briefly, Madeleine’s blush took on a deeper color. But she exhaled out the embarrassment, and kept going.

“That is, there are a lot of grimoires with suggestions for whole levitation, but I haven’t ever seen anyone do a partial cast – let alone a partial cast manipulating the gravitational constant, and I… I’m not…” Madeleine’s cheeks were red again, glowing, but she pushed through, “I’m not sure how to write it.” She was conscious of disappointment; she didn’t know if it was Ekain Da Huane’s or her own, but it was sharp in her throat. She wasn’t a spell writer; she’d never written a spell before. Madeleine thought that she should – she should keep searching, that if she looked long enough, hard enough, maybe she would find a spell that was close enough.

There were so many parts of it – she felt a little overwhelmed thinking of it all. She had her approach, yes – for gravity at least. But she needed to find a spell suitable for tissue (tissue was a better word, she should have said tissue and not body, body was a terrible word) and she needed to figure out how to temper it to be cast while dancing, to be cast on a dancing body, and she – she needed to figure out the control, how to make it precise, really precise, because a fraction too much or too little and it wouldn’t work at all.

“I’m still looking,” Madeleine offered, and knew it wasn't enough. She didn’t look down, but her shoulders pulled in, slightly, and her face fell, the bright, brief confidence already fading away. Madeleine had liked his smile, she thought, mournfully. He had a nice face, sometimes.

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