The Dance Master [RP Excerpt]

Darshil

He couldn’t help the little grin that peeked through his ruse, but his expression turned more to curiosity as he eyed the girl’s cane. It seemed a bit… small for her general needs. “So… are you trying something new?” He asked carefully, gesturing lightly to the cane, a little unsure of bringing up the matter directly. He knew that Tris was rather particular about certain features being brought up in conversation.

Tristine

Tris didn’t follow his gesture, staring him in the eye. Her smile broadened into a grin. Then she got to her feet.

“I am,” she said. She shifted her weight onto her good leg, then brushed her skirt aside with a bit of a dramatic flourish to reveal the polished wooden calf and mechanical foot at the end of her right leg.

Darshil

It took him a moment to really take in what he was looking at, before suddenly he seemed to try and enact several responses at once.  His face brightened into one somewhere between shock and delight, and he brought both hands up, gesturing first to her leg, then to her face, then back to her leg as a slightly jumbled string of words spilled out.  After a moment though he seemed to gather his wits a little and chirped, “Gajab ka!!* Ah, look at you!! I was hoping you’d come and show me soon!” He clapped his hands together, then placed them on her shoulders, looking as though he could have hugged her, but held off due to his somewhat sudorific state.

“I’m so happy for you, that’s wonderful, Tris!” He beamed, his excitement nearly rivaling her own.

Tristine

Darshil’s encouraging energy never ceased to brighten her day, and she barely kept from bouncing on her toes.  “It’s still very new— and I haven’t mastered it yet of course,” she laughed. Then she lifted her chin proudly. “But it’s been a whole week and I haven’t tripped up the cathedral steps once! Bless you for making the mandir grounds fairly level— I might prefer to practice here than at home, even if it means I have to pick grass out of— OH!”

She covered her mouth with her free hand, and her eyes went wide. “Is… is that okay?” she asked, voice suddenly thin. “In the temple I mean. Walking around with this… it doesn’t count as a shoe, does it?”

Darshil

His excitement was curbed only slightly by the question, and he looked down, turning his head in a rather birdlike fashion to get a better look at the appendage.

“Well, I mean it ­looks like a foot, and I’d imagine you can wear a shoe over it… which means that it by itself isn’t exactly a shoe so… I’m going to say no, it doesn’t count?” He offered, looking back up at her with a slight shrug.

Tristine

“Uhff, thank you,” she sighed, relieved. “It still takes me almost half an hour to get this thing on and off, and it would have looked rather peculiar next to my shoes in the gatehouse.”

She smoothed her skirt back over her leg and re-adjusted her grip on her cane. Then her face suddenly lit in a cheeky grin, and she gave a little involuntary wiggle from head to toe. “Did you hear that? I have shoes now.”