#at least the Ren Faire version of the Korobushka

[dainesanddaffodils]

Let’s Dance, pt 2 - Widomauk 

Because what’s a Harvest Close festival without DANCING! 

read on a03

The streets of Zadash look like they’ve caught fire.

Lines of colorful paper are strung between buildings, wreathes of autumn foliage adorn ever lamp post, streamers of reds and golds hang from windows and street vendor stalls and when the evening’s setting sun hits it all just right, the entire city looks as though it is ablaze.

Perhaps that is why Caleb feels distracted throughout the day. The breeze rustles the festive papers around them, light catching their movement and turning them into dancing firelight for a fraction of a second, before they settle again. He sighs and tries for the umpteenth time to direct his attention elsewhere.

He is usually rather fond of autumn, of the warm days transitioning to crisp evenings. He is usually equally fond of the festivals that surround the season, and had hoped that perhaps this day might be one he could actually enjoy with his motley little group.

But things so rarely worked out the way Caleb hoped.

“-What about you, Caleb?”

He started, turning towards the address and meeting Jester’s expectant gaze, closer than she was the last time he had paid attention to their order.

He is, as he so often is, towards the back of the group as they wander some of the less populous backstreets. They’ve spent much of the day on the main thoroughfare, perusing street vendors and watching performances on various stages that have been set up over the last few days. Enjoyable as it has been, even the more sociable of the Nein (Mollymauk) seem content to step off the bustling streets to eat some of the food they have purchased and actually be able to hear each other talk.

Not that Caleb has been hearing anyone. “What?” He asks Jester.

She looks neither surprised nor offended to find that Caleb has not been listening to anything the party has been saying for minutes now. The Mighty Nein have begun to pick up his habits, have begun to know him. He isn’t sure how he feels about that yet.

“We’re talking about other Harvest Close festivals. I guess Beau and I are the only ones who have ever been to one before now. What about you?”

Caleb takes a second to file that information away. It doesn’t surprise him that Yasha, Nott or Molly have not seen one before, but he expected it of Fjord. “I have not had a Harvest Close festival, exactly,” he says. “The Zemni Fields has a festival for the fall but it has a different name, and it is not quite so large.”

It is not remotely as large. Caleb remembers thinking of his home festivals in comparison to Molly’s troupe, considering them to be larger and more put-together events, but in hindsight they are a candle to Zadash’s bonfire.

Summoned either by his thoughts, or more likely by the mention of the Zemni Fields, Mollymauk hangs back from speaking with Yasha and Nott (sitting on her shoulders) so he can fall into step with the two of them. “What do they call it?”

“Just ‘Autumn Festival’,” Caleb says with a shrug.

“In Common or in Zemnian?”

He doesn’t know why it matters, but Mollymauk has always been one to latch on to the details he does not expect to be latched on to. “Zemnian. It is ah- Oktoberfest.”

“Oooh!” Jester says, eyes going wide, “That sounds much cooler than Harvest Close!” 

“Much cooler,” Yasha agrees from in front of them, with about as much enthusiasm as she says anything. Caleb bites this inside of his cheek to keep from grinning.

“Agreed,” Molly says and he’s looking at Caleb in a way that makes him think his smile was not as hidden as he had hoped, but does not call attention to it. “Sounds more majestic somehow. Oktoberfest.”

“It means the same thing,” Caleb points out dryly. “And your accent is horrendous.”

Mollymauk puts a hand on his chest with an theatrical gasp. “Caleb, you wound me! Most people call it ‘disarmingly sexy’.”

Oh Caleb is sure they do. “Most people have not heard you try to speak Zemnian.”

Molly pouts, and it is both more amusing and more adorable than Caleb wants it to be. “Well, I suppose you’ll just have to teach me until it improves,” he says, and Caleb’s slowly blooming smile dies before it reaches his lips.

It has been nearly a week since their job for the Gentleman and the party that was held in the Evening Nip after they had returned. It has been nearly a week since, at Mollymauk’s playful prodding, Caleb had taught him a Zemnian festival dance, the kind of dance they’d have at Oktoberfests back home. It has been nearly a week since Molly’s offhand compliment about Caleb’s skill at teaching had flustered him more than even their close proximity and he still couldn’t quite explain why.

Molly catches his expression and his dramatic frown turns more genuine and damn, Caleb is used to being hard to read. Before the tiefling can speak, however, Nott calls over. “Caleb! Caleb, I have something for you! Come here!”

Unsure what his friend could have found for him while sitting on Yasha’s shoulders, Caleb does as he is told, keeping his eyes away from Molly as he passes. “What is it?”

Nott grins, and it is Caleb’s favorite grin – the kind that nearly splits her face in two, showing all her teeth. It is a grin Nott only uses not only when she is happy, but when she is comfortable enough to not be self-conscious of her appearance. Proudly she extends a woven flower crown in his direction. Caleb realizes, at her vantage point, Nott could and did grab a number of flowers off of street lamp garlands and hanging pots. 

“That is very nice.” They’re not very neatly woven, and look like a too-strong breeze would force them apart again, but it is the thought that counts. “They might blend in with my hair, I think. Perhaps Jester would like them.”

“It wouldn’t fit around my horns!” Jester says from behind him. 

Well, he can say he tried - and he doesn’t really mind Nott’s new habit of putting flowers on him every chance she gets. Certainly he does not feel too dignified for such things; he has long since stopped having dignity. “Alright then,” he says and inclines his head towards Nott. Yasha stops walking in order to keep her steady as Nott very regally places the flowers atop his head.

He hears a slow clap and knows it’s Mollymauk even before the tiefling speaks. “Such grace! You’ve been crowned king of Oktoberfest!”

Caleb shoots him a look. “I regret telling you that; you make it sound ridiculous.”

“That’s what I’m best at.”

From the front of their grouping Beau - who until this point Caleb had not believed was paying them any attention - calls back, “Ain’t that the fucking truth!”

Molly flips her off but he’s still smiling, seeming to know full well that she isn’t looking.

“You look very nice,” Jester says, walking next to him along one side. “It looks like your hair is on fire.” 

Caleb stiffens, managing to barely suppress the sudden urge to take the crown off immediately. “I- that is not-” 

“Nah, that’s not right,” Molly says, smoothly taking his place on Caleb’s other side. When Caleb turns to him, his expression is as cheerful and mischievous as ever. “He looks like he’s sprouting flowers.” 

Jester considers this. “He does, doesn’t he? Caleb, you are turning into a tree, like Fjord is turning into water.”

“We are doing neither of those things. Hopefully,” he adds, just to be safe (the world sure loves to jinx them), but he feels the tension in his body uncoil. If Mollymauk has noticed the effect of his distraction he does not show it, and Caleb isn’t sure if he is relieved or disappointed.

Instead he nearly collides with Yasha’s back, as the woman stopped just before colliding with Fjord’s back. Caleb cranes his neck to look past the two taller figures, and sees that their peaceful little alleyway has reached its end - meeting up with what looks to be a confluence of many streets, forming an open (and by the sounds of it, bustling) square. 

“Weren’t we just here?” Fjord asks no one in particular.

Molly doesn’t move forward, but leans around to get a better look at the square, speaking absently. “’All roads lead to Zadash’?”

“All roads lead away from Zadash,” Beau deadpans. “People just take them the wrong way.”

“You’re a poet,” Molly says, sarcastically. Without looking back, Beau flips him off. Caleb struggles not to laugh.

He is only just sure that he has schooled his expression into something neutral when Molly makes a soft ‘oh’ sound. 

“Well would you look at what we found, Caleb,” he says, his eyes still trained on the open square before them. His voice is pitched low, meant for his ears alone. “Dancing.”

Before Caleb can think to respond - or frankly, think at all after that statement - Jester perks up. “Dancing?” She jumps up and down trying to look over shoulders, before finally pushing forward so she stands between Fjord and Beau at the front. “What kind of dancing? Is it Molly kind of dancing?” 

Molly laughs, shaking his head. Caleb exhales a bit gustily as he watches Mollymauk leave his side to stand by his fellow tiefling and dancing partner. This is good, he tells himself. Molly will dance with Jester, just like before. 

But because things simply cannot go the way he plans, he hears Molly’s voice a moment later. “Well, I certainly don’t know this one. Hey Caleb!” He calls back cheerfully. “Come here and tell us if this is another Zemnian dance!”

If it is, Caleb is not going to say so. But he obediently comes forward, pointedly ignoring the way both Jester and Beau are looking between him and Molly. 

Finally at the front of the group, Caleb can actually see what everyone is talking about: there is a flagpole in the center of this square, impermanent-looking and likely set up for the festival, and at it’s base a small band is playing a simple tune. In a circle around them are many, many citizens of Zadash. All ages, various races, all common folk dressed in as fine of festival clothes as they could likely put together. 

The music is not Zemnian, and the dance certainly not Zemnian. “I do not know it, either,” he says, a little glad that it is the truth. 

Still, he stays where he is and watches the dance as it continues. The music has a slow, steady beat. The pairings of people - and they are coupled together - take small, simple steps. Two to the right, two to the left. Then one to the right and one to the left. Moving to face one another, they take three steps, spinning away form each other and then clapping before spinning back in. They switch places and repeat the spin and clap, before returning to their first position and the whole thing begins again.

“Doesn’t look hard to learn,” Mollymauk observes. Caleb starts, surprised that the tiefling’s thoughts so closely mirrored his own. He has been focused a while, he realizes, and much of their party has separated to watch the dance more comfortably. Caleb sees Nott has somehow found more flowers and is weaving them into Yasha’s braids.

He feels Molly’s eyes on him, and when he looks back a hand is extended cordially. “Shall we? I’ll lead, if you’d like.” 

He can feel heat rise to his face, and his heart pounds a little too hard in his chest. “Ah- I am sure- wouldn’t Jester rather-”

Molly grins, wicked and amused. “You really do space out, don’t you? Her dance card’s full.” He jerks a thumb out toward the dancers again, just as Jester pulls Fjord with her into the circle - couples gladly opening space for them. Fjord’s face is a dark muted red and Caleb thinks he looks close to afraid. 

A corner of his mouth turns up, in spite of himself. “And if we go to join them we will not be able to watch.”

Mollymauk laughs. “You know me, darling; much more of a participant than a spectator.” 

He wants to make a biting remark about how well the group can possibly know him, but the ‘darling’ causes his brain to freeze long enough for the remark to die before it can form. 

And, well, Mollymauk is right. Caleb does know that about him; that he enjoys the spotlight and that he, too, has no sense of dignity whatever, and that he seems to enjoy learning new things as much as he does (although their taste in new things varies wildly, the excitement in learning is there and is recognizable). And as much as he has been struggling to avoid it, Caleb knows that Molly knows him too. He knows that Caleb could protest this much more stubbornly if he really wanted to avoid this, and the fact that he hasn’t can only mean one thing.

At least the they are not the only party members dancing, and he will not be the center of everyone’s attention. 

With as much ease as he is capable of, Caleb puts his hand in Molly’s.

Like with Fjord and Jester, the circle of dancers opens up when they join them. This dance isn’t led in the same way the dance Caleb taught Mollymauk had been, which is probably for the best since neither of them really know who should take the lead. In the end they settle on Molly being in what served as that part. 

The music has picked up speed by the time they join, apparently with the musicians having decided that the dancers understood what they were doing by their third or fourth go around. Thankfully, both of them are quick studies, and the up in speed doesn’t throw them. Caleb can hear Molly quietly speaking the steps aloud, likely for his own benefit as much as for Caleb’s. 

They go through it twice, simply enough that Caleb doesn’t need all of his focus of the steps and finds it wandering to things like the way the fading sunlight catches on Mollymauk’s jewelry, the way his coat flairs out when he spins, the lopsided smile on his face when they step together and then apart again. 

So he is caught completely by surprise when the music speeds up again. 

He stumbles a little through a step left and hears Mollymauk laugh softly. “Do you think this is how it is supposed to go, or are they doing it to fuck with us?”

“Could be both,” Caleb says.

When it loops to the beginning again, the musicians speed up once more. 

“Oh dear,” Molly says, still with easy good humor. “I think you’re right.”

The tune begins to steadily increase with speed, and as the dancers stumble through keeping in time laughter begins to fill the square. With what little attention Caleb can spare on their surroundings, he begins to see couples stepping out of the circle breathless as much with exertion as with laughter, leaning on each other for support.

“What-” Calev says, short of breath himself, “do you suppose - one gets - if they’re the last - ones left?”

Molly is grinning, his face a little flushed and laughter wrinkling the corners of his red eyes. “Want to - find out?”

"I am not sure - how much more of this - I can handle,” he admits with a rueful smile of his own. They spin away from each other, clap, and when they spin back together Caleb’s vision takes a moment to catch up with him and he stumbles, leaning heavily enough onto Molly that the tiefling stumbles a bit himself.

“Aye, I think we’re done,” he says, keeping a hand on Caleb’s arm and stepping them outside the circle - which is all well and good because they speed up, again. “I feel like if we looked into it there are probably stories of people being trampled in this dance.”

Caleb laughs at the concept of there being sordid histories behind types of dances. It sounds very much like something Molly would know. 

“Looks like Jester and Fjord are still going strong,” Molly observes. 

“If it is a competition, Jester will settle for nothing other than winning,” Caleb says. “Poor Fjord.”

Molly shakes his head. “Poor Fjord, indeed. It’s a good thing he didn’t drink as much as some of us did earlier. Though now I’m wondering about some of these other fine couples.” He links his arm more comfortably with Caleb’s. “Come on, let’s watch this from a safer distance.”  

They take no more than two steps before Molly stops them again “Ah! One second!” He stoops down to retrieve something off the dusty stone street, straightening with Nott’s flower crown in his hands, which clearly had been flung from his head at some point in all the spinning (it is, by some miracle, still holding together). “Nott would hate me if you lost this.”

He settles the crown back on Caleb’s head with more care than is perhaps necessary, and his hands linger on the sides of his face ever so slightly longer than need be, and Caleb’s heart is pounding a little faster than the can be solely blamed on the exertion from dancing. 

“There,” Mollymauk says, suddenly dropping his hands and dusting them on his coat. He doesn’t take Caleb’s arm again. “There you are. King of Oktoberfest again.”

Caleb groans, internally more grateful for a reason to be irritated than he is actually irritated. “If you keep this up I will have to teach you Zemnian just so you will stop offending my ears.”

“That’s the goal, darling,” Molly says sweetly. His long legs take him a few steps ahead of Caleb and Caleb lets him go.

It means he doesn’t see it when Caleb brings a hand to absently touch his cheek where Molly’s hands brushed so lightly a moment ago, feeling the heat in his face and knowing he must be blushing quite red indeed. He slows a bit more, watching Molly as he walks away as the setting sunlight catches on his coat's embroidery until it looks liked the embers of a dying fire.

Oh, he thinks. Oh dear.