#how long has it been since ive had to do a mastery drabble hahaha

[nelithic]

　𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨 𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐭　/　dancer mastery ₊

　　　　　　　　　　　　　❪ fell xenologue spoilers near the end. ❫

　　　　　　　　　　　　✶

two thousand years ago, she danced.

all day and all night. morning to night, to morning again. summer to winter, to summer again. her feet became calloused as a dancer's; her hands became cramped, her bones strained and at times shattered. she bruised, she bled, she rose again.

as with any performance, the stage did not end because she grew tired. the audience did not stop watching. she could not disrupt the formation of this finely choreographed production for such simple things as a sprained ankle, a mending limb, a broken heart. and as with any performance, they were not one or individual, but the whole — a cabaret of matching hisses and reptilian hides, fangs not one inch high or one inch low, a perfect row of smiling grimaces just as father made them. all day, all night, they danced. they were brilliant as gems were brilliant; they were each of them full of imagination because there is nothing that works harder than the mind in such darkness where the eyes cannot see.

and because they were each of them visionaries, one scale off of sombron after the next, the show would never end. put ten thousand artists upon a stage where each of them can dream the world but never touch it and the show will never end.

in her sleep she danced. she held pevar's hand in one and snapped his ribcage with the other, dragged the tines in to pierce his lungs. they spun whirlishly as he struggled to spill her innards with his last gasping breaths.

in her waking she danced, punctured teirvet's throat with her fangs, a bite like a lover's. her poison was teirvet's poison was the poison of each and every one of them; they had practiced this routine countless times, almost playfully, and for a time it had been the closest she thought siblings could ever be — a closeness gradlon's eternal bolero could never permit: they passed mere inches by each other with every step and never, never closer — but then teirvet like countless others had dared to slip, and with that, the unending rehearsal was pushed out before the house in yet another reenactment of the original sin, tearing curtains from the walls in its fever. even the congregation had fled in its wake. but their homeland's composition was a composition of error, made for missteps and casual casualty, or perhaps it should be said that it was in fact a pageantry of these very things. and so when hysterical daou had come at her too afterwards with rage over the death of his twin, with glee over the death of his twin, with excitement, with grief, with vengeance, with gratitude, screaming that he would get her until he was hoarse, screaming that he would get nil, that he'd taste his blood, that he'd kill him if she couldn't, he would kill him, killhimkillhimkILL HIM, in what other way could she have felt close to him but in a dance?

it was the only way any of them felt close to one another.

the only way any of them loved.

one thousand years ago, she danced this old dance again: the dance of siblings, of family, of loved and hated and scorned and cherished ones. it was the dance only they could dance — who closer than twins? of whose half neither would have lived nor grown without the mirror half, of whose bone marrow lived in synonym with the other's, loaned out like the heart loans blood to the hands and the feet in understanding that it would come recycled back someday.

they danced to the death, finally. as had always been meant to be and as she had been avoiding; as she had left gradlon avoiding but which, she always suspected, would find her nevertheless. their steps were long, long overdue, and now there was no audience left to watch. a gallery of corrupted, and false spectators from another world — shades, only.

it did not matter in the end that it was she who killed herself or nil who killed her or rafal who killed her or she who killed either of them. that the hands they had both been dealt stained and redeemed the blood that flowed.

all that mattered was that it had finished. the curtains would finally close. the stage would empty into the wings. the house would never fill again.