I don't really have anything to say about this. I wrote it in just over an hour. It actually takes place in the same universe as my original fiction, during a particularly tumultuous part of the world's history. I've changed the names to protect my own privacy.

This story can also be found on my AO3 (user Snowy_the_Sane_Fangirl), my DeviantArt (SnowytheSaneFangirl), my Tumblr (dog-ears-and-shades), and my Wordpress (sanefangirl).

In the autumn, the valleys where the Dark Mountains met the southern moors of Largia, the ground turned to a book of grey pages, paper made of the dead branches and roots of scrub bushes and dry white topsoil, words of bright red and green ink decorating it, and a cover of sheer grey cliffs. The page was marked with sturdy trees hugging the cliffs, pine and aspens vying for majority in the surprisingly rich soil at the base of the mountains. Straggling aspens made their way out onto the moors, a movement the pines might have called retreat and rout, and the aspens referred to as exploration and conquering. Their red, gold, and black leaves mocked the pines, giving the illusion of fire leaping from their lower branches, while their white trunks stood out like silver bars among lead. And in one particular spot, the aspens had complete dominion, and that spot was like a room of the palace, imported red and orange carpet offsetting grey stone walls and high white pillars, specks of light floating through the leaves overhead like sparks from an expiring torch. And it was here that Dave Strider taught Jade Harley how to dance.

A fitting reward for the hero who had slain (not really) the Witch of the Dark Mountains (which one), Dave was not expected to return to his regular duties in the capitol for over a month, and he opted to stay in the nearby farming village of Ciracill. Each day, he went to the aspen grove, ignoring the dark looks and mutterings of the natives of the town. The residents, he knew, thought his excursions more than suspicious, but they could do little. Dave had sent back his report and the king had probably not read it, slapped his mark of approval on it, and then paid it no more mind. It was a temporary solution, Dave knew, but it would do to ward off the curiosity of people who thought he shouldn't be going back to the mountains every goddamn day.

Dave didn't actually attempt to climb the mountains again. He'd learned his lesson after the unfortunate turn his last attempt had taken. He did not know nearly enough about mountaineering to attempt to climb the mountains. Or rather, Jade had learned his lesson and insisted on showing him how to do it, step by step. So each day they met in the grove and Jade would show him how to find the safest paths and how to guess if the stone would crumble and how to tell if the weather would change suddenly and how to recognize when he was getting too close to a giant's den or a goblin cave or a dragon's hoard.

"I'm a knight," he'd said, swinging his legs over the edge of a sheer drop of about a hundred feet. The trail was so narrow that even though his legs were hanging off the edge, his back was practically touching the sheer wall on the other side. "It's my job to go after dragons, didn't you know? I get paid for that shit."

"That's a silly stereotype," she said. "One knight slew a dragon seventy years ago and suddenly everyone expects all the knights to do it." She paused and glanced at Dave. "Don't even think about it!" she said. "You are not fighting a dragon, Dave Strider, you can't even keep your own horse under control when it smells a measly goblin!"

"Low blow, Harley. I thought we'd agreed not to talk about that. It's not like I fucking train my horse to stare ma- mutant corrupted freaks of nature in the face every day." He quickly corrected himself, dropping out the first word of his description. Being friends with a witch was - well, it was weird. Dave lived in a society where he had been trained to think all magic was evil and the only plausible result was eventually mutating into a goblin. Magic wasn't strictly illegal, but sometimes the excuses to go after magic users who were a "danger" were flimsy at best. And he'd found himself saying singularly rude and obviously wrong things since about the first moment he'd met Jade.

Jade had the good grace to ignore his slip-up. She understood it, and forced herself to be grateful that he'd corrected himself, because he was the first close human friend she'd had in years and she was not chasing him away. "You asked me not to talk about it, I think, and I said I'd think about it," she countered. "And I think you need to train your horses better, then. What if goblins start launching attacks? They used to, you know. I bet half your soldiers wouldn't know what to do with them either. You'd better stay away from goblins. If any of them captured you and they got a story about the state of Largia they would be attacking before you were even done talking! Really, it's a marvel they haven't already."

"Civil unrest and rebellions? Brother turned against brother?" Dave said. "The crown prince trying to murder the king? Whoever would that make them want to attack? Sounds like a shit time for attacking to me. Absolutely nothing but the best fucking vigilance. We don't even sleep down there. Those coffee beans we import? We have that down to a fucking art. There is no bedtime anymore, just coffee time. Nobody ever goes home tired after a long day's work. That shit's for the losers up in Cirharen. They don't know how we do it because we keep tight wraps on that shit. Even though we can barely grow coffee here. That shit is tight. It's just between us and wherever the fuck we import it from."

"Faelgrave. You import it from Faelgrave," Jade said. "And yes, I'm sure you're all very vigilant but the simple fact is that you've grown complacent. You don't expect goblin attacks, so you don't train for them. You think you can take on a dragon, but even Sir Gavlen was incredibly lucky. He shouldn't have walked away from that battle alive, or so I hear."

"That's not the way we hear the story," Dave retorted.

Jade rolled her eyes, adjusting her spectacles. "Of course not. Whoever told you that story apparently also told you it was a good idea to take a horse up a mountain trail that's about two feet wide on average, when it isn't even trained to face goblins."

Dave picked up a little rock and idly tossed it over the edge. "Because I definitely spend months training a mare to face dangers it will probably never have to face, and like hell am I exploring a place like this on foot, without a quick way to retreat."

"And where did you plan on turning around? Or do horses gallop backwards now?"

"Exploring, Jade. Exploring. I didn't know what the fuck was up here. She found a place to turn around, anyway."

"Because the horse is better at surviving than a certain knight I know!"

"Yeah, most things are. Knights don't actually do a lot of surviving, you know. Lots of training, also lots of living in expensive houses with land and serfs and no shortage of food. Surviving is for the assholes in that village." He pointed to the village in question, a blurry dot on the ground hundreds of feet below them. "And people like you. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty awesome. Just never something I've had to do."

"A hundred years ago knights had to go on quests to earn their knighthood," Jade commented, surprise coloring her voice. "When did that change?"

"Sometime in the last hundred years. It's all hereditary now. My father was a knight, my older brother was a knight, when he died I got the knighthood."

Jade looked at Dave, an expression of genuine curiosity painted across her face. "Well what do you know how to do, then? Besides living in a nice house and training?"

Dave was still looking at the town below. "I'm pretty rad at poetry. I can read and write, obviously. I can draw. Noble's education and all that. I know where to put all the forks at a table setting for a feast. One by the plate, one in the soup, and one up the ass of whoever decided there needed to be three fucking forks." He kept looking down, a little embarrassed at his next words. "I can also knit and dance."

Jade didn't seem to notice his embarrassment. "Ooh, you can dance?" she exclaimed. "That's so cool! I've never seen anybody dance. You have to show me!"

Dave looked up. "Here?" he asked, glancing around the narrow trail. "Do you want me to fall and break my neck? Is that it? And I thought we were friends. You wound me. I'm fucking betrayed over here. Bleeding my heart out."

Rolling her eyes, Jade said, "No, silly. Down on the ground. You're not dancing up here. You'd probably find a way to fall down if we found the biggest, smoothest ledge. Come on, let's go! I want to see this!"

"That was one time, and it was entirely the horse's fault," Dave objected, but Jade ignored him as she grabbed his arm and pulled him up and down the path after her. The path was long and curved back and forth across the mountainside, and on the walk down he had plenty of time to get hells of uncomfortable with the idea.

"What kind of dancing is it?" Jade asked, blissfully unaware of Dave's stress.

"Partner dancing. I show up fashionably late to all the balls and sweep all the ladies off their feet. They stand in little groups before I get there, whispering about -"

"Oh," Jade said, suddenly stopping. "I didn't know you needed to have another person."

"What?" Dave asked. "There's two of us, isn't there? I thought you wanted a hands-on demonstration. Can't let you miss out on all that action the ladies at the balls are getting."

"I can't dance!" Jade said. "I've never even seen it."

Dave hesitated a moment, and then he placed his free hand on his friend's shoulder. "Jade Harley," he said. "That is about the saddest thing I've ever heard said." He squeezed past her on the path and started pulling her down. "Come on, we're teaching you to dance."

"Are you sure?" Jade asked. "You don't have to if you don't want to. It's not like it's a very practical skill in a survival situation."

"Yeah, and recognizing a dragon cave isn't a practical skill in a civil war situation, but you still taught me that," Dave said. "My turn. Come on, you'll love it."

Dave, as it turned out, was a shit teacher, but Jade was a quick learner so it almost balanced out. They spent altogether too long trying to figure out where to put their hands, and for some reason touching each other was a big hang-up, because Dave felt streaks of electricity dart up his arm every time she shifted against the hand that was gently resting against her waist. But they eventually worked that detail out, and then Dave tried to explain the steps to a simple waltz. It was a colossal fucking failure. Jade stared at him in confusion every time he tried to explain it differently, and finally blurted out, "But that's over three beats. I thought music had four beats? Do we do it on a base of twelve? That sounds really complicated."

"What the fuck," was all Dave could say, completely unsure of what twelve had to do with anything. Then, something else occurred to him. "Fuck," he said. "Music. We don't have any music. We can't dance without music."

The two of them were silent for a moment. That was about the worst possible thing that could go wrong. Dave was supposed to have killed Jade; he could never take her to a ball, or even to an evening dance in a village without being outed as a liar and having gone against direct orders. Jade knew a couple of other witches, but she knew that Feferi couldn't play an instrument for shit and she didn't trust Damara within five hundred feet of Dave or one hundred feet of herself. She could play an advanced type of lute that she'd sort of invented herself, but she couldn't both play and dance. They would not get music.

Dave was looking at the ground, but Jade, who was slightly shorter than him, could still see his face. She could see disappointment written all over it. He'd really wanted to show her this, and now not only did she not understand it, but they were missing one of the critical components. She smiled a little. "Hey," she said. "We can still do it."

"Dancing without music is like sewing without thread, Harley. It doesn't fucking work."

She pulled her hand out of his to playfully poke him in the nose. "You're just not thinking creatively enough," she said. "Come on. Close your eyes."

Dave grumbled, but he did it. Jade smiled, and did it too. "Hear the leaves in the wind?" she said. "They're the beat. Not the most even beat ever, but they'll do. Now, there's a nightingale somewhere close, and a whippoorwill on the other side of us. The whippoorwill is a bit more musical, so let's go with that for the tune. Imagine the nightingale is the harmony."

Dave was frowning, obviously not buying it, but before he could say anything, Jade pressed a finger to his lips. "Wait," she said. She brought her hand back to his and clasped it, glancing over Dave's shoulder. The sun would set in a couple of hours. That meant that soon - even as she thought it, she heard the first cricket, a pause, and then a veritable army of crickets started to chirp. "There," she said, satisfied. "Better rhythm. Come on, a rhythm is the most important part, right?"

"Yeah, but that nightingale sucks," Dave responded.

"I guess we'll have to disagree on that one," Jade said. "This isn't a fast dance, is it?"

"No," Dave said, his eyes still obediently closed, which accentuated the curious furrowing of his brow. Jade thought it was adorable.

"Good," she said. "Let me know if this doesn't work."

She started to hum, using the crickets as a base and slowly closing her own eyes to focus on the tune she was working with. She just hummed for a while, and then Dave's voice joined her. While it went out of key uncomfortably often, the rhythm was slightly different and he gently guided her into the necessary time. She nodded, once she thought she got it, and hummed a little longer to solidify it, and then gently pulled on Dave. he took the hint and started to slowly lead her through the steps of the dance. Jade could feel her boots brushing through piles of leaves, scattering them and shoving them aside, and she was sure that under all those leaves her feet weren't doing at all what they were supposed to, but they were doing something. She let the vibrations of her vocal cords resonate through her and pass from her over to Dave where they were touching each other. The simple tune consumed them and they focused on it over every other sensation, except that of the wind on their faces, or their hands on each other's bodies, or the specks of heat where the dappled evening sunlight fell through the trees and touched their faces. Jade exclaimed in surprise when Dave suddenly lifted one arm and then pushed her under it with the other, encouraging her to do a slow spin, but it was smooth enough that she figured out what was going on without getting too off-beat. The crickets kept chirping all around them and Jade kept humming and Dave kept dancing, and for a moment, everything was right.