Dancing for Rain
Her feet aren't broken in for heels yet. She wobbles in them childishly, each tottering step makes him catch his breath and watch her brittle ankles as they threaten to snap. Oblivious of his agitation, Lenalee frisks ahead, her white face and sweet, dark eyes spinning as she struggles to drink in the unfamiliar surroundings. He reflects briefly that it's her first time in Europe—and everything, everything must look so different to her.
The autumn wind sends a hoard of blazing leaves spilling down the path towards them. Lenalee smiles and kicks at them in delights, but Kanda smells the storm.
His Chinese is rudimentary at best, and her Japanese struggles with a heavy accent. After a few minutes of pointing and speaking loudly and clearly for no particular reason, she seems to understand, and trots after him obediently. He sets a brutal pace, hopping for the inn some miles down the road.
The storm breaks before they've quite reached it, and he curses, drawing the hood of his cloak over his sodden black hair and scrambling through the mud. Lenalee's breath comes out around her in ghostly puffs, her dark hair slipping over her brow as she struggles after him.
Shivering violently, the two of them at last stagger through the inn's doors, panting and flushed from the chill. Lenalee slips back her hood and unbinds her hair, drawing the dark strands away from her neck in a messy coil as she rings the water out. The rain water streaks down her face and neck, in a sloppy caricature of weeping, and Kanda thinks, fleetingly, that beauty doesn't need a common language.