Disclaimer: Know your own limitations!
AN: I like the myrrh festival. You get to hold burning torch thingies, the Elder chants and waves his hand at the crystal to make it glow, and all my neighbors break out the dancing shoes and get down... Good times.
"Ow! Mom, that stings!" The little Selkie whined, edging away from the medicated rag which threatened to heal him. His mother simply tsked and continued her work, swabbing the small gash on his forehead with styptic and ointment.
"Hold still, honey. You're lucky that you don't need stitches, but that's still a nasty cut you've got. I need to clean it out so it won't get infected."
"But mooooom...!" The boy gave a few more attempts at flinching away from his mother's medicine before giving up and sinking into a deep pout, complete with crossed arms and stubborn glare. He was desperate for something, anything, to take his mind off the painful and thoroughly embarrassing event that got him hurt in the first place; but sitting stock still while his mum tended to his wounded noggin provided very few distractions.
-x-
It was late, well after dark and his usual bedtime, but then the annual myrrh festival usually ran long into the night as everyone celebrated. This was his seventh festival and the first time he was old enough to dance with the other villagers. He was so excited. After all those years of watching he was finally able to join in and dance with everybody else! (Except the musicians and Elders, who said they were too old for that kind of thing, of course.)
The band had been playing for a while, letting all the dancers warm up a little before cutting loose, and the little Selkie had to admit; being a dancer in the circle was very different from watching from the sidelines. Really fun, no doubt, but still different. If he turned around he could see the Clavats doing their traditional jig and one of the Lilties clogging away like there was no tomorrow. Across the crystal, visible only through the transparent blue stone, he could see the Yukes, twirling gracefully like birds in flight. However, the sight that commanded the lion's share of his attention was right in front of him: His folks.
As his family landed from their last flip he got ready, falling into a casual low-slung stance that matched theirs pretty closely. They took a step backwards, so did he. Step forwards, step backwards, he matched their rhythm as best he could and at exactly the right moment, jumped.
Flipping, he found, was amazing! It had to be what flying was like. He was up in the air, his feet not touching anything, looking down at the ground above his head. It was some of the most fun he'd ever had, until he started to fall back down to earth and discovered he had no idea how to land. The sense of fun and wonder from before was quickly joined by creeping fear and an edge of panic as he saw the stone steps that ringed the base of the crystal rushing up to meet him.
-x-
"There, that should do it." His mom patted a bandage into place over the freshly-sterilized cut. "Now do you see why your father and I didn't want you to do our dance? You'll be able to when you're older, but right now you just don't have the coordination."
"Yeah, yeah..." The little Selkie muttered, ducking his head. This was all so embarrassing, cracking his head on the crystal's pedestal like that, then falling flat on his bum... Maybe if he was lucky his friends would let it drop, but next year- Next year he'd do it for sure. He would get the flip dance right! All he had to do was start practicing now and...
AN: If you've got Selkies in your town, you'll notice that during the myrrh festival dance the adults and caravan-age youths dance by flipping, but the children don't. Why? (Probably because they don't have the body proportions to fit the Defend animation the game programmers reused for the Selkies' dance.) It's just another thing I noticed and wondered about.