It didn't start out so bad. The dinner was fun, because Cailan and Rosie were stuck playing hobs to the nobs while Myra got to talk to one of the pikemen. They were kinda fascinating to her. Your job is to stand there and hold a stick. If you do it right, something gets stuck on your stick. If not, bye bye stick and bye bye you. Simple. Elegant. Stupid for the man forced to do it, but fascinating.
The dancing was even more fun, Myra being able to finagle Bryn to her side lightning fast. They were a lot less stuffy here than in Denerim. There was no way she could have gotten away with one cartwheel, much less a backflip back home. Bea would have drug her dad in by his ear, then her mom would show up and it'd be a fifth blight all over again.
When she first looked up to spot Gavin surrounded by a bunch of fancy skirts, she tried to play it light. They were all there to mingle, maybe he was mingling. Then the one woman's mingling grew too cozy, her fingers pawing at the boy as if he was some horse she was going to buy at auction. Ugh. It was disgusting.
Hating that she cared, Myra fell into a few rounds with some of the Highever boys that hadn't learned who she was yet. People always seemed to like her until they got either the bastard or the king's daughter bit. It was downhill every time after. By the time she spun away from a twirl, feeling like her head was dancing without her body, she spotted him standing alone.
He looked the exact opposite of the boy she spotted in the meadow. Poor Gavin was twitching his fingers, his face all scrunched up in a nervous sneer while he kept turtling up his neck into his shoulders. It was an act of pity that drove her to strike up a conversation with him, nothing more.
Okay. That was buyable. So why'd you talk him into abandoning the dance with you?
Because...shut up, that's why. Myra tried to shake off her brain's thoughts by hopping onto a bannister running the length of the staircase. While Gavin took the stairs like a normal person, she stepped with her feet completely sideways down it. The focus needed to keep from face planting was enough she nearly forgot he was even beside her.
At least until the boy gasped out, "I will never understand how you don't fall. I'd fall."
"The trick is to picture the ground and how much it would really, really hurt if you did. Then don't do that," Myra explained. Getting a good feel for her balance, she picked up speed, dashing forward. At the end of the bannister was some iron mabari statue squatting on its haunches. The iron dog looked like it wanted a treat, the stubby tail sticking out to the side. Reaching the end, Myra scooped her hands upon the dog's head, pushed her legs up high and skirted her ass right over the top.
With a simple plop, her feet landed upon the ground and she turned backwards with her hands extended. Gavin had to increase his gait, jogging down the steps to join her. For a moment he looked at the dog she sailed over and grimaced as if it should be impossible to pull off. Myra'd been leaping over, under, and around worse since she was twelve. Her sister once joked that they should enter Myra into the steeplechase. After seeing some of the horses that year, she probably wouldn't have come in last.
"You're doing well," Myra said, her feet slowing as they circled around the silent courtyard. She suddenly realized she had no idea where she was going to take the boy she invited out. Great thinking there, Myra. Way to really plan ahead.
"Oh?" Gavin slowed up as well. The awkwardness hadn't entirely fled his body, but he didn't have his chin tucked up against his chest either. Progress.
"Captured a deadly assassin, helped to stop a bandit plot..."
"As I seem to remember, it was you who stopped the bandits."
Myra waved it away, "Promoted to bodyguard for my sister, and on our first fancy stop you had a whole bustle of ladies begging for a dance with you." She was trying to be light hearted, to compliment him, but the boy's face dropped.
"How did you...? You could tell?"
"That they were circling you like a pack of wolves that spotted a limping deer?" Myra plucked at her lips as if in thought. "It's not that hard to tell, even if you're not taught to do that shit. The 'ladies' at these stops live for this stuff. New blood, some fancy toy to play with that they've never had before. Pick, prod, toss back for the next one."
He fell silent and she turned from gazing out at the grey and black gardens to try and catch his eyes. "Did no one warn you about that?"
"It seems there is a lot I was not...informed of," he grumped as if being saddled with good looks was such a burden.
Would that be his excuse? He's too pretty for the common woman? No, not pretty. Pretty implied fine features that would shatter like glass. His could cut glass, maybe shatter a few bricks too. Even now there was a ruggedness to him she didn't spot in the other squires. His broad nose and jaw would get better with age. And, damn it, Mom! Myra did not care what he'd look like older, if he'd look better older. That was all the lady Solver's doing, teaching her to look and anticipate people, to know them inside and out.
"What...?" Myra stirred her slipper on the ground wishing she'd worn real shoes. They'd barely had any warning there was to be a stupid dance and she grabbed the first thing she could out of her wrecked luggage. "What happened?"
"I..." he pursed his lips together. Even by the starlight and fire of the hall in the distance Myra could spot the edge of his bottom lip glistening. It highlighted the swipe of pink before his lips trailed off to become a tempting tan. And you're staring at him. Stop doing that!
Shuffling on his feet, Gavin glanced over at her and sighed, "I don't know how to dance."
"Is that all?" Myra gasped. She'd expected something else, anything else but that. The boy's haunting amber eyes crossed into a stern look at her flippant response, but she was too busy sliding over and grabbing his hands to care. "Here," Myra extended his hands out, "I'll teach you."
"What?" he looked about to shy away back into his shell, but she had a tight grip when she wanted to. All that climbing and not wanting to die, probably.
"Don't panic, it's easy."
"Says the girl who can climb up a sheer cliff like a mountain goat," he was in full on grumbling mode. Normally, Myra would prod at someone behaving like a bee flew up their trouser leg but it was oddly captivating when he stuck out his bottom lip. No, damn it. Forget that stuff, focus on whatever you were going to do.
Raising her hands up into the first formation, Myra's brain tossed out 'Not as if he'd ever look twice at you anyway' to get one last stab to her self esteem. Thanks brain.
"I'll show you the...think of it like the base dance. Everyone knows these few steps, it's what you cut your teeth on, and then as you get older you learn a bit more fancy stuff to do with it."
"Fancy like those twirls and dips and twists?" Gavin turned to her but his shoulders were relaxing out of their carrying the whole world state.
Myra snatched up his fingers and placed them on top of hers, "I prefer to add something fun like plate spinning or lion taming, but yeah, I guess there's always twirls." She cracked up at her stupid joke but froze at the sound of the boy beside her laughing as well. Good thing it was nearly black as pitch out here so he couldn't see the blush burning on her cheeks.
"Okay, first thing you do is step like this. Step, step, step," she shuffled her feet as if they were half the size they really were. "Raise up a bit on your tiptoes like you're trying to sneak out late at night."
"Like this?" Gavin's far too great form somehow daintily lifted onto the very tip of his toes as if it was no bother.
"How in the Maker's name are you so good at that?" Myra tried to copy him but her tiny toes screamed in qunari curses that Qimat taught her. There was no way she could get up on them. With a sly smile, she bent the crook of her elbow towards Gavin's side. "Did you give the stuffy ol Commander the slip?"
"No," Gavin swallowed, his eyes darting around as if he'd been caught being naughty. That'd be the day. "The abbey would sometimes require quiet days and...my mom would make a game out of it."
"Oh that one. My Mom tried that too. 'Myra, let's see how long you can go without talking.' 'Oop, I lose. So, Mom...'" She giggled at the memory, her mother often turning her own special shades of red while suffering her daughter's jabbering jaw. Reiss liked to claim that when Myra was a five year old, her mother lost her voice for an entire week from trying to answer all of her daughter's questions. That seemed mostly unlikely.
Catching on that she was supposed to be teaching and not thinking about home or her big warm bed, or the way Lunet would sometimes sneak in a special pink donut just for her, Myra shifted her body. With a careful step forward, she tugged the cargo ship with her. Gavin, while light standing on his toes, was less so moving on them.
"Think of clouds, or water and how it flows over floors when you spill it," Myra began. He wasn't getting it. He'd shuffle forward at intermittent speeds, his toes all but nipping into the back of her heels. Then he'd overcompensate and lag behind, tugging Myra's arms back over her head. It'd be funny to watch, she'd have to give him that.
Biting onto her lip, she began to tap the beat through her fingers against his. "One, two, three, step, step, step." You're holding his hands. Yeah, I'm trying to teach him how to dance. You're dancing with him. If this is dancing, swallowing a bucket of leeches is medicine. You're enjoying it.
"Not like water, forget that," Myra shouted all of a sudden. She craned her neck to spot Gavin's eyes open before he pursed his lips. He thought he had it. "Think of a fight."
"Dancing isn't combat."
"Sure it is. Dancing is combat but with sharp tongues instead of swords, and quick toes instead of...shields? I'm not so good at the metaphors. In a fight you read your opponent, right? You anticipate their moves and counter with your own." The boy's stupidly handsome face nodded. He leaned tighter to Myra to try and listen to her advice. It wasn't too close to be anything but friendly, but she could smell a combination of a juniper oil and that man musk that would turn her stomach. But it wasn't doing that this time. She wanted to lean closer and sniff more. No, Myra. You're treading into weirdo territory again.
"Here," she shook her head and leaned away as if to get into position. The garden's sun baked fragrances filled her nose instead of boy. It helped clear her head. "Watch me, and prepare to counter my moves."
With a breath, she stepped off. At first Gavin hung back, their tether straining as he seemed to be eyeing her up from behind. Myra was about to tell him he had to remain by her side for it to be a dance, when he suddenly darted closer to her and began to match her right foot for left. They paraded around the garden, her arms screaming for a release as they'd been held in the same stupid position behind her shoulder and to the side for too long. But he was starting to get it, really starting to get it.
"Okay," Myra paused them up and dropped her hands. Her puny biceps cried in bitter relief but it was a short victory. "I think you're ready for the next bit. Twirling."
"I..." his eyes flailed wide at the concept. "I'm uncertain if..."
"Don't worry, the girl has to do the twirling. All the boy needs to do is make sure to be in place when she comes back. Here," Myra betrayed her arms and moved back into position when she paused. Unknotting the leather tie in her hair, she began to quickly undo the braid. As it fell apart, her dark gold hair freed from its bonds slipped down to near her waist.
With her eyes closed, she tried to comb her fingers through the top section, savoring the feel of a soft breeze darting against each hair. Myra could feel the boy staring at her in seeming confusion, and she burned even hotter. "It...the twirl is meant for loose hair. Looks better," she tried to stupidly explain, feeling more self conscious with every word. That was why she let it down, not because...because he used to like playing with it. There was a logic there.
"It's..." his fingers darted through the air but didn't touch her, "wavy. I didn't know it could curl."
"Oh?" Myra plucked up the ends which twisted together at the bottom, "Probably because I've had that in for a few days. It'll fall soon, once I brush or wash it. Is that...?" Maker's sake, why did she turn to jelly around him? "Do you think it's dumb?"
"No, I," he snickered, his head tipping down, "the only hair I know is mine, or my parents. Curly no matter what, often worse in the rain. I didn't realize someone with straight hair could alter it so. Sorry," now he was smiling like the utter goofball she remembered, "I imagine I sound like a rube to you."
"Nah, I mean, it's cute," Myra threw off before panic squeezed her guts, "That you didn't know. All those little things we think everyone does know about us, but they don't cause they live different lives. My mom calls it blinders." Oh blessed Andraste, what are you doing? "She says you have to take them off to do her job. To see people for what they are instead of what they project."
You're talking about your mother and her boring ass work. He doesn't care. Stop it. Shut your mouth. Shut your mouth right now!
"It's, that's all, the cuteness of...blinders like horses have and I was going to teach you to twirl," Myra slapped her hands together hoping that would finally stop the babble that spat out of her throat like a crossbow bolt. Wincing a bit, she lifted her arms and turned to face the garden.
Either okay with her sudden explosion of uncomfortable verbal diarrhea or thinking it best to play along, Gavin resumed the position beside her. With her fingers tapping the rhythm in her head, Myra set out and he followed right beside. One, two, three...she counted her steps until coming to the twentieth. Barely turning on the ball of her feet, she raised their conjoined hands higher and spun in place. It was a simple revolution, but when she returned to marching her head felt lighter.
"Was...was that it?" Gavin gasped.
"That's level one of twirling. Most girls can only do that, or will do that. Every 20th step she stops and spins, her skirts flying in the breeze and long, flowing hair doing the same thing I guess." She squinted feeling like her arms grew heavier with uncomfortableness.
Licking her tongue against her chapped lips, Myra glanced over quick and complimented him, "You did good, exactly what you need to do. Stand still, keep your fingers in place, and then get back to walking once it's over."
"It seemed obvious," Gavin tipped his head, the boy already the master apparently. "I watched and matched you like in a fight."
His cheeks were so thick from his heartfelt smile Myra wanted to take a bite. Lick them? Maker's sake, stop wanting to eat people. It's weird. The amber eyes which could burn with such anger were soft as honeysuckle. Trying to distract from the whole handsome package, Myra stared down at his lips, which only reminded her of how she'd kissed him before. She was the one to make the first move. Bold Myra, never did as she was told. It seemed easier then. See boy, have boy invite you to secret grotto to climb on a magic horse statue, find boy cute, kiss boy.
Now it felt as if she had to turn a dozen different gears to unlock a puzzle, but each twist threw the entire landscape off. She'd be turning switches until she was blue in the face before understanding any of it. When did this all get so complicated?
"What's a complicated twirl look like?" Gavin's voice punctured through her starry eyed drooling.
"Wha?" Myra mumbled before shaking her head. Right, he wanted a real twirl like the professional ball goers would do. Grabbing up his hand, Myra slotted her fingers over his. Gavin stared at the handhold in mild confusion before she turned on her toes and whipped her feet at lightning speed out towards the edge of the garden path.
The boy froze, uncertain what to make of the woman having pulled off three rotations before she came to the end of the tether. Lifting his hands high, Myra raised her leg parallel to the ground. She used his grip like a spindle, twirling one last time with her leg fully extended like a plank. It was much slower than the others, giving her time to catch sight of the boy's lips popped open.
Once the last spin was done, she dropped her leg and rolled back towards him. Myra misjudged her amount of twirl and she curled up into Gavin's arms, her shoulder nudging against his chest. Trying to hide how self conscious she felt, she laughed and then promptly darted back like a skittish deer.
"That's a complicated twirl, that can also take out a few people who are dancing near you, so use with caution."
"I...I've never seen anything like that," he gasped as if she'd done something impressive. There were plenty of girls and women that could do the same, probably a few inside right now. But he was looking at her as if she moved a mountain.
With her cheeks fully cherry red and her stomach in flames, Myra turned to stare ahead and began to march him back into the steps. How many stupid dances had she done over the years? Her Dad had her attending them since she was able to walk. A lot of that was so he could use the excuse of 'the baby's acting up, I have to go.' When she stopped being a baby, and he'd just leave when he wished, Myra began to stick around. There were a lot of boys at first that wanted to dance, then were forced to, then really sweaty palm wanted to. Now it felt like she was back to the forced to part. Be nice to the bastard, she's important to the King. Maybe we can use her as leverage.
But this... She was waltzing around like a peacock in an orlesian flower bed without any music, clinging to a boy who'd never managed a step in his life and it was the realest the dancing ever felt. Magic. That was it. It reminded her of the first time she managed to cast a fireball on purpose, her stomach all twisted up in concentration, but elation when it caught and a bit of fear of what came next.
Oh shit. What comes next?
"Myra?" Gavin murmured, his always low voice practically rumbling in the air like thunder.
"Uh huh?" was all she could manage. The boy paused in his dancing and she matched. Turning towards him, she found he was framed by starlight, the brightest of them bursting behind his head. His amber eyes darted to the ground, Gavin knotting his fingers up in pure nervousness. What was he concerned about? Was he going to...? Her heart leapt into her throat as she stared dead center at his lips that were pursed with a barely concealed thought. Myra reached over to wrap her hands over his to try and smooth down the nerves.
"I've been thinking, wondering. Perhaps it's not my place to ask you, or question it. These things are..." Maker's breath, either spit it out or kiss me! Gavin's striking eyes raised and he stared dead set into hers, "Why did you stop writing to me?"
A punch to the gut winded Myra and she literally teetered back on her toes, partially to get a breath and also to keep from doing anything stupid. He didn't care about...that stuff with her. He only wanted to know about, of course, the friendship bits. Wincing, she dropped his hands and drew her palms over her forehead. Some of it was to yank back the stray hairs that crept closer, but a lot was to buy her more time.
"I should not have pried," Gavin raced to fill in. "It is your prerogative and..." he winced as if an arrow struck him to the heart. "I only feared that I did something or said something to, to offend you."
"No," she shouted so loudly it startled a few birds that'd been trying to sleep. "No, believe me if I'm offended I tell someone. Mom says I can't stop speaking my mind. It's..." You really walked into this one. What? You thought you could pull the vanishing act and then, boom, he'd forget? "I did it because I'm a very bad person."
"That's not true," Gavin insisted despite all evidence to the contrary.
"I'm always forgetting to answer letters. Shit, I wrote up most of the ones to my mom before we left so she couldn't yell at me or drag me home on a technicality. It's like 'Hey Myra, remember all that mail stuffed in your desk? Cause if you don't deal with it, the entire thing will collapse.'"
He didn't seem to buy it, his head listing to the side. "That makes sense," Gavin answered because there was nothing else to say. Calling her on her bullshit wasn't really his style. "I," he winced again, "I thought perhaps I was rather boring. It wasn't as if I had much to talk about."
"Nonsense, you were always going on about these wild things you read about and..." She kept every one of his letters, often reading them a few times. They were prolific in that winter between Myra's training sessions, coming once a week. But when she got the news she was staying at home, it...it didn't seem worth it. He lived on the other side of the country, she was never going back. He would never come to Denerim.
And you feared the day you'd have to read the letter where he talked about this beautiful girl he met in the market. How you'd have nothing to respond with beyond talking about Bryn. Rather than tell him, you stopped answering period.
"I'm sorry," Myra sputtered out. "I didn't meant to make you feel bad, though I can get why it would now. It just seemed like..."
"A lot of trouble, I understand," that armor was back. She'd seen it around others, Gavin often retreating inside of himself when he was being wary, but never around her.
Fumbling over, she gripped onto his hand and shrugged, "Like I'd get in a lot of trouble if I ever tried to hitch cross country." His eyebrows met in confusion and Myra struggled to explain her joke, "Because I'd want to see you again, because your letters were so... Never mind."
He smiled softly at her fumble and glanced down at their conjoined hands, "Are we friends?"
Myra threw on a smile of her own while she felt her insides melting. Friends. Yeah. Buddies. Comrades. People who were shoulders to cry on and nothing else. Just an old chum you'd chew the fat with and then head home with someone else. Why were you thinking there'd be anything more? Because he's nice to you? Because he sometimes smiles? Blighted look at him!
"Yeah," Myra nodded her head vigorously, "we're friends."
"Good," the stupid boy seemed grateful for her agreeing.
"Now," she tried to shake off the pain lodging in her throat, "let's give it one more go around the garden, then I think you'll be ready to try it for real on the dance floor."
Her partner smiled wider, his body locking back into formation. "Yes, ma'am." All those girls he'd snubbed would be bowled over by the few dance moves he could manage now. Pretty things that'd coo the right words at him. Smart women who wouldn't ignore his letters because their young hearts were stupid as a nug. "Right," Myra smiled, "from the top."