Princess in a Tower

A Mindset, A Way of Being

"Aww, Dalia, what's wrong?" Noa asked, gliding over to the taller, older dancer. She was sitting alone at one of the local cafes in town, staring out a nearby window with a despondent expression on her face, jaw resting on her knuckles. Someone like her shouldn't look so sad! Especially on a day as lovely as this!

"Hmm, what?" Dalia turned to her, surprised. "Ah, Noa Fukushima."

"The one and only," Noa grinned, stepping closer to Dalia's table.

"I'm sorry, was there something you wanted?" Dalia asked, having not heard Noa's earlier question.

"Well, not wanted, per se," Noa replied. "I was just wondering why you looked so sad."

"Sad?" Dalia blinked. She hadn't realized.

"Yeah, I noticed you were just staring out the window, kind of forlorn." Noa's forehead creased in concern.

"Oh, no, it's nothing." Dalia tried to flash her a charming smile and wave off her concern with an unconcerned hand, but Noa only shook her head.

"Come on now, Dalia, I can tell when something's eating someone!" Noa may not have always seemed it, but she was incredibly intelligent and observant. She was good with people, and just really smart in general. She could always tell when someone wasn't happy. There were so many cues.

For a moment, Dalia seemed reluctant to open up to her, to concede that Noa was correct and admit that something was wrong. But Noa was nothing if not persistent. She stood in front of Dalia, hands on her hips, eyes stern but caring. Caring. As severe as Noa's expression was, there was genuine concern in her eyes as well. She just wanted to help Dalia. What was so wrong about that?

Well, Dalia supposed that she could argue that it was not Noa's place, nor her responsibility, to help Dalia, or to even decide that Dalia needed help at all, let alone Noa's, as if Noa was some kind of expert! But...

Shouldn't think like that... Dalia shook her head at herself. Ok, yes, it was true, she'd been feeling rather moody of late, and that moodiness was affecting several other aspects of her life, including social interaction. In fact, it was a social interaction that started the whole mess in the first place.

Just a few days ago, one of the patrons at the bar was getting a little rowdy. Naturally, Dalia stepped up to the plate to make sure that nobody got hurt. She wasn't trying to be a hero or a knight in shining armor, per se, but it was her job as the bartender and bodyguard/bouncer to make sure that as drunk as people became, order still remained. The customers, however, were none too pleased to be stopped and lectured by Dalia. What a buzz-kill! But none of them dared tell her that to her face. She was much too scary.

With her eyes flashing, towering over them, hands on her hips, she didn't need to say a single word to send them all slinking away, tails between their legs. Dalia sighed as she watched them go, hands falling from her hips and ferocity falling from her face, the scowl turning into a frown. It was only made worse when, later that same night, she heard the same patrons whispering behind her back, speaking ill of her.

"Who even was that lady anyway? She looked so... nasty! And mean!"

"Yeah, did you see the way she was glaring?" The second patron shuddered. "If looks could kill..."

There were other snide remarks, bitter complaints that they'd been wrongfully accused, but those were some of the ones that stuck with Dalia the longest, even days after the event had taken place. Nasty? Mean? Scary? Was I being too harsh, too out of line?

Perhaps the patrons hadn't been doing anything wrong when Dalia intervened, but that was kind of part of her job. She wasn't supposed to wait for a situation to happen before she tried to de-escalate it. And yet, she was cast as the villain for trying to maintain the peace.