Lead & Follow

Plié

Part 1: Lead

First Movement, Plié

Plié pli·é

/plēˈā/

noun: a movement in which a dancer bends the knees and straightens them again, usually with the feet turned out and heels firmly on the ground.

verb: perform a plié

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[Spoilers ahead, so play the Baxter DLC 1st please.]

It begins with a bend, as you tilt forward to retrieve the flower which has fallen from your carefully coiffed [h/c] locks. The slightly crumpled white poppy is a perfect match for the checkerboard floor beneath your feet.

"Oh, man," you titter as your fingers brush against the soft petals, chilled by the evening breeze–but your hand does not make purchase. 

This particular flower is important to you for many reasons–it is the finishing touch of a loving mother to your first excuse for dawning formal wear; it is freshly plucked from your hill and your cherished swathe of wild poppies which grows just beyond your childhood home; it is the focal point of the lone compliment you've received from your maybe, kind - of date tonight. 

' T-The poppy is a nice touch, [Name].'

But now, it is perched between the nimble fingers of an unfamiliar hand. Your gaze raises at a snail's pace up from the dance floor and into the charming brown eyes of a boy your age.

"I beg your pardon," he murmurs with a smile which reflects not an ounce of the pause his voice gives. "But I was under the impression you hadn't yet noticed its absence."

He carefully extends the fallen accessory to you, and you worry your clammy fingers won't manage the hand-off well. You pluck it from him gingerly, your thumb and pointer hooked just below the base of the petals, and you blush when a few wayward digits brush his own.

"T-Thanks," you squeak because though you are grateful you are also a bit mortified to have been perceived by such a handsome face. "I almost didn't."

"That would have been a pity," he laments, though his smile never wavers. "I find there to be no better accessory than a touch of monochrome."

The way he talks is a bit stilted, and the obvious perusal of your fancy attire feels at odds with the tone of your night. 

His look is perfectly tailored and without nary a single wrinkle in the fabric of his fine suit, and his pin-straight ebony locks fall into his dark eyes with all the drawn elegance of a comic book's male lead. 

Your meeting feels like the first stroke of good luck the evening has allowed for you, and, to your fiction-addled adolescent brain, something like fate too.

A handsome boy has deigned to break away from his place in this fantasy setting–this unfamiliar world of twinkle lights and sweet-nothings underneath a bowl of spying stars and moon-brightened clouds, and he is doing so for you.

You wonder if he can sense your estrangement from the so-called soiree around you–if despite the dim lighting of the summer evening he can still glimpse the damp sheen beneath your eyes, the slight swell of your eyelids from the brief moment of distress you'd allowed yourself in the privacy of a bathroom stall.