The room had been cleared, and the music box had begun to plink out a sweet melody. Eris assumed a gallant looking starter position, her face aloof and unaffected, if not for the studious gaze that seemed to bore down upon Siffia. Though hesitant, Siffia soon placed herself cautiously into her embrace, putting herself into the stance that she believed she remembered while looking nervously up to Eris for confirmation.
“This is… correct, right?”
Though she was fairly certain it was, somehow now that she was actually doing it, Siffia couldn’t help but worry that she might be doing something laughably wrong without realizing it.
“Hmmm…”
After a few seconds of contemplation, Eris suddenly pursed her lips, breaking out of her stance to carefully make small adjustments to Siffia’s positioning here and there. With a brief nod of satisfaction, Eris raised her hand and loudly snapped her fingers, causing the magical music box to reset itself and begin its tune anew, before returning to her previously impeccable dancing position. And as the music ended its first phrase, marking where the dancing should begin, the pair finally began to move.
At first, Siffia was rather pleased with herself, flowing along with the movements with relative ease, seeming to remember how the steps were supposed to go. However, after around the minute mark, she managed to make an unfortunate mistake, taking the step a beat too late and tripping over herself slightly, causing her to start falling backwards.
“W-Wah-!”
Luckily, Eris easily caught the falling Siffia, using the hand that was placed at her waist to quickly yet gently pull her back into position. Unluckily, however, the momentum of the abrupt movement caused Siffia’s long, curtain-like hair to fling forward, swinging back into Siffia’s face and smacking right into her mouth, which had still been gaped open in shock.
Siffia repeatedly made an odd spitting noise, desperately reaching up to pull the strands of hair from her mouth, though she quickly stopped when she realized what a spectacle she was making of herself in front of Eris. Her eyebrows raised, and her cheeks soon flushed with embarrassment. She tried to smile and awkwardly laugh what she’d just done off, but that just made her all the more aware of the few strands that were still wetly clinging to her mouth, causing her to make yet another spitting noise.
However, she stopped instantly once she felt the touch of smooth, graceful fingertips against her face.
Slowly, as if handling something incredibly fragile, Eris moved the hairs away one by one, neatly rearranging Siffia’s hair with a ticklish touch, and putting it all perfectly back into its place. Her face came closer than before, peering so as not to miss even the tiniest of hairs, or even the most minute of details, absentmindedly coming closer and closer, until even the small, soft, concentration-filled breaths could be faintly felt against Siffia’s face.
Siffia, in reaction to this unexpected closeness and gentle handling, was stunned into complete stillness. Her heart had begun to beat so loudly in her chest, and yet for some reason, she was afraid to let a single sound escape and somehow give that fact away. It was as if she were slowly being filled with a stifling, overwhelming feeling, one that threatened to explode at any moment. It wasn’t until Eris was finally pleased with her grooming and straightened back into her previous dancing posture that Siffia felt like she had been released from some kind of terrible vice.
“Don’t be disheartened by what just happened. There are bound to be at least one or two mistakes when returning to something after such a long period has passed. Until that point you were doing excellently, so let’s try it all again, and see if you cannot do that step correctly this time.”
“Ah… Ye-Yes… Yes, the… the dancing. Thank you...”
Though it was still impossible for her to fully fix how shaken she still felt, Siffia quickly forced herself into the dancing form that Eris had shown her before, focusing her gaze elsewhere in an attempt to make herself calm down more swiftly. She could feel Eris staring at her with a questioning look, obviously noticing that she was still a bit out of sorts, but she refused to acknowledge it, instead giving a quick snap of her fingers and restarting the music box, trying to speed things along and distract herself.
Once again, the pair began to dance. But this time, after a few seconds had passed, Eris suddenly decided to speak to her.
“...That woman earlier. The one that was next to the Viscount. She must have been your mother, correct?”
“Hmm?”
Siffia couldn’t help but look up at Eris, confused by the random seeming question.
“Um, yes? Yes, she was.”
“I see… I thought as much.”
Though she continued to dance expertly, Eris’s hand, which had been loosely supporting Siffia’s as was proper posture, suddenly deviated from its place, coming to slowly comb itself through Siffia’s long, straight strands.
“Your hair color is just a shade darker than your mother’s deep purple hair. Perhaps it's because your father has such black hair himself…”
Siffia’s eyes widened for a moment. She unknowingly bit her lip. It was a miracle that she managed to not miss a step.
She truly didn’t know how to feel about what Eris had just said.
It was an observation that she’d heard all the time when she was younger and her secondary gender was still yet to manifest. If she became an omega, then everyone seemed to believe that her hair would naturally become a little bit brighter to match her mother’s. Conversely, if she were to present as an alpha, then no one would really care about how bland her hair was, as it would all become secondary to how capable she was.
But as soon as she was revealed to be an omega and her hair stayed just as dark as before, all comparisons to her mother’s pretty coloring swiftly faded away.
From that moment forward, she’d been mocked and mistreated for her disappointing coloration. It was as if she were some kind of defective being, like a flower that failed to grow petals and only had leaves. It was exactly this plain-ness that had ruined her life in this way.
And yet, despite the complex that she had over it, in the face of Eris, who repeatedly told her how beautiful she was and was even now stroking her hair as if it were something lovely, Siffia couldn’t bring herself to hate the familiar words.
“Yes… You must be right, Lady Eris.”
~~~
As if having reached some kind of catharsis, Siffia’s anxious heart had somehow managed to relax, and she passed the first dance as well as the next with barely any issue. It wasn’t until the third dance, a particularly slow style of dancing where one was especially pressed close against their partner, that Siffia suddenly became aware of the awkwardness of the situation that she was in once more.
“Ah… L-lady Eris, I… I don’t think I’m very, um… accustomed to this style of dance!”
“Of course not, they wouldn’t have taught you how to slow dance as a child. This is a dance only those who have come of age are expected to do. The steps to it are quite easy however, so I’m sure you’ll be perfectly fine after practicing it once with me.”
Siffia was all too aware of what the dance was and how it went, having seen it from afar during a good handful of events. But never once had she expected that she would be the one dancing it, with her body pressed lewdly against someone else as if she were embracing them!
“Um… Y-yes, it’s quite an easy dance, as you said. I think I get the gist of it now though, so perhaps we can-”
“I won’t have you running around improperly prepared at the banquet, Lady Siffia. If you believe you understand it then prove it to me by finishing this song without any mistakes. Only then will I believe you.”
“...Yes, Lady Eris.”
Siffia obediently shut her mouth and continued dancing, agonizing though it was. The song, characteristic to the style of slow dancing, seemed to drag on exceedingly long, and with each passing second, it felt as if Siffia was becoming more and more uncomfortably sensitive.
She was getting hotter and hotter, and Eris’s strong, trained arms around her felt heavier and heavier.
But just as Siffia was beginning to sweat and was about to open her mouth to say something, Eris beat her to the punch, taking in a deep sniff before suddenly speaking up.
“...Are you perhaps wearing some kind of perfume?”
“Hmm?”
As Siffia’s slowly overloading brain tried to understand the random-sounding question, Eris leaned in, their already closely pressed bodies coming somehow even closer. Siffia could just barely feel the tip of Eris’s nose tap against the exposed skin at the crook of her neck, causing her to lightly shiver.
And as she heard Eris taking progressively deeper and deeper breaths, and felt the ticklish air coming out and repeatedly flowing over her skin, Siffia felt as if she might just go crazy.
_____
Aaand with that cliff hanger, I have to sadly say that I'll be missing next week!
But hey, if you're impatient then maybe give this some considering?
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Aaay? Aaaaay~? >:^D