2014-11-20 - The Feeling of Bitter Disappointment, Shattered And Forgotten
| Title: The Feeling of Bitter Disappointment, Shattered And Forgotten | |
|---|---|
| Summary: Anteaterina has just had the worst day in her entire life. Mytho let her down, and she was embarrassed in front of the one person she swore to defeat. When Princess Tutu finds her and the shard of Mytho's heart which has come to rest with her poor, broken heart, will she be able to help Anteaterina let go of her grief? | |
| Who: | |
| Where: Gold Crown Town | |
| OOC - IC Date: probably december 2013 if we're going by where the last scene left off but time is a mutable concept so who knows - 20th November 2014 | |
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
The lawn is beautiful in the morning.
The sun rises, luminosity incarnate, golden glory that turns every dewdrop upon the grass into scintillating rainbow-hued diamond.
The fountain burbles, its surface as bright as glass, yet beneath, as dark and rich a blue as the endless dawnlit sky.
The hedges sing softly, leaf-harps played lightly by fingers of warm spring wind. Every note promises a perfect day.
Mytho sits on the edge of the slope, one leg stretched languidly in front of him, the other bent as sharply as a mis-hammered nail. Even so, the curve is lovely, though not quite as lovely as his eyes.
Matched in hue by that wonderful sun, this morning they almost seem to shine, as they look out over the world.
Almost.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
"I'm late! I'm late, I'm late, I'm laaate!", Duck had cried, falling out of her bed and hurriedly tossing birdseed at her fellow feathered friends and pulling on the last of her clothes even as she stumbled out through the hall.
It was only after she had scrambled out of the dormitary and halfway through the school grounds that she realised today was, in fact, not the day she thought it was, and that she did, in fact, have the morning free. Feeling incredibly foolish, Duck stops, and looks down at herself. Her skirt is crooked and her hair is a mess. 'I guess I'm just not very good at looking nice in a hurry... well, I am only a duck.'
Duck sighs, shakes her head, and it's only then that she notices the boy sitting down who probably saw all of that. Her face reddens, and she goes stiff. 'Senior Mytho must think I'm so weird! Oh, no, is it even weirder that I'm looking at him?!' Duck looks away, sharply. 'But wait -- no -- that's even weirder than that! No, no, I have to act like I meant to do that and it's normal! Okay, Duck! You can do it!'
Duck turns back to the tragic prince, and approaches him c a s u a l l y, waving and smiling. "Senior Mytho! Hi! Isn't it a nice day?" 'Of course it's a nice day!', Duck groans, inwardly, her smile stiffening a little as she realises just how much she's already bungling her perfect plan.
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
Mytho doesn't seem to notice Duck while she goes through her morning rituals; he seems transfixed by the splendor on the whole, but incapable of appreciating the individuality of the details. Or maybe he's just looking at the middle distance, the 'nothing' in 'everything and nothing'. Is it possible he isn't enjoying this beautiful morning at all?
He does turn when addressed, his feathery white hair stoked to heavenly brightness by the dawn. It makes a soft ruffling sound as it moves along his cheeks.
Looking up at Duck through his impossibly (and possibly illegally) long eyelashes guilelessly, he replies with his typical levels of enthusiasm, "Okay." He doesn't seem off-put by her weird smile or disheveled appearance, so there's that!
Then the silence hangs, pregnant in the air, pursuing the labor of awkwardness that is found along the way to the miracle of birth.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
'Senior Mytho is so serene! He really is a prince from a fairy tale... even someone as weird as me can't bother him!' And a beat passes, and Duck realises that she's ~staring~, and she claps a hand across her mouth and holds her breath rather than release it as a 'quack' to ruin her illusion of girlhood right here and now. And then she realises how strange /that/ must look, too.
"T-that's great!", Duck laughs, waving off her previous gesture and grinning just a little too wide. "Yeah! It really is a nice day, isn't it? Do you not have classes right now either, Senior Mytho?" 'Of course he doesn't! Do you think that the kind and considerate Mytho would skip class?! Ohhhh, Duck you're /hopeless/!'
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
The line of Mytho's neck pulls as he shifts his stare upwards. At first it seems like he's gauging the time from the position of the sun -- but no, there's the belltower, and clocktower, both in one. It may not be putting on its mechanical play right at the moment, but it has humbler uses.
"No," he agrees with a soft sort of amicability -- it's too early for class. Classes don't start for another half an hour. His eyes flicker back downwards, and for the briefest of moments, they look /directly/ at Duck, right into her eyes. It is easy to think that his expression is gentle, that there's just the hint of a serene smile tucked beyond the horizon of his lips.
That is a dawn that will never come, however, as the story currently stands.
---
Offscreen, someone cackles, then leans forward intently.
He sips his tea.
---
Yesterday was the worst day of Anteaterina's life, or so she believes. Having lost that legendary pas de deux to Rue, she feels she has lost everything. She ran out of the classroom, and hasn't been seen since.
But now she's here, her presence like a thundercloud. Tongue slashing in and out like a red whip, the tip of her tail twitching back and forth, her claws bursting straight through her slippers to rend holes in the ground with every step, she stalks towards Mytho, straight past Duck.
"Out of my way!!" she shrieks at the latter. "You -- this is all your fault, you stupid, limp... doll! You knew that if you danced poorly, Rue would humiliate me! You set me up!"
"...not really," murmurs Mytho absently, glancing at the howling maiden only sidelong.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
"No, of course! I don't either. I mean, if I did, I wouldn't be out here! I'd be in class! Ehehehe..." Duck curls her hands together in front of her, and her dismay at her inability to talk to the Prince is overtaken in a moment as she looks back into Mytho's eyes.
They're perfectly still, like a quiet pond. But... somehow, they look so sad.
'How can I help you, my Prince?', Duck thinks, as her expression quiets and her inner monologue turns to that one thought.
Unfortunately, it's a peace which is soon shattered. So lost in his eyes, Duck doesn't even hear Anteaterina until she's upon them, shoving past her to get to the boy. "Ah--!" Duck cries, stumbling back a step, one hand coming up to her chest. Her words come immediately -- she's not the sort of girl who can stop to consider them, not right now. "Miss Anteaterina! Senior Mytho would never do that to you!"
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
Duck, as Rue's partner in the crime of ruining Anteaterina's life forever, may have made a tactical error in engaging this.
"And YOU! Are you here to laugh at me? You're the worst of all! You slack off in class, shaming the school, and you only do your best in order to hurt other people! To hurt me!"
Tears leak from the corners of her eyes. Though her words are spoken in anger, the last of them ring with truth. She is hurt. Terribly hurt.
The bells ring to herald the start of class, and Mytho quietly gets to his feet and starts heading that direction. His head is bowed -- in sadness? However, Anteaterina does the opposite, and pelts all-out towards the forest. There's no way she can face the class like this. Face Rue. Least of all face herself.
Though she disappears into the treeline, she hasn't gone far. It's easy to hear her as she tears up the ground looking for ants, gorging herself in the depths of her misery.
"It's not fair! Not fair! Not fair not fair not fair!"
She screams her fury and her anguish... more of both than a girl her age should hold.
Could contain.
But then, this is more than just her feelings.
If Duck gets close, her pendant starts to shimmer...
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
"No! N-no, that's not true at all!" Duck shakes her head, her face stricken with distress. Anteaterina is so upset...! "Miss Anteaterina--!"
The bells sound, interrupting Duck before she can even finish her sentence. She takes in a breath, looking to Mytho as he stands to go to class, despite the strong emotions Anteaterina is screaming to the world. In that moment, Anteaterina, too, leaves -- but she doesn't run to class. She runs away, and Duck runs after her, because she's upset and in pain and Duck can't just leave her alone.
All she has to do is follow the sounds of sobbing and torn earth, and even a clumsy duck can move quietly given /that/ much cover. Unheard, she approaches Anteaterina... but before she can reach out and speak to her, her pendant glimmers red, and something red glimmers by Anteaterina... Duck gasps, and pauses, her hand curling back to the necklace which makes her into a girl, and the girl, into Princess Tutu. Because it's not just red light, it's --
'Senior Mytho...?'
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
For a brief moment, all of Anteaterina shines with the light of heart's blood. Then He is there beside her, a ghost in a truly princely tunic, leaning beside her, comforting her.
"I know how you feel. Go on and cry," 'Mytho' urges. But that can't be Mytho -- he just went inside. This Mytho gently clasps Anteaterina's weeping head to his brest, his cheek nuzzling her nose. "It IS unfair."
"It's so unfair, it hurts!" weeps Anteaterina softly. "Please, stay with me forever."
There's something about the apparition's eyes that are utterly unlike the golden lamps of the 'true' Mytho. It's because there's something living there, behind those windows to the soul. There's pain in them, but also... hunger.
"Of course. I need you. I need your broken heart."
His smile is terribly, terribly wrong, like a dagger's slash across his noble face. The expression remains even as their nestling is interrupted by the arrival of Princess Tutu.
Anteaterina senses her more than she sees her, buried in Mytho's breast as she was. Still, she's quick to leap to her feet and turn around. "Who are you," she asks, without even wanting an answer. It's not a question -- it's a rejection. "Have you come to laugh at me as well?!"
Behind her, directly in her shadow, Mytho inclines his head encouragingly... aggressively.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
Duck watches, transfixed, from behind the tree. "But," she murmurs to herself, her inner monologue spilling out over her lips, "but how could that...?" 'I need your broken heart,' Mytho says, a Mytho whose smile is too sharp and whose eyes are not a mirror. Duck gasps, her eyes widening as her upper body shifts back, shoulders back, head back. "That's--!!"
Her pendant shines, and from a golden egg hatches the ineffable Princess Tutu, who rises to relevé and steps out, revealing herself. "No, Anteaterina." Her voice is calm, gentle, and kind: entirely unlike the flailing, hapless Duck. "But the one next to you is not truly your partner." Still smiling, her hands rise above her, circling around each other in the mime for 'dance', before reaching out to the hurt girl before her -- she says it with her body before the words ever leave her mouth, but leave her mouth they do. "Please, Anteaterina... won't you dance with me?"
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
Anteaterina, trailing more of that red light, glares daggers at Princess Tutu. "I refuse! You couldn't possibly understand how I feel!" The forest around them is fading to outlines, the light that beats down reducing all things to the essence of itself. As the girl's arms lift, her uniform sheds like a snake's skin, revealing her own leotard and slippers beneath.
She dances, but not with Tutu.
Mytho looking on, she dances alone, whirling around and around in the saddest and most lonely Trente-deux Fouettés en Tournant that has ever been performed. She spins and spins, attempting that most dangerous and legendary of prima ballerina feats.
One...
The mossy ground thickens to harsh rock and desert sand.
Two...
A windstorm whips up, the pain in the girl's heart, as fanned into full flame by the heart shard, howling its rage. It batters and blasts, trying to keep everyone away, no matter what.
Three...
Anteaterina, each time her face returns to the fore, is still glaring at Tutu, defying her, daring her to argue, to object, to declaim.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
It is an impressing display, each movement skilled, sharp, expert. And it is so full of hurt and pain and suffering that Princess Tutu's heart aches. She reaches out, against the wind and the buffeting sand, crying out over the din of the gale. "Anteaterina!" The sand catches in her throat, and as Anteaterina makes another turn and summons another gust, Princess Tutu has to bring up a hand to try and protect her eyes. But she does not turn away, does not scurry into the desert, does not run from Anteaterina and her pain.
She can't. She won't. It reads in her eyes, the way she raises her voice over the sandstorm. "Is this violence... really your way of dancing?!"
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
Four...
Pillars of jagged rock are rising out of the desert in a ghastly ring. To be blown against one would be death by obsidian incision. "Yes!" screams Anteaterina, but quickly, too quickly. She clings to this idea like life itself, because it has been her bulwark for so long.
Five...
"To make the audience surrender!"
Surrender, as she did, her heart in her throat, the first time she saw the class idol leap into the air and return to Earth as though an angel descended from Heaven, blessing the ground with the tip of her toes. She'll never forget that feeling.
She must /force/ everyone else to experience it, when they see her.
"THAT is art!"
Six...
The sandstorm leaps up another notch of intensity. "THIS is my way of dancing!" the girl at the eye shouts proudly, but also painfully. It is not dissimilar to a toddler who decides that handstands are /the/ correct way to walk, and that they will do it, /no matter what/. /Because/.
Seven...
Because she has to. She has to prove that one wrong. By any means necessary. She'll work harder, train harder, dream harder. "There's no such thing as destiny!" she adds. "No talent that cannot be overcome with my hard work! I /WILL/ win!"
Win at what, really?
Mytho looks on impassionately.
Eight...
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
The rocks rise, threatening to pin Princess Tutu into the deadly arena. But she's already accepted it. "Why do you feel that dancing is such a competition?!"
She leaps -- forward, not back, into the whirlwind before her. But the storm is too strong, now, too strong even for Princess Tutu to pierce through with her love and her devotion and her heart which aches for Anteaterina's heart. The wind plucks her from the air and dashes her to the ground with all the ferocity of the girl's pain.
She should be still, now. She should be broken. She should have seen the strength of Anteaterina's conviction and been smashed upon it. But Tutu pushes herself up, cries out to her again: "Why must you win so badly?!"
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
Anteaterina's eyes tell the story. They tell the story of now, where Tutu's words strike her straight to the heart, darts of clarity, and they tell the story of then, the day that an innocent girl lost her heart first to the art of ballet, and then to darker forces.
Weakened, tainted by jealousy, wounded in pride, she was easy prey for Mytho's shard.
"BECAUSE SHE SAID IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE!" The truth rips out of her like a lanced boil, which is not all that far from the truth. Princess Tutu, even now, is moving through her storm with such determination, and it rings with conviction... as she, herself, does not.
Nine, ten, twelve... fifteen...
She spins like a top, desperate to hold onto the lie that has driven her for so long, but it is an unstable spin, precessing. The right words would knock her off balance completely.
"Because I want to dance like Rue-sama, and no matter what she says, I'll do anything it takes to win!"
...twenty...
Tears pour down her cheeks. Even with the magic, her legs feel like they're about to break.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
Princess Tutu pushes herself to her feet, even though the sand catches at her namesake clothes and threatens to send her sailing away like so many feathers. She rises back to her toes, and she dances forward, toes on the sand as if the rest of her were weightless.
She can almost see it, the pain weighing down her heart, the pain which stings and tears at her throat as she spits words like slings and arrows. A horrible pain, a damning pain, and yet...
"Those feelings are not truly your own, Anteaterina," Princess Tutu says, coming to a stop before her and reaching out. The storm does not sway her again, does not cause her to turn away.
She looks up to Anteaterina, and her eyes are compassionate, and understanding, and kind.
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
Princess Tutu's eyes are also blue.
Blue, like the lake of water that springs into existence beneath Anteaterina's toes, mirror-flat and all-consuming. The fresh scent of a winter lake pours upwards, banishing the dry air and the tension carried within it.
It isn't a pool of tears, but they come as well, beading at the girl's eyes as she gazes into that of the Princess. But no longer are they expressions of agony. Now they are simply release.
Her shaggy arms coming up for a beautiful twirl, Anteaterina -- finally -- leans forward, and ceases to dance all alone. But her steps are tentative, confused, perhaps a little overwhelmed.
It is up to Princess Tutu to lead this pas de deux.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
The desert gives way to endless blue, the parched sand becoming water, cool, calm water. No longer hostile to all life, but instead cradling it, fostering it, sheltering it in its oldest forms. Anteaterina never wanted to cut everyone so deep, did she? Water is a much better backdrop for her performance.
"Please, show me how you truly dance, Anteaterina." Princess Tutu encourages her as she takes her hand, leading her into the dance slowly but surely. "Without that bitterness and hatred... I'm sure it will be much more beautiful!"
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
And so it is.
Anteaterina bends more gracefully than a willow in the wind. She swirls, and is as lovely as wildflowers in the field. Her leotard is gloriously rich against the paler blue of the lake, and her eyes shining like the endless sky.
"I feel so light... so free... so happy!"
She follows Tutu's steps, and tentatively, gloriously, tries a few of her own. The thought explodes from her heart and out her mouth without her even realizing it.
"I /love/ to dance!" For its own sake, for her own sake, not for anyone or anything else. She quivers with catharsis, her tears flicking off into the air around her until there is nothing left but a watery, long-tongued smile.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
And so it happens that they are dancing together -- when Anteaterina finds the courage to make her own steps, Princess Tutu moves with them, emphasising and supporting the other girl's grace and relief. She is there to complete Anteaterina's dance, but it is Anteaterina's, first and foremost.
"Dancing with freedom and joy... yes, this is truly your way of dancing!" Princess Tutu is so, so glad that Anteaterina has found that truth, has realised her precious feelings. And she will dance with Anteaterina until her heart is content, because she is blessed to be part of this dance.
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
They dance forever and a day, but eventually, enraptured in her dance, in the bliss that Princess Tutu has fanned within her, Anteaterina pirouettes away.
Another remains, a dark red glow in this pristine blue space. Mytho, or the one who looks like him, floats downwards towards the Princess, his expression as bereft as Anteaterina's had been, as though all of her suffering has been returned to him.
He clasps her hands lightly, intangibly.
"I am the feeling of bitter disappointment, shattered and forgotten," he explains, and though his voice is hollow and strange and desperately sad, it contains more emotion in those few words than Duck has ever seen Mytho express.
There is no warmth in his ghostly palms as they hover over Tutu's, but a great deal of coldness in his voice. Not the icy gale of cruelty or rejection -- but the freeze of someone who is alone, out in the winter storm, desperate to find even the slightest pile of rags near a brightly-lit window so that they will be warmer, and even slightly less alone.
"Must I wander again?"
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
The heart-red glow becomes Mytho's image, and Princess Tutu smiles as he takes her hands. He is a piece of Mytho's heart -- she knows this, even as she sees the sadness and suffering in his eyes. Despite his sadness, he is a part of Mytho. Even sad feelings, when true to your heart, are precious and important.
It must be so. The Prince needs his heart back.
"This is not the place where you belong," Princess Tutu explains, gentle and calm and kind. "You need to return to Mytho... you are a precious part of Mytho's heart."
<Pose Tracker> Mytho [Infinity Institute (10)] has posed.
"I can go back?"
It is morning all over again, a beautiful morning, simply from the staggered look in Bitter Disappointment's eyes. They are luminescent, enkindled with the greatest emotion of all, one which dare not speak its name. His eyes crinkle just a little, his lips begin to smile, and Tutu gets just the slightest glimpse of what her Prince might be like once he's restored. "I'm so glad..."
Then the apparition dissolves into a cloud of red sparkles, which congeal in Tutu's palm, a literal shard rather than a figurative one.
And the true Mytho, the Mytho who has emptied himself, steps out from behind a tree. Apparently he didn't go to class after all. In actuality, he walked out in the middle (leaving an infuriated Mr. Cat cleaning himself on the floor), drawn like a magnet for reasons he doesn't understand.
Cannot understand.
He stares at Tutu -- gapes, really, which is about as much as he can express right now. He remembers her from the other times. Falling, always falling. And like a force of nature, she's there to catch him.
The shard twinkles in her palm.
<Pose Tracker> Duck [Infinity Institute (9)] has posed.
Princess Tutu nods, and smiles. When the feelings of Bitter Disappointment collect into a shard of a heart in her palm, even the maiden of the dance must look on in wonder, her amazed smile crinkling at the corners of her eyes.
She's found a piece of the Prince's heart. She's really, truly going to help him get his heart back...
Footsteps announce another guest, and Princess Tutu turns to find Mytho, the real and tragically heartless Mytho, stepping into the clearing. She stretches her hands out, tilting her cupped palms towards him, to offer the shard to the Prince with which it belongs. And she smiles as it goes to him, happiness in her eyes... But when she hears others coming, she realises that she should go. She turns, and in a few, graceful steps and leaps, she disappears into the forest.
Princess Tutu...? The Prince's dutiful savior has gone.
