Dance and Dance Again

[Die Shize 4672]

 

  

Music OOC

Spoiler

 

 

The Rising Star

It was two o’clock when the bell rang, signalling the prince to rise from his chair even as its cushion beckoned him to never leave it, his aching bones kept so warm before the hearth. Each time the flame flickered it was like his own two feet were dancing. Each crackle of the fire was like a call from a chime; no hourly bell of service or servitude but the stroke of a triangle to take him out of his square of an existence.

 

“O but were it not for the destiny and duty of my lineage, my frail and feeble fireplace, I might yet die in this plump and purple chair as happily as my father in his deathbed.”

 

With a sigh, the prince rose, or attempted to. 

 

“Dare ye!?” Called his page. “O Master, what have I told you!? You will get no further than the floor without my help!” She tutted as she helped her prince into his other chair, despite the young man’s reluctance, before gently rolling him across the carpet toward the door. 

 

“Truly, my prince, I should swat you over the head with a broomstick—”
 

---

“Terrible, utterly terrible,” the prince in his own right shook his head as he crumpled the paper up and tossed it over a shoulder. “No finesse! No feeling! No flipping magic whatsoever!” It was his turn to tut—at the prince, at the script, at the dialogue and the story and the setting and the very desk that he had not dusted since his maid had passed away only to be replaced by a mad manservant of a man servant. 

“BEKKINS!” The actor and the artist called across the chamber as he beckoned for his butler. Not quite a maid on that note but what's the difference? “Bekkins, are you out there, you useless swine of a slug!? My glass is half full and I am bored of blinking at it.”

 

A forty-something-something-year-old man strolled into the manor’s study with a towel-something draped over a forearm, pacing ever so slowly toward his master’s desk. “Is it half full, Master?” He blinked down at the glass of red wine. “Or is it half empty?”

 

A moment of silence ensued, both men staring one another down, before the corners of their lips cracked and their smiles said more than a thousand words in a script.

 

“O Bekkins, what on earth would I do without you?” The director and the dictator lamented in jest, though with just as much truth.

 

“Answer the front door for yourself, I would imagine. Your appointment has just arrived, Jethro informs me.”

 

“Ahh that brilliant bugger of a security guard. Probably just found his exciting hour of the day beyond propping his feet up reading Terran tales in the guard house. Macy has cleaned up, I trust?”

 

“Dutifully so,” Bekkins assured. “House is spotless, Master.”

 

The master blinked at his desk but thought better of it. “Good. I should like to keep it that way.” Though not sure for how long when it comes to foreign footprints. 

 

Sighing like a crippled prince, the acting director and artistic dictator straightened his purple-grey jacket and rose from his chair. He needed no help to carry himself from second floor to first, barely a beat in his gait as he found the foyer to be met by the manor’s staff. They were lined up on either side like troopers to a commander, the latter considering opening the door himself before gesturing toward an underling to do so for him.

 

“His name again?”

 

“Hm?” Bekkins answered beside him. “Oh, no, Master, your he is a she. Her name is—”

 

The door opened just then, and stepping through it was  . . . 

Edited February 7, 2021 by Die Shize