Beneath Dragon Hide - FF9 - PG
Fandom: Final Fantasy IX
Title: Beneath Dragon Hide
Rating: PG
Word Count: 597
Note: Reflective. Freya. Posted March 5, 2008.
Summary: Freya's thoughts about Cleyra, dancing, girlhood, and being a Dragon Knight.
Dancing is a visceral memory. It rises up to chew on ankles and knees. It coaxes rhythm in strained calves and thighs. It rides up arms, putting pressure on wrists, politely asks you to elegantly arch. Feet straight, knees out, and then whoosh. The pattern of your legs, the rhythm a rat-tat-tating in your head like the tapping nail of a claw. And your body will know because dance is invisible and its hands are gently prompting and your body has learned how to oblige.
Freya couldn’t have believed, not for a million raindrops, not for a sliver of sunshine, that she would be dancing again. Not when she was young. Hardly even now. She feels strange weaving in and out between Cleyrian dancers with wrists arched elegantly and prancing feet. It could be the magic of the sandstorm humming through her veins. But she knows better. It’s memory, as visceral as any can be, and it’s like it has been there all along, the silver lining of her bones waiting to be set free. To possess.
But it is such an old memory. A lost thing. A-a girl thing.
When she was a child, Bishop Mahondry required her to take dance and symbology and flower arrangement classes. Nevermind that she was a knight in training, she was a girl knight in training. The only girl knight in training.
Oh how she loathed it then. She became a target for bored boys, for disapproving adults, for cruel girls. She’d find worms in her desk and spit in her hair. She’d get detention and extra homework for falling asleep in class, for struggling with a problem. Boy’s would kick at her shins, toss her bag around, elbow her till she bruised. And she was angry. So angry to find such opposition, because weren’t dreams supposed to be chased after?
No one seemed to understand. Not even Fratley. Especially not Fratley. It was a requirement for him, after all. A duty. His father and his father and his father had been Dragoons. And he was good at it, to an unnerving degree, but he hadn’t loved it. Not like she had, yet.
But he taught her all the same.
She remembers Fratley’s hands on her shoulders, urging her into her steps with his calm patience. Ghosting fingers against her skin. He had had to learn it, he told her, and so did she. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, he said, because maybe one day you’ll need it. Maybe one day it will make a difference.
She had scoffed then. She was a dragoon, not an artisan. Why should she master something not of her craft? And yet here she is now, wrists and ankles bent for the most sacred of dances. A dragoon and a dancer, a girl in a boy in a girl. It is strange, this niggling in her stomach like horse flies swarming, like exhilaration. Maybe it is Fratley’s presence earlier that has made her so, but somehow she knows better.
This is the crossroads. Dreams in reality. She’ll chew herself open just to see this real epiphany, because it’s the extraordinary juxtaposition of things terrible in their singularity. Girl things and boy things, so petulant and destructive. And far from cloying, Freya can’t breathe in enough of it, even if she is grown and should be past these insecurities.
It is a revelation. A nawing, slow creature rising in her like water tides. With it, she can finally find it in herself to forgive. Not Bishop Mahondry, not the children, not Fratley.
Herself.
Title: Beneath Dragon Hide
Rating: PG
Word Count: 597
Note: Reflective. Freya. Posted March 5, 2008.
Summary: Freya's thoughts about Cleyra, dancing, girlhood, and being a Dragon Knight.
Dancing is a visceral memory. It rises up to chew on ankles and knees. It coaxes rhythm in strained calves and thighs. It rides up arms, putting pressure on wrists, politely asks you to elegantly arch. Feet straight, knees out, and then whoosh. The pattern of your legs, the rhythm a rat-tat-tating in your head like the tapping nail of a claw. And your body will know because dance is invisible and its hands are gently prompting and your body has learned how to oblige.
Freya couldn’t have believed, not for a million raindrops, not for a sliver of sunshine, that she would be dancing again. Not when she was young. Hardly even now. She feels strange weaving in and out between Cleyrian dancers with wrists arched elegantly and prancing feet. It could be the magic of the sandstorm humming through her veins. But she knows better. It’s memory, as visceral as any can be, and it’s like it has been there all along, the silver lining of her bones waiting to be set free. To possess.
But it is such an old memory. A lost thing. A-a girl thing.
When she was a child, Bishop Mahondry required her to take dance and symbology and flower arrangement classes. Nevermind that she was a knight in training, she was a girl knight in training. The only girl knight in training.
Oh how she loathed it then. She became a target for bored boys, for disapproving adults, for cruel girls. She’d find worms in her desk and spit in her hair. She’d get detention and extra homework for falling asleep in class, for struggling with a problem. Boy’s would kick at her shins, toss her bag around, elbow her till she bruised. And she was angry. So angry to find such opposition, because weren’t dreams supposed to be chased after?
No one seemed to understand. Not even Fratley. Especially not Fratley. It was a requirement for him, after all. A duty. His father and his father and his father had been Dragoons. And he was good at it, to an unnerving degree, but he hadn’t loved it. Not like she had, yet.
But he taught her all the same.
She remembers Fratley’s hands on her shoulders, urging her into her steps with his calm patience. Ghosting fingers against her skin. He had had to learn it, he told her, and so did she. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, he said, because maybe one day you’ll need it. Maybe one day it will make a difference.
She had scoffed then. She was a dragoon, not an artisan. Why should she master something not of her craft? And yet here she is now, wrists and ankles bent for the most sacred of dances. A dragoon and a dancer, a girl in a boy in a girl. It is strange, this niggling in her stomach like horse flies swarming, like exhilaration. Maybe it is Fratley’s presence earlier that has made her so, but somehow she knows better.
This is the crossroads. Dreams in reality. She’ll chew herself open just to see this real epiphany, because it’s the extraordinary juxtaposition of things terrible in their singularity. Girl things and boy things, so petulant and destructive. And far from cloying, Freya can’t breathe in enough of it, even if she is grown and should be past these insecurities.
It is a revelation. A nawing, slow creature rising in her like water tides. With it, she can finally find it in herself to forgive. Not Bishop Mahondry, not the children, not Fratley.
Herself.