Elegance at its Finest Open to 1 other Closed

A tune twisted through the castle. Asteria followed it like a girl on a mission. Lately, she had taken up exploring, meandering through the castle, poking into all the nooks and crannies. School work hadn't been that hard, her social life was essentially non-existent except for a bucketful of awkward confrontations, and so her free time was wide and open. It was wonderful to get lost and loose yourself in the process. At least, that's what she told herself.

The song was classical, a soft but stirring piece that her dad had put on the radio sometimes, attempting to instill an appreciation for fine art in his young daughter. Memories flashed of him playing it while cooking, pretending the spatula was a conductors baton and nearly burning dinner in the process. And so she followed it, listening keenly as it threaded through the calm of the castle, not quite breaking it, but weaving into it instead.

There wasn't any real rhyme or reason behind what she did. The impulsive reflex in her, the thing that told her to snap, to prod, to question, had simply acted and now she would not stop until she found the source. Her boots slapping quietly against the stone of the castle, she crept along until she came to the source of the music: the Ballroom.

It was strange really, how her hands acted as if they had a mind of their own, pulling at the door so she could peer in. She had found what she sought, but the potential consequences of intrusion were the farthest thing from her mind as she stared through the now ajar doorway. The girl inside all but took her breath away. There was something mesmerizing about the way she danced: it was like watching a pendulum move back and forth as it traced patterns in sand or staring at the patterns of clouds for too long - if you looked too long, you would get sucked into it, unable to look away until it was over.

Asteria barely even registered the dress the girl wore: out of place in every other room in the castle perhaps, but in here it fit. Instead, her eyes were glued to the dance, to the way the body could become poetry in motion. Her fingers itched for her notebook, wanting to write, to capture this moment in scattered fragments of words, but until the song ended, she was helpless. But end it did, the tune fading as if was swallowed by the castle, smothered by the vastness of the space.

And again, she found her hands acting against her volition, opening the door even more so that she could squeeze into this space not meant for two young girls alone, a cavernous room that demanded an entire castle's worth of humans to fill in. She began to clap, wanting the other girl to understand her appreciation. But as she clapped, her brain jumped into hyper-drive, realizing where she was and what she was doing and she began to flush a light pink. Stopping mid-clap, she squeaked out an explanation. "Hi, I was- I was just passing through and I saw you and wow! Wow! I didn't mean to intrude but that was, well, gorgeous." She flushed an even brighter red at this, one hand now scratching the back of her neck, the other fiddling with her robe slightly. "I'm- um, Asteria. Asteria Kurokawa. Again, I am so sorry for just coming in but- wow!"

@Brielle Gray