fandomhighdorms | Party on the roof, Dorm roof, Friday night

River looked up at the sky. Once it got dark enough the stars would be visible. She smiled. That would be decoration enough. The music was already playing and she tooka a few dance steps, then spun around, closing her eyes.

Still, to be a proper party there was a few other things needed, and River had made sure they were there. Buffy had let her borrow the CD-player they used for the cheerleader practice, and Isabel had brought a large collection of CDs. River herself had provided snacks, mainly the kind bought from a shop, and had mixed a non-alcoholic punch.

From somewhere a few bags of glitter had appeared, available for anyone who needed it. River frowned, then shrugged. She placed the chair she had promised Adah next to the stairs, hoping that she would brave the long climb up to the roof, and put a blanket on top of it.

[Up early because I'm in a timezone that makes me want to go to bed before everyone else. Everyone's invited to party and dance. ~~Wait for OCDs!~~ OCDs are up!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Adah smiled a bit ruefully. That wasn't at all what it was like with her and her sisters; more marching than dancing, always the same order. But River wanted dancing, not marching, so instead of the line of girls cutting through the forest behind a flame-headed woman of tall posture but slouched shoulders, she thought instead of the Congolese women, who lived their life every day in a dance. Swarthed in bolts of cloth that made Adah's head hurt with their bright colors, jarring, mish-mashed patterns, spangles, sparkles, crosshatching and gingham, all wrapped tightly around their bodies in ways that made the curve of their hips more noticable as they swayed, slightly shuffling, down the red dirt paths of the village. More colors, pink starbursts, orange flowers, over their heads, or coils and coils of hair, twisted and turned by the knotted experienced hands of Mama Lo. Still, perfectly balance on their head, at all time, despite the swirling turns they took, the graceful bends to pick a naked child off the ground, the deft avoidance of a stick in the road, was the world, their world, barely swaying. Baskets, blankets, pots of water and the day's fufu, which they'd just finished making in another dance of chanting, haunting songs, rhythmically beating their hands down on the rock, together, timed almost perfectly like heartbeats, until the white blant became pulpy and ready for consumption, every day, arms in the sun, trills in their throats to keep animals away and make Adah's head pount like the fufu on the rocks. Adah wasn't certain if anything would be as fascinating a dance as the ones those women danced, all for the mere sake of being alive and being able.

As Adah remembered the Congolese women dancing, River closed her eyes, smiling, her hands interpreting the movement if not the colour. She could sense the beat, but it wasn't like the words that had drawn her to Adah's room earlier this week. She rose to her feet from her crouched position next to Adah's chair, opened her eyes and extended a hand towards Adah. To anyone else it would have been an invitation to tug them towards the dance floor part of the roof, but to Adah it was a way to make her mind even louder. Not that it was necessary, but this was dancing, and dancing without a touch felt wrong somehow.

[And bedtime for me, woe]

Adah's eyes shifted again toward River's hand; she blinked at it as though uncertain what to do with it. Her own hand shifted, fingers brushing against the feather still clutched inside, soft down and supposed promises of death. Her mind was a terrible jumble of memories at the moment, clashing, slashing, habberdashing, and she didn't know what River intended. An offered hand was an offer to help, more often than not, which made Adah immediately reluctant. Besides, the feather...she couldn't trust her right hand to hold it, so, almost as if to create a defense, she clung to it tighter, drawing away a little.

Maybe it wasn't so much the possibility of help, because she knew River was fine with Adah staying where she was in the chair. She realized that it was merely a simple fear of a level of concrete intimacy. Bad enough that River could read her thoughts, but to add a level of solidity to it by taking her hand...It made panic start to slowly climb inside Adah; it made her mind instantly flit to excuses of exhaustion and pain from the stairs, although by the point, she was feeling fine.

River immediately pulled her hand back, a slight blush on her face. She looked down and took a step backwards, turning it into a dance step, followed by a slow spin, until she faced Adah again. "Just to dance," she said quietly. But there was no way she would push Adah. She tried to think of a way to make it up to her, and finally said: "Ecnad ot tsuj," while smiling a little.

It took a moment for Adah to pick that apart; she wasn't exactly used to hearing backwards poetry, but she couldn't help a small smile when she did get it pieced together. It isn't, she thought, dance, about always. Dance, prance, chance, romance, E. C. N. A. D. She wondered, not unkindly, if River ever stopped dancing, or if it was just in the nature of her name to constantly be flowing.

Didn't she ever just get tired of constant flow?

River giggled and spun around again. "Perception of the world. It's flowing, moving, shifting, like the sea. But now I'm stuck, not sure where to go, and dancing makes me forget." It made her forget well enough to still smile at Adah as she spoke. "Gniwolf ekil sesor no a revir." She started spinning around, fast, arms outstretched.

Party on the roof, Dorm roof, Friday night

Re: Mingle

Re: Mingle

Re: Mingle

Re: Mingle

Re: Mingle

Re: Mingle