A Dance Without Sound [Invite Only]

[Jessica (DELETED 4028)]

Jessica was getting out of practice. Every day, she remembered her routines from before taking the job as one of Zodiac's teahouse employees, but she found herself struggling to perform the simple motions. So she made a simple choice to take Thursdays off work. For exercise, she told her coworkers, but she explained to her employer the real reason.

To practice.

Finding somewhere to practice wasn't hard, nor was digging up a set of workout gear, but the problem was finding the key element of her practice. A set of true noise-block earplugs that worked even for vampiric hearing. The usual foam just wouldn't do. She preferred to rehearse unable to hear a single thing going on around her.

This preference had little to do with Jessica herself and everything in the world to do with her brother, Luke, who she could honestly owe her ease of communication with her employer. She could smoothly switch between speech in private and American Sign Language in public, because in her parents' place, Jessica had learned the physical language to communicate with her Deaf brother. For an entire year, in fact, she had worn a pair of noise-cancelation earplugs so that she would have no other way to communicate.

Luke was her best friend, her brother, and the only person in the world she knew she could trust with anything. Where she had never been able to lie, he had always come up with a fib that got them out of their latest childish scheme, through their high school years. He'd supported her decision to become an exotic dancer, just as she had supported his choice of the culinary arts.

Around nine o'clock, Jessica, wearing a thick coat, jeans, and boots, with a small duffel over her shoulder, made her way up to the gym's cashier, four hundred dollars in hand to pay for the evening's use of the pole dance classroom.

"Hello, Ms. Young," the young man said as he greeted her. Another side effect of her inability to lie. The lack of ability to maintain a false identity. "The room is all ready for you."

"Thank you," she replied, handing over the money. Nearly two nights' pay, just to work out for a few hours. Granted, she was paying for the full user of a mirrored room by herself, and to have their cameras in that room temporarily offline so that they wouldn't catch her lack of reflection, but that point was moot. It was still a lot of money for a single evening.

"Let us know if you need anything else," he said. "The management was reluctant to shut down surveillance, but when they heard why..."

So she'd promised something that she wouldn't keep to just to get the cameras off. That didn't matter to her. She had no plans to strip nude for practice, but she was feigning ignorance of that promise. She could do that. Easy. "Tell then I said thanks," she said, grinning pleasantly. "And there might be a tip in it for you if you make sure that no one comes up."

The young man nodded vigorously, clearly unaware what a tip from her meant. He couldn't know. To know would mean that she'd seen him somewhere before, and he didn't look familiar. She was careful nowadays. After a couple slips early on, she was no longer reckless. She was careful. Quiet. Still in every way the same girl who'd run away from home three days before her eighteenth birthday, but far more dangerous.

She wielded magic many of her former peers would not understand, with how her bare hands could lay a lasting burn on undead flesh, and she could defy the laws of physics themselves by teleporting across the city. She took the stairs two at a time, making her way to the workout room she'd rented, and stepped inside, barring the door. "Time to have some fun," she said simply, giving the trio of poles in the center if the room a wide grin even as she shed her coat, boots, and pants in favor of her workout gear, setting the cardboard strip in the door's window.

From her duffel, she extracted two things. One was a small black cylindrical case, containing her earplugs. The other was a clear jewel case with a plain CD, a single word written on it in black Sharpie.

Practice.

She popped the disc into the stereo, pressed play, and cracked the case open, revealing solid black foam earplugs that formed to her ears
She ppressed these into her ears roughly as an old favorite practice song began to play. But she could still hear it. So, closing her eyes, she recited a quiet incantation. "Terpsichore, daughter of Zeus and muse of dance, bless me with this strange request. I cannot practice my art with the curse of sound. Please, I beg of thee, grant these mortal noise cancelation devices the ability to block sound from even my preternatural ears. Though I make no offering now, I swear to give one later. This, I vow by my blood as the progeny of Prudence."

The familiar curling of magic older than the sort she worked as part of her defense gave Jessica a chill as suddenly she was enfolded in a world without sound. Oh, it was glorious! She could feel the thrumming beat of the drums, the rip off the guitars, through her entire body, and she began to move.