Jia Li smiled at Adrian coyly. “Well, not off-hand, but if I find anyone, I’ll be sure to let you know.” For some reason, around this guy, she felt her old self from four years ago coming out. She used to be a social butterfly, and the dryad even used to be a bit of a tease, but all of that had ended in the hours it took to give her a wound that would scar her for life. However, covered as she was, she could almost forget it existed, and she could slip back into the social normalcy she’d once had down pat.
“Ah, well, for the most part, it’s a critic’s choice because obviously some judges are going to prefer certain dance routines over others, but they also keep the levels of difficulty, creativity, and execution in mind when they judge, so it’s a little fairer. I’ve always loved competing even when I don’t win.” For Jia Li, winning wasn’t everything. Dancing wasn’t her career choice, so she could afford to be relaxed about it. That didn’t mean she didn’t work hard at it. Ever since she was little, dancing had been an enormous part of her life, and while her father wasn’t nearly as amazing a dancer as the dryad’s mother was supposed to have been, he encouraged her all the way, and he even helped her where he could. Even after she’d surpassed his abilities, he had still been able to offer her insights into things he saw her do. Just because someone wasn’t as good at something as another person, it didn’t mean the other person couldn’t have valuable insights into what they saw.
“Oh, no. That’s fine. You can eat. I’m not hungry right now, so I’ll just go for tea. Um… I don’t know a lot of places. There’s a Caribou Coffee on campus, and there’s this small, independently owned coffee shop a little ways off campus. I can’t remember the name of it, but it has some pretty good pastries, and it has a variety of teas.” All coffee shops seemed to have selections of teas, too. Caribou Coffee had a few different selections of tea, too, and they were working to become more environmentally friendly all of the time.
So Adrian was a muse? That partially explained the rush of ideas that the dryad-female had gotten when she’d heard him play. Usually, when she heard music, she was able to get a few ideas about dance moves that could go well with it, but when she’d heard him playing, she had an entire dance almost perfectly choreographed to go along with the music. It was amazing. “Oh, no. She’s actually a siren.” Having gone to supernatural schools for her entire life, she had learned not to be ashamed of her race, but she often kept it to herself for as long as possible because she feared that someone would try to find her tree.
It was no secret that a dryad’s life force was connected to her tree. What happened to a dryad happened to a tree, and what happened to her or his tree happened to her or him as well. She had a terrible scar to prove it.
“Well, what’s your usual, go-to method? Most people tend to have a preferred style. Shakespeare went for sonnets most of the time. Others prefer free form or rhyming or haikus.” She liked poetry. It was wonderful to read how words could be taken and changed into symbols for other things. There were many profound lessons hidden into poetry much of the time.
“Do you need to go to your dorm first to drop off your violin?” She asked. Jia Li assumed they’d be going to get tea very soon.