Re: carnival: sparrow/matt
He liked listening to her talk about things that sounded almost posed, memories that were a little too clean around the edges for all the dust and sepia. He saw her make some kind of decision about him, and wondered what it was.
Then she asked about the shoes, promised she had always loved ballet. He didn't need to ask if she said it because he'd brought it up, or because it was true. The dancer. There might never have been a dancer. Maybe he'd only seen the shoes, resting on their quiet shelf, poised in a back room before he did something it was important to forget.
He stood from that small chair when she moved toward the dresser, halfway, reflexive. "Only if you want to," he said. He didn't want her to wear ballet shoes for him, and put on tights because she thought it would make him happy. He believed from the warm expression on her face that she liked his company, and that she'd asked him here for more than the money he'd put in the barker's hand, but he wasn't that kind of man.
Maybe he had been. Who could say? But he wasn't now. She liked dancing, and if she wanted to dance in ballet shoes, it should be because she liked to, not because he paid someone.
The dancer. "Don't know," he said. That was honest, at least. Up close, his eyes were blue edging into green, and he searched her face for motive. This Sparrow was so soft, shiny curls like twisted yellow ribbon candy, with a sweetness not like anyone he could remember meeting. Hollow inside, kind in a way that didn't hit him false. He judged people on his gut feeling about them. It was a good asset for a soldier - there wasn't time to dawdle in long-form character dissection in a firefight. He wondered if she really hated carnival rides.