Just for a moment Tianic is the center of the world. 

Everything has turned to her; everything is waiting for her. She just needs to take a deep breath and trust herself to do something good. She needs to let her sword move and feel out the shape of the dance. Even in a moment like this it's not free flowing, she'll take a stance and then second guess herself and take another. She'll backtrack, hesitate, and then commit to her original intention, maybe perceiving the flaw lay elsewhere all along. She stops for a moment to think but even as she thinks the dance has its own momentum. This isn't anything special. It's just her thoughts and daydreams and the work of her stuttering hands. 

She doesn't feel like doing this will make her be loved. Love is such a strange and scary thing and there's no way this humble offering would be enough for that. She doesn't feel like doing this will make her beautiful. She's an amateur, a beginner, and she doesn't really believe she'll be a real princess one day. She doesn't do it because she has to, although she does has to. The sword comes into her hand like a compulsion, like an addiction, like sleeping - she practiced it all these years because it didn't let her not. But that doesn't make her good at it, doesn't make her confident in it, even now. She's not from a famous line of warriors, she doesn't have professional training, she's not friends with anyone and she's not even sure she could become friends with anyone. She has a hobby that she has to do because she's been doing it for so long she doesn't know how to operate without doing it but that doesn't mean she's good at it. Doesn't mean she's good enough to show this to anyone else.

But she was [i]asked[/i] to show it.

And... nobody ever did that before. Nobody took an interest in her, her secrets, her heart. She would pour her heart into the sand every night for so long and that was just between her and the sand. Even if people knew she practiced it wasn't like they wanted to see it, just to comment on it, maybe encouragingly tell her she could be a princess someday. If she had practice partners they didn't even really want to see it either. She could just fall into being a mobile training opponent for them, constructing a test of steel and then sitting back to see if they could solve it. And oftentimes they could! They soared and exceeded themselves and mastered perfect techniques and became heroes and she smiled for them so happily and planned the next test. Nobody had asked if there was anything she wanted to work on, nobody paid attention when she did, nobody would carve for her riddles of steel that she'd need to become better than herself to solve. And so her secrets remained secret even as her hands became steadier and her flow became more confident and her technique became refined. She learned the styles that were popular and dreamed of the ones that would be satisfying, and that had to be enough. Because as far as she knew she was the only one who took an interest in the techniques of her opponents and if she took the time to focus on herself then there wouldn't be anyone like that left in the world. 

And she didn't mind! She didn't mind at all, being the mirror. She got to see such marvels in bladework, got to see so many maidens blossom as they learned to navigate her webs. She got to indulge her habit, her reflex, and see wonders along the way and though she envied her opponents it was a good natured, wistful envy. It wasn't ever about her, in the end. 

Except for now. When it suddenly was. 

The world had turned around in this strange moment and she was its center. She was the storm which every eye was focused on. She was being asked to lead. She was being [i]asked[/i]. Someone wanted to know her secrets. They wanted to see what was in her heart. Even when she'd come into this arena, resolved to win, she hadn't imagined for a moment that she would. She didn't ever see herself as the hero of her story, and so to lose to a wolf in the first round had seemed as easy as lying. But somehow the moment had come, the story had found her, and she wasn't just a riddle of bladework any more. She was Tianic and she'd been here all along and her story was written in the sand, line after line. Nobody could do this. Nobody could do this like her. She knew that, and she wasn't proud of it - she was just touched that somebody had wanted to see her do it. To see what she was capable of. Who wanted to see her heart more than they'd wanted to express their own. 

So that was why she was doing this. She was doing this because she was asked. She was turning every flowing ripple of sand into the unfolding lotus pattern of her dreams because she had been asked. It wasn't the refined elegance of her riddles, her learned reflection patterns by which she could draw the skill out of her partners. It was a technique rehearsed in her heart but never to find true expression. She'd never thought there'd be a world just for her but here it was and while she never wanted it to stop she also knew better than to cling to it. When she was done here today she'd clean and sheathe her blade and go back to being Tianic again and the only difference would be that the world might know what secret arts were merely a request away. 

It was a catharsis to finally sculpt this mandala, incorporating all the gashes and tears of a girl who was a wolf, who didn't know the shape she was building towards but wanted to see her build it. Who let herself be a mirror, if only for a moment, and reveal the shape of a love that had always been waiting to express itself. Because in this moment of blades and dance and beauty Tianic finally got to show what witnessing a thousand perfect moments had done to change her and make her ready to reveal one of her own.

So wait a moment more, maidens of sun and moon and stars. Wait a moment shapeshifters and prodigies and heroines. This moment was offered to Tianic, this question was asked of her. Yes, she's having fun. More fun than she's ever had. A victory, too, if she wanted to reach out and claim it. Enough to make her a legend in her own story in the same beat that it started.

She won't take it, though. And she's smiling as she realizes why - it's because she has more to show than even this. She has so many battles still to fight before she can accept that victory so sweetly offered. It's not that she has to do more to earn it, it's not that she doesn't want it. It's that she's not ready for it. She has a long road still to walk before she's as perfect as this wolf girl. This isn't the triumph of her story. It's a beginning for her. And so she decides, and with a final clash of blades her sword falls from numb fingertips and the blade of Yue is beneath her chin.

And she smiles, with a tear in her eye, and says "Thank you."