“It’s not a song I need to sing along to—also, I don’t know the words well enough.”

“Ah. You don’t have the Skill? [Perfect Recall], that’s what most [Singers] and [Historians] and such have.”

“Huh. I’d love that. No—my memory’s fine. I can remember entire plays. It’s just—a different language.”

He blinked. But before he could ask, Cara hit the play button. And a piano began to play.

Ser Dalius smiled. It was instantaneous, wondering.

“Is that a harpsichord—?”

Then he cut himself off. Refusing to ruin a second of the music. He watched, curiously, as Cara began to walk forwards. Wasn’t she going to dance? What was she—

His eyes widened. Had she just…stopped? For a second, it seemed like she’d slowed in time. Mid-step, her movement slowed. Then time resumed and she took a step. Her other leg moved up, her foot lifted—

Slowed. It was like every step was delayed at the apex of its progress. Frozen, moving. A clock that was only half working. Then, he heard a voice in a foreign tongue begin to speak.

“Drathian?”

The [Knight] started. It wasn’t English. It was, in fact, Japanese, and Cara couldn’t have sung it if she wanted to. Well, she could come close, but it wasn’t a language she knew.

Wonderingly, Ser Dalius floated after her, staring at her feet, demanding to know if this was time magic before he caught himself and shut up. It was nothing of the sort, of course. Just fine muscle control. It was a lot harder than it looked, to stop your foot and imitate that shutter-step technique. Cara had practiced for a week to get it down after seeing the music video of World Order, performed by a Japanese band by the same name.

It wasn’t quite a dance, but it entertained the [Knight], and that was all she wanted. Cara performed a few more moves, all of which had that stop-motion quality to them, a hallmark of the band’s performance. When she went back to the shutter-step—she saw Ser Dalius copying her.

The [Knight] floated through the air as the music played, trying to imitate her movement. He was a trained warrior. And while he kept glancing at her feet rather than looking straight ahead—he nearly pulled it off!

Cara smiled despite herself. They walked across the tomb, performing for no one but each other. When the music stopped, they had to laugh again.

“Amazing. I’ve never seen that trick. And what was that song? Not the common tongue, indeed.

Drathian? It sounds vaguely familiar, but I have met few enough from the Isles of Drath.”

Ser Dalius shook his head. Cara raised an eyebrow.

“It could be any number of languages. That’s Japanese.”