"It's traditional?—"
"I don't dance."
"Everyone dances."
"I don't." She said it with such finality that he almost believed her. "I have two left feet. Three, possibly. I once stepped on someone's foot so hard at a wedding that they had to leave early. There was an ice pack involved."
His lips twitched. "I'm sure it wasn't that bad."
"It was worse. The bride was furious. She's still not speaking to me."
"The bride?"
"I stepped on her brother." She dropped her head into her hands. "Oh god. I can't dance at the festival. I'll humiliate myself. I'll humiliate you. The whole town will be watching and I'll trip over your hooves and knock you into the punch bowl and it'll be the most embarrassing moment of my entire?—"
"Marigold."
She looked up.
"Breathe."
She breathed. Shakily, but she breathed.
"I can teach you," he said.
"You can't possibly?—"
"I grew up dancing. I could practically dance before I could walk. My mother used to joke that I came out of the womb doing a jig." He leaned back in his chair, watching her panic slowly subside. "We don't have to do anything complicated for the opening dance. Some simple steps, a basic pattern. You just need practice."
"Practice."
"With me. Teaching you." He kept his tone light, ignoring the way his pulse had picked up at the thought. "I promise to keep my hooves well out of range."
She stared at him. "You want to give me dance lessons."
"I want to make sure you don't knock me into the punch bowl. It would be very undignified."
A short, surprised laugh escaped her, like she hadn't meant to let it out. He filed the sound away, adding it to his growing collection of things he wanted to hear again.
"And where exactly would these lessons take place?" She raised an eyebrow. "Your cabin living room isn't exactly a ballroom."
"The grove."
"The grove?"
"A natural clearing just across the creek. Flat. Private. No one to watch you stumble." *Except me,* he didn't add. *And I'll watch every move you make and count myself the luckiest satyr in three counties.*
"Thallos…"
"There's another reason." He hesitated, weighing how much to tell her. The full truth—that the grove was sacred, that his family had performed rituals there for generations, that bringing her there for something as intimate as dancing felt like offering her a piece of his soul—seemed like too much. Too fast.
But a half-truth could work.
"The acoustics," he said. "Sound carries differently there. It would be a good place to practice my music as well."
She was quiet for a moment. He watched her weigh the options, watched her careful mind calculate risks and benefits. He knew that she was thinking about being alone with him, in that grove, learning to move together because he was thinking it too.
The difference was, he wanted her to say yes.
