The Glorious Evolution

Jasmine stared at his gentle smile for a few moments in silence... she didn’t know how to react, and she didn’t have to... her body answered for her as it started moving with Levi to the music on its own.

The rhythm met her next step, then the one after it... Slowly, she stopped looking down at their feet.

Her eyes closed shut as she sank into the unfamiliar sensations.

Nothing reached her ears, and yet she could follow the music... feel when a note lingered, when another joined it, when they rose together and softened again.

’Levi... you really care this much about her?’

Even N’ibby fell silent when she realized how far he was taking it.

Levi had made drums of his bones, sending each beat rolling through his skeleton. The tendons in his arms tightened and released like harp strings, while the thicker ones along his legs drew out the low, lingering notes of a cello.

He used his lungs as bellows, shaping each controlled breath through his throat into the delicate voice of a flute.

Along his Harmonic Spine, tiny muscles worked like piano hammers, striking its silver threads in careful sequences.

All of them had to keep playing while he turned with her, bent his knees, and held her hand.

It wasn’t just difficult; it was painful too...

Every turn pulled against tendons he needed to keep taut as strings, while the repeated beats sent a deep ache through his bones.

His muscles strained to carry him through the dance without interrupting a single note.

Still, no trace of agony crossed his face.

His hand remained soft at Jasmine’s waist, and whenever she looked up at him, she found the same warm smile waiting for her.

As Jasmine felt the symphony coursing through her, she couldn’t help but let out a genuine, beautiful, wide smile... in this moment, she didn’t care about keeping a cold expression or how others perceived her.

She just danced with Levi... her eyes closed shut, and her lips tugged into an innocent smile.

She had seen instruments like these before, watched people play them, and read descriptions that meant very little without anything to compare them to.

But not anymore.

Little by little, Levi stopped following the musicians exactly.

He lingered over the notes that made her fingers curl around his, brought back the ones that surprised her, and softened the deeper vibrations until they settled comfortably through her body.

Around her, husbands danced with their wives to whatever the party’s orchestra chose to play.

But to Jasmine?

Levi was bending an entire symphony around the notes she loved, as though nothing in the song mattered so much that he wouldn’t change it to make her smile.

For he knew that music was a subjective form of art, and even though Jasmine was deaf and had never been thoroughly given the chance to appreciate all of its forms... he still paid attention to what moved her, letting her enjoyment guide the changes he made.

Jasmine had no idea how carefully he was adjusting the song for her.

She only knew that it kept getting better, and that the goosebumps scarcely had time to fade before another lovely passage brought them back.

She was smiling when her eye began to sting.

For a few steps, she tried to ignore it... Then a thought slipped through.

How much have I missed...?

She remembered watching a group of children at her private primary school sing together when she was seven years old... their open mouths, their swaying shoulders... the way they had suddenly burst into laughter at something in the song.

She had smiled too, hoping someone might explain.

No one did.

Her NeuraLens displayed the lyrics, but the words did not explain why... Had someone sung something wrong? Was it the way they sounded?

She started forming a holographic message for the girl beside her.

What was funny?

Then she remembered... the girl wouldn’t be able to see it.

Most parents waited until their children were older before giving them a NeuraLens. Jasmine had received hers early to help her follow speech, but the other children had no devices to receive her replies.

They hadn’t learned her signs, either.

The girl noticed her looking and smiled before returning to the song.

Little Jasmine parted her lips, gathering the courage to sing with them... then remembered the last time she had tried to speak.

One boy had flinched. A little girl had backed away from her, crying, while the others stared.

Jasmine had looked behind her at first, searching for whatever had frightened them... until she realized they were looking at her.

She had only been trying to say hello.

Even now, she didn’t know what they had heard... she only remembered wanting to apologize, then being afraid to open her mouth again.

She wanted to try again.

Just a few words... enough to join them.

Just once.

But her lips were already trembling, and she pressed them shut before anyone noticed.

With her ethereal pallor and strangely colored eyes, Jasmine was already the weird child... the deaf girl who never spoke.

She didn’t want them to be afraid of her, too.

So she stayed beside them, smiling whenever they smiled, careful not to make a sound.

There had been so many moments like that she had lost count.

Someone asking her a question, watching her attempt an answer with her hands, then glancing helplessly toward another child.

Jasmine trying again, more slowly this time... only to realize they had already lost interest.

Children calling to one another and running off to play.

Sometimes, they called for her too.

”Jasmine! Come on!”

A boy waved from across the courtyard, but she was sitting with her back to him, unaware that anyone wanted her.

He called again.

Then someone caught his sleeve, urging him to hurry before the teams were chosen. He glanced once more at Jasmine before running after the others.

They were seven years old... There was a ball to chase, a game to win, and friends already shouting for them.

Going back for Jasmine would have meant missing the start... none of them stopped to wonder what it would feel like to be her, turning around to find everyone gone.

Occasionally, someone kind enough remembered and fetched her.

She would hurry after them, so pleased to have been included that she smiled through the awkwardness of not knowing the rules or being able to ask.

At home, her father always waited for her answers.

If he misunderstood a sign, he asked her to repeat it.

When she had something to show him, he looked. She could take as long as she needed, and he would still be there when she finished.

For years, she kept hoping to find someone else like that... but that dream withered as she grew older and began finding reasons to leave gatherings early.

Later, reasons not to attend at all.

Her father kept encouraging her.

”Give it another chance, sweetheart.”

Sometimes, she agreed because she couldn’t bear to disappoint him... she would dress, accompany him, and remain close enough to catch his eye when she wanted to go home.

Eventually, the children her age began wearing NeuraLens devices of their own.

At last, they could see her replies.

But by then, Jasmine had stopped having much to say.

Questions received short answers... invitations met a small shake of her head.

Someone could sit beside her for an entire evening and leave knowing little more than her name.

Her father still caught glimpses of the girl who had once rushed home with so much to tell him.

But around everyone else? Her expression barely changed.

She no longer arrived hoping someone would like her. ℴ

She no longer tried her voice in private, wondering whether it might sound better the next time.

As a child, she had wanted so badly to be understood... and only her father had consistently wanted to listen.

As she grew older, she accepted the way everyone else saw her.

She stopped offering them anything beyond it.

Deaf and Mute.

Just like they wanted her to be... and so she became.

...

Suddenly, her foot caught against Levi’s.

For an instant, Jasmine lost her balance... then his arm tightened around her waist, catching her before she could fall.

The movement startled her out of the memory.

She opened her eyes to find him close, his expression concerned... Music still trembled through the hand holding hers.

’Jasmine... are you all right?’ he asked.

She nodded, then tried to smile... but a tear slipped down her cheek before she could hold it back.

Levi slowed their steps and made no remark about her tear... instead, he reached out with his finger and wiped it gently.

He had already felt her happiness turn painful, the grief growing stronger even as she kept smiling through the dance.

Now, with her standing so quietly in his arms, he didn’t need to peer into her memories to understand.

Her childhood hadn’t been filled with Nightcrawlers whispering inside her mind the way his had... People hadn’t watched her warily, waiting for the day she surrendered her body and became a Sleepwalker.

But he knew what it meant to enter a room and have his disability arrive before anything else about him.

He knew how quickly people got tired of making an effort... how they could stop including someone without ever considering themselves cruel.

He knew how quickly people judged anything they couldn’t understand.

Jasmine didn’t need to tell him about her childhood for him to imagine what she had endured... or how much harder that loneliness must have been for a girl who already believed her parents hadn’t wanted her, having abandoned her as an infant in the Shadow Dimension.

Levi thought of their afternoon together, of how eagerly she had demanded another game just to beat him again... how little trouble she’d had finding something to say when she was making fun of him.

He liked that girl.

He wanted more afternoons with her, more arguments over games he apparently had no hope of winning... more chances to discover what else could make her smile as beautifully and innocently as earlier.

But right now, she was struggling to hold that smile through her tears.

He eased their pace.

’Would you like to stop?’

Jasmine shook her head before the message had properly settled.

’Please... keep playing.’

His smile softened as he adjusted his hold, giving her room to find her footing.

The music continued through their joined hands while he waited, letting her decide when she was ready to take the next step.

There was nothing reluctant about his answer.

Jasmine mattered to him far more than he knew how to put into a message.

If turning his entire body into an orchestra could show her even a little of that, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it regardless of how difficult or painful it was.

He could keep the music moving through his body, adjust it until it felt right to her, and stay here while she cried without making her feel she had spoiled their dance.

Levi waited until she moved first.

A small step... then another.

This time, Jasmine kept her eye on him.

He followed her uncertain pace, letting her settle before guiding her into a gentle turn. When she stumbled slightly again, his gentle smile remained.

Their next turn went wrong anyway.

Levi led her one way just as Jasmine moved the other, leaving them briefly tangled in their own arms. He laughed as they untwisted themselves, and her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

A woman watching nearby exchanged an amused look with her husband. He scoffed, then guided her past them through an elaborate sequence, finishing with a graceful turn and a glance toward Levi.

Neither of them noticed.

They smiled at each other and kept going.

Their dance was clumsy, strange, and increasingly unlike anything happening around them.

Still, they occupied their little corner of the floor, taking steps that would have horrified a dance instructor... too absorbed in each other to care.

A few guests shook their heads in judgement and turned away.

Once, Levi and Jasmine would have noticed every glance or heard every change in tone... they had spent enough of their childhoods wondering what they had done wrong, what they needed to change, why being themselves always seemed to make people leave.

Now, Jasmine was smiling at Levi, and he was smiling back... neither asking the other to be any different.

Let the dance be awkward.

Let them look strange.

Let them be judged.

They could be weird together.

For Jasmine and Levi... that was enough.

Truly.

Enough.