"Oh. Uh, OK. But you should go to class! And I should go to class! And - we can meet in the studio after class maybe and - and we'll see?"

Yes good excellent that gives her time.

"Okay," he says. "Do you want to borrow the lamp for company in the meantime?"

".....OK."

The lamp is good. It's soft and warm and completely incapable of judging her for uselessness and cowardice and possible accidental murder.

He hoists the bag off his shoulder and hands it to her through the window.

She'll just wave goodbye to Serafin and then hug this lamp for a while. And then she will go to class. Really. For real. She may not learn anything or remember anything or be very meaningfully conscious during it, but she said she'd go to class and that means she's going to go to class.

(With the lamp. Because the lamp is important.)

Serafin also goes to class. He's ten minutes late for his first one, and completely unrepentant about it.

She doesn't find anything that she recognizes as courage over the course of the rest of the day. When her last class ends, she goes to the studio and mills around outside the door for a bit, clinging to the lamp like a security blanket. She wonders how terrible it is to not show up and whether Serafin would think it means she doesn't want to be friends or if he'll think she's just really really a coward.

She has about thirty seconds to pace indecisively before he opens the door, looks out, and sees her.

"Hey," he says, with a gentle smile. "How was your day?"

"It was fine!" she says, a little too quickly. She still looks like a particularly strong breeze could knock her over. "Actually it was kind of terrible. But I did go to class!"

"Well, congratulations on that, then. C'mon in."

So she does. She sets the lamp down in the corner. And then aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa what is she supposed to do.

...they came here to dance, but she looks so...

"Do you want a hug?"

She sniffles and nods.

So he hugs her.

So she hugs him back!

And then she cries. Because she's not sure what's happening but it's horrible and everything is terrifying and crying is childish and humiliating but she doesn't know what else to do.

...he continues to hug her. He's not... really sure what else to do. Hugging her seems like probably the thing. She's so... small and helpless and afraid and in pain... and she's his friend and he likes her and he wants her to be happy and not—whatever this is—

People say... words, at times like these, don't they? They think of comforting things to say and then say them.

What is a comforting thing.

He wants to tell her it's going to be okay but he can't really do that when he doesn't even know—

—well—

That has a simple solution, at least?

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she says miserably. "I just - keep thinking about how - I think maybe I've always been useless, and I know I'm no good at anything, and that's - that's OK - but when things like the other day happen then everyone knows."

"—hey, you're not useless," he says. "You're not. And - this is a school, for heaven's sake, you're in the beginner's class, you're here to learn ballet, the point is not that you should already know it. And you honestly weren't even that bad! Fakir's the one who dropped you! I'd rather dance with a beginner who isn't sure what she's doing than an expert who's gonna let me down on purpose, any day."

"I guess," she says, still a little miserably, but she seems to have stopped crying. Still clinging, just not crying anymore.

Hugs.

"If it weren't for you, I probably would've burned down Mr. Cat's house," he says. "Or hurt myself permanently trying to fight a tree or a wall or who knows what. I might even have killed somebody. Me with a magic anger problem is no joke. And you went down that ominous trapdoor after Mytho. You're - you're good. You do good important things."

"I try," she says, very quietly. There's a small hiccuping laugh. "M'glad you didn't kill someone."

"Yeah, me too."

She seems - not all the way calmed down, maybe, but a lot calmer than she was. 

"OK then. Sorry about that. Did you, uh, still want to practice dancing and stuff?"

"Yeah."

Then she will do her best to dance! 

She's still not good at it. But she is better, when she isn't having an anxiety attack and has a partner who's not deliberately trying to mess her up.