Little! Trinity & CG! Baran/ Little!Victoria & CG!Cassie
( I just want to preface that I know that gymnastics is a big trauma for Trinity, but I'd like to think that Baran spoke to Trinity while big and explained that little her was always flipping on stuff, and she wants her to be able to do it in a safe space, but Baran would always be there, so nothing bad could happen)
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・
The studio had a window that caregivers could watch through, which Cassie was using extensively.
Victoria had been standing very still in the center of the small studio for the past three minutes, watching the other little ones warm up. She was in the pink leotard and tutu she'd selected with the focused intentionality of someone dressing for something super important, the pinkest one, the one with the fluffiest tutu. She had her hair in two careful buns. Cassie could not help but gush over just how cute she was!
The teacher, Ms. Emiy, warm and unhurried and entirely used to littles of all kinds, demonstrated the first position: heels together, toes out, arms curved.
Victoria's feet moved into position immediately and precisely. Well, as much as a little could do that, is. Slightly wobbly.
Oh, Cassie thought, at the window.
Miss Emily showed her arms. Victoria's arms followed. She looked at them. Made a small adjustment. Looked at them again.
The little girl beside her, a sweet, round-faced girl who was having a lively internal experience with her tutu, had her arms in a shape that was enthusiastic rather than precise. Victoria glanced at her. Victoria's hands moved very slightly toward a correcting gesture and then stopped. She appeared to physically restrain herself and returned her attention to Miss Emily.
Cassie pressed her lips together hard. Sweet girl just wants to help everyone. Cassie thought.
By the midpoint of the class, Victoria had learned four positions, a simplified plié that she was executing with absolute seriousness, and a spinning move she had tried seven times until she was so dizzy she couldn't see straight. She was the smallest person in the room and the most thoroughly focused. At one point, Miss Emily said something to her, and Victoria looked up. Cassie couldn't hear it, but she saw Victoria's face, the small private smile that Victoria gave when she was pleased about something she didn't want to be too obvious about being pleased about.
At the end, there was free movement to music. The other littles improvised with great joy and zero structure. Just a bunch of little limbs flailing about. Victoria improvised with something that was clearly internally structured, something she was composing as she went, one hand above her head and one out to the side, turning slowly.
She caught Cassie at the window.
The smile that happened then was different, not the private one, the full one, the one that took over her whole face.
Cassie's hand came up to cover her own mouth. This little girl was hers and was absolutely downright cute.
In the car on the way home, Victoria was still in her leotard and tutu and refused to change, and sat very straight in her car seat looking at Cassie through the rearview mirror.
"Next Saturday," Cassie confirmed.
"Same class, same teacher."
"pretty dance," Victoria said, just mumbling to herself.
Victoria looked out the window. "pwactice," she said. "Jus' a wittle bit. At home."
"The living room is all yours, baby," Cassie said.
Hopefully, the day has tired the sweet girl out.
°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・°❀⋆.ೃ࿔:・
The foam pit was the first problem.
Not because Trinity didn't like it. Because she liked it enormously and had to be guided away from it three times before the class actually started, each redirection was more reluctant than the last.
"We'll come back to it, baby," Baran said.
"I wanna go now, mama," Trinity said, looking over her shoulder at the foam pit. She was three today, in the little striped leotard she'd picked, Gumbo stationed on the bleachers in Baran's care. "I jus' want to look at it."
"You've been looking at it for ten minutes."
" soft foam," Trinity said. With genuine reverence.
Miss Cal, the gymnastics teacher for littles, had the patient energy of someone who had seen everything and was surprised by nothing. She gathered them at the bar, low to the ground, appropriately sized, and demonstrated hanging.
Trinity hung. She swung her legs. She looked at Baran with an expression of pure delight.
The balance beam was next. It was four inches off the ground. Trinity stepped on with great confidence and made it approximately a third of the way before miscalculating a step and going sideways off it with a thump and a sound.
The crying was immediate and thorough.
Baran was up from the bleachers before anyone else moved.
"fell," Trinity said, from the mat. Reporting a catastrophic event.
"I saw," Baran said, crouched beside her. "Are you hurt?"
Trinity checked. She was not. " fell in fwont of evewybody," she said.
"Everybody falls on the beam," Baran said. "It's why they put the mat there honey."
"I fell first though," Trinity said. The waterlogged voice.
"Trinity," said Miss Cal, appearing, crouching down. "Do you know how many times I fell off that beam when I was little?"
Trinity looked at her. Assessing the sincerity. "'ow many?"
"Every single class for a month," Miss Cal said. "I kept a count. Forty-seven times."
Trinity stared. " thas a lot?"
"And now I can walk across it with my eyes closed."
Trinity looked at the beam. She looked at the mat. She looked at Baran's face.
Something shifted in Trinity's face. The calculation of it. The permission of it.
She got back on the beam.
She made it halfway across this time before the end of class, and she was already looking at the foam pit on the way out, and she said to Baran in the car: "pit pwease mama?"
"Next week, baby, let's get dinner."
The girl was asleep in the car seat before they even left the parking lot.