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When Fakir danced, there was power in it. He could do what others simply couldn't. His lean body could perform feats that belied a seemingly impossible strength. Audiences were left amazed, wondering how anyone could move so quickly, jump so high, and do it all with such grace as made it appear easy. He looked superhuman on the stage.

Ahiru looked rather less than human. She was more likely to trip and fall than execute a jeté, more likely to stumble than glissade across the dance floor. And even something in the way she walked just normally, when she wasn't dancing at all, looked awkward.

Critics wrote in their reviews about how poor of a choice it was, putting such a clumsy dancer with such a skilled one. It was clear the pair had chemistry, they would say, but to have one so clearly outstripping the other was ill-advised and detracted from the performance.

But the true beauty of skill in dance is that it is ephemeral, fated to live only while the dancer's body endures the demands put upon it. A young man might work his body until he can perform astounding feats, but he cannot keep his grace forever.

Years later, when Fakir's limbs started to lose the discipline he had trained into them, Ahiru's skill still had not surpassed his. Her fumbles were perhaps less frequent, but it was always apparent that Fakir was the better dancer, between them.

But the same critics, whose hair had started to gray, found themselves noticing things they had not before.

The other beauty of dance, which has nothing to do with skill, is in the emotion inspired in those who see it.

When Fakir and Ahiru danced, though their steps had lost the vigor of their younger days, anyone who watched could feel acutely the firmness of a tree bearing its first fruit and the light fluttering of a bird leaving the branches to test its wings against the empty air for the first time.