Mirabel Voltigern

Mirabel Voltigern, mountain-pass weather.

Ask any school whether they teach the two-hander. They will tell you no school teaches it, and they will be very nearly right. The man who trained Mirabel had been a master among the War Dancers, and he had the art from someone before him: their movement carried onto a blade thought too heavy for it. A handful of people know it, scattered. She has not seen him since.

Describe her

She smiles first, often shyly, like someone hoping to be liked. She laughs hard at jokes that do not deserve it, then stays serious while the whole table falls apart. She answers a second too late, or a second too early. Her voice rises fast. She cannot keep still, shifting hand, foot, weight, even sitting down. And if a blade comes out anywhere, all that disorder falls into place at once.

Play her

Have her misread people often, and never the same way twice. She misses the obvious, then catches an implication nobody else saw. Do not play her stupid, play her without a grid: she tries a reaction and watches to see whether it worked. In a fight, reverse all of it. Describe her faster on the third exchange than the first, less predictable by the tenth, and let her laugh in the middle of it. And hold, underneath, that she is finally exactly where she belongs, and that it lasts only as long as the fight.

What she says (rarely)

"Did anyone else think that was funny? His throat. Blurp. Blurp."
"It does not stop. If I stop, it is too heavy."
"(still breathing hard, smiling) When do we go again?"