This poem is spillover from the May 15, 2018 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from lone_cat . It also fills the "costumes" square of my 5-1-18 General card for the Pro Wrestling Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by mama_kestrel . It belongs to the Damask thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. "En Décalage" Savvy has known Damask for half a year before he begins to notice something truly odd . They haven't spent that much time together, so it's hard to pin down at first, but the longer it goes on, the more certain he becomes. Il ne faut pas se fier aux apparences, Savvy's soup mentor had taught him. One should not trust appearances. Damask might seem to be all of a sort, but that didn't necessarily make it so. Something about the superhera was en décalage . Mismatched. He noticed it first with their costumes. Savvy's outfit was a swashbuckling mastery: all black clothes with a dapper coat and a floppy hat with a blue, a white, and a red ostrich plume pinned on by a gold fleur-de-lys. Sometimes Damask admired it, other times scorned it -- but Savvy never got the sense of being lied to. The opinion simply changed, as quick as the wind and just as unpredictable. Damask's costume changed, too, from the awful blue-and-red that looked like bad wallpaper to the softer duck-egg teal with swirls of bright fawn embroidery. She kept the impassive white mask, though. Sometimes, she just seemed to wear the costume differently than others -- the way she walked, or stood, or brushed the hood away. Savvy also noticed that certain of the changes always appeared together. The sharp, swaggering walk went with the tendency to jump up and hit things. The soft voice went with the rolled shoulders and hands patting for injuries. And so on, so on, so on. Then there was the effect on his interest, which was nothing short of bizarre. Savvy was a lady's man, and Damask was a very fine lady ... most of the time. Most. Then she'd bound into a different pose and he'd forget what had fascinated him about her before, all of her feminine charms gone like a candle flame blown out. That was creepy, in a way. It took a while before the possibility dawned on him that maybe he wasn't seeing things. Maybe Damask wasn't she but really they. Savvy had heard things about Mindflare and his twisted gift that raised ... questions. It might explain why she was so en décalage. He didn't doubt Damask's capability in a cape fight, no. He just wondered how ... intact she really was. You couldn't just sidle up to a working acquaintance and ask that sort of thing, though. So Savvy watched, and said nothing about it. But he tried to treat Damask the way she was acting in the moment, rather than always the same. * * * Notes: Savoir Faire "Savvy" (Renaud Cœur) -- He is a handsome Frenchman with fair skin, shoulder-length straight brown hair, and blue eyes. He is a professional dancer with a lean fit body, not very tall. His soup friends often call him Savvy. Origin: Act of derring-do: When a theatre caught fire during a performance, Renaud leaped into action to save members of the audience, swinging on ropes and jumping over flames. The ghost of the theatre's founder then appeared to him and bestowed superpowers. Uniform: All black, close-fitting clothes with a dapper black coat; floppy black hat with a blue, a white, and a red ostrich plume pinned on by a gold fleur-de-lys. Standard weapons are rapier, dagger, and pistol. Savvy paints his face with stylized makeup instead of wearing a mask. Qualities: Master (+6) Dancer, Expert (+4) Jack-of-All-Trades, Good (+2) Confidence, Good (+2) Romance. Poor (-2) Oh, Him Again (people are often dazzled by him at first, but the more they know him, the less they like him) Powers: Good (+2) Swashbuckling, Good (+2) Wits, Average (0) Agility, Average (0) Speed. Vulnerability: Average (0) Sacre Bleu, Can't You See I'm French?! (avid Francophone, avid countryman; but the French flag's colors are the same as America's so that confuses people, which really pisses him off) Motivation: Rush in to save the day. * * * 1. Il ne faut pas se fier aux apparences . Literal translation: “One should not trust appearances.” Meaning: This saying is the English equivalent of “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” or “Looks can be deceiving.” It means that you should get to know someone before you make judgments about him/her. In short, “Don’t make assumptions.” Usage: This saying is most commonly used to refer to people, particularly those whose appearance seems to be en décalage (mismatched) with their profession. For example: A big, burly man may in fact be a ballerina and that scruffy dude you always see at the bus stop might be a world-renowned opera singer. You might want to get a job that lets you use French, but maybe other people don’t think you even seem like the type to learn French. You never know, so don’t judge. -- Common French Sayings Ham customarily displays assertive body language while Clement displays submissive body language .