She went down the slope again and he watched her glide, quickly and precisely cutting through the snow.
There's a word for that.
What is it?
Glissade. It's French in origin.
I've heard something similar.
Glissando, probably. It's a music term.
Yeah! When you slide between two notes, right?
***
He went down the scale again and she watched him glide, suddenly yet skillfully maneuvering through the keys.
They come from the same place, actually—glissade and glissando.
And what's that?
Glissade comes from the French 'glisser'. And glissando from 'glissant', which is the present participle of glisser.
Huh.
It's beautiful, don't you think? It's a metaphor that comes purely from word origins.
I guess.
He smiled. Some people just naturally decided that both actions made for an elegant glide, and probably weren't even thinking of the other, whichever came first.
It is pretty, I suppose. That natural comparison.
***
Their hobbies involved glissade and glissando, mostly. They saw the comparison, the similarities in motion, the beauty behind their collective dance, but not the critical difference.
He didn't notice her until she was far down another slope, and it was then he finally realized that glissade and glissando—once those two untouchable French beauties—perhaps weren't so similar after all. Glissando always seemed to be stuck in the present, simultaneously because and in spite of the lively music he produced. Glissade could see ahead, and didn't like what she could see.
So she glided away.