The Physics of Limping
Copyright© 2025 by Heel
Chapter 1: The Aesthetics of Balance
Adrian Voss believed that beauty obeyed rules. Symmetry, proportion, clean equations — the universe, he was sure, could be solved with enough geometry and caffeine.
Until Sophia Morales showed up to class on crutches.
Her left leg was encased in a long white cast that reached nearly to her thigh, transforming her usual brisk walk into a slow, deliberate rhythm of balance and sound. The click-clack of crutches echoed down the hallway, perfectly periodic, as if she were a metronome measuring time itself.
To anyone else, it was an unfortunate accident.
To Adrian, it was physics in motion.
“Broke it skiing,” Sophia said when she noticed him staring.
“Ah,” he replied, eyes lighting up. “So you’ve become a practical demonstration of Newton’s Laws of Motion!”
She sighed. “That’s one way to put it.”
“No, really,” he continued, already in full lecture mode. “Law One: Inertia. You at rest, refusing to get up for class. Law Two: Force equals mass times acceleration — that’s every time you push on the crutches. Law Three: Equal and opposite reactions — the universe pushes back, hopefully not too hard.”
Sophia blinked. “Are you flirting with me using physics?”
Adrian paused. “Possibly. It’s untested territory.”
She grinned despite herself. “Well, I’d say your hypothesis is weak.”
He scribbled something in his notebook. “Observation noted.”
Over the next weeks, he couldn’t help but study her. The movement fascinated him — the coordination of arms, shoulders, and the swinging arc of her cast-bound leg. The crutches formed a perfect isosceles triangle with the ground at each step. To Adrian, she wasn’t limping — she was solving a problem in real time.
He saw the elegance in it. Each shift of weight a miniature experiment, each careful pivot an argument for stability. Walking on crutches, he decided, was a kind of poetry written in vectors and leverage.
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