Ketka was a runway vision of a goddess of war, and we were dancing.

Instead of Shuli on a hand drum, it was a full band playing something slow and sweeping. It had the same underlying rhythm that I’d practiced, but there was a towering complexity that rode on that rhythm. Still, it was a lot more under-stated than their warmup piece, probably to keep the focus on the dancing for now.

Which was good, because I was setting up to dance with Ketka, which meant it was the fingers of her right hand instead of Tayir’s that my fingers were interlaced with and it was her left hand cradling my shoulder blades. Hers were the eyes trapping mine, widened with makeup to balance the thickness and angularity of her brows and the strength of her cheekbones; hers were the lips that didn’t need anything to look soft and welcoming, the eyelids dusted with bronze just a shade darker than her skin.

I was the girl who got to feel the tension in her left arm as it rested against my side, gentle nonetheless, and I was the girl who got to marvel at the coils her hair was twisted into, threaded through with shining gold that seemed to deepen its already-midnight hue. I realized after a moment of staring that the way the coils worked their way to the nape of her neck and wove back upwards, loose, into the base of the coils suggested a helmet; it was a stunning work of fashion, something whose purpose was nothing but beauty in the evocation of a warrior.

Right foot to the left, forward, tap.

My blood should have roared too loud for me to hear myself think. Instead, I could hear the absurdity of Ketka’s murmured question—is it well, that we dance so close, she was asking. Ridiculous, but it made the heat pulse harder in me to know that she cared, that she wasn’t assuming.

I couldn’t answer in words, couldn’t pick the right ones from the infinite array of vocabulary I was gifted with. I nodded an emphatic affirmative instead, squeezing her right hand with my left and having faith that she’d understand.

From the way she nudged my boot closer in with her sandal—soft-strapped and open and somehow looking like she could climb a mountain in them—I knew she got the message. The feeling of her toe brushing delicately against the skin just above my not-quite-anklet made me shiver, which I’d have found mortifying a decade before, probably; but I’d long since grown out of that.

Though maybe I wouldn’t have felt self-conscious, not after Meredith and James put an ocean of emotional intimacy on display.

Foot back to tap, step back, let go of the hand, hands slide.

Ketka kept the length of her arm pressed against mine as she slid her hand down, caressing the silken cloth. There was enough fabric there that I wasn’t exactly feeling her skin through it, despite how her outfit bared her arms to the shoulders, but I reveled in the touch with shameless joy anyway.

Sure, it was just one touch. Sure, it was light, grazing; sure, it wasn’t skin on skin.

But we were just getting started, and already the anticipation was getting to me.

Tap, sidestep, tap.

The look of absolute focus on Ketka’s face was almost enough to crack my composure and steal my attention away from how I needed to move. She was a fantastic dancer, but I could feel a stiffness in her movements; nothing like my own, nothing anywhere near like my own, but as though she hadn’t danced this specific dance before.

And some of the implications of this specific dance were… socially unambiguous. Danced intimately, the first open dance of Ease was specifically a couples dance. You weren’t pledging or committing to anything, but dancing it close, the way we’d obviously both practiced, was about as subtle an invitation as coming out of the bathroom wearing a short skirt with your panties slung around your finger.

She hadn’t danced this dance before with anyone else, and she was choosing to dance it with me.

Step, turn, tap, tap.

I bent my knee to press the side of my calf against hers, my pants thin enough that I could feel the texture of her skin in that fleeting moment. It pushed the skirt up minutely from where it sat just above her knee, heavy with plaits made to mimic armor, and she pressed her leg back into mine.

The skirt that rode up just a little bit more as a result was less in the way of coverage and more in the way of weight than she wore normally, I was pretty sure. My hands itched to feel what the weight would be like on my fingers, to take apart the aesthetic she was rocking so fucking well, and I shivered at the thought and the need for patience alike.

I knew at that point that the evening was going to be the most wonderful of tortures for me. From the look in her eyes, I wasn’t the only one who’d be suffering gloriously.

Tap, tap, step, tap, step.

We were circling each other, each of our fingers on the engaged hand curled into the other’s forearm. It gave me time to just look at her, to appreciate the way her chunky necklace suggested a piece of neck armor, to appreciate the way her tunic was tailored to emphasize the lines of her muscles. The fabric looked somehow molded to her torso in front, and its thousands of overlapping plates of stiff-yet-soft cloth in gray and black made it look almost like she was in armor while emphasizing every muscle of her core.

When she pulled, when I felt the muscles of her arm bunching in anticipation and saw the readiness in those abs, I overrode the doubts and fears that were always, always there and launched myself up and forwards.

I’d had three choices of how to respond to her invitation, and fuck if I was going to play hard to get—that was for chumps who wanted to spend the night alone.

She caught me at the waist, her grasp all strength and surety as she held me at a perfectly fixed distance out and a little bit up from her hips. She spun with me as my hair floated upwards with the force of it, as my hands brushed lightly across her shoulders and I felt her shiver gloriously, and then I was on the ground again and already looking forward to the next lift.

Twirl out, twirl out, pause just long enough for the skirts to settle again after going spinny. Twirl in, twirl in.

She pulled me in as I came out of the second twirl, and I savored every millisecond of the not-quite-four-beats where I could just press myself up against her, my back forming one line with her front.

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Her arms felt as tense as steel cables and just as inexorable, hugging my arms into my chest and holding them perfectly parallel to the ground. Despite that, her grip was impossibly gentle where she cupped my hands with her own. Her fingers caught in my gloves and pulled almost painfully as we stepped together, turning as we traveled together in a smooth arc across the grass; my billowing sleeves bunched and bound against her arms; the pins in my hair dug into my scalp as the back of my head rested against her collarbone.

My hair was up, my sleeves billowing, my gloves intricate—every discomfort was euphoria, because I was beautiful and I was dancing with Ketka.

Half-twirl out, one-and-a-half through in to out. Palms pressed together, circle.

Her hands made as if to smooth where she’d gotten snarled in the spirals of near-invisible cloth that covered my palms, but the enchantments in my clothes had taken care of that already. She didn’t miss a beat, fingers stroking against my skin through the gloves.

The touch sent shivers from my hands to my toes, and I only managed not to miss the next step because of Ketka leading me into it. Which was only fair, since she was the reason I almost missed it, and she’d become a wickedly-smirking paragon of grace without my noticing.

Palms pressing become hands grasping. Arms high to turn with each other, hands grasping become hands pressing, step in, small steps to the side to circle while traversing.

Not that I could focus too much on that smirk. Despite the way that Ketka was guiding my hands and body, I was constantly scrambling to remember the next step. Reminding myself where my feet were going next, hyper-aware of every stiffness or awkwardness in my motion, I almost missed her quarter-turn and step towards me that had my fingers sliding up her arm and past her shoulder.

Her back muscles flexed under my hand as she scooped me up, and I squeaked—it hadn’t been in what I’d practiced, and I was momentarily lost. Gathering my thoroughly scattered wits as Ketka slowly spun, I leaned into the Skill I’d picked up and reached through it to Spark for help, for this one moment of having no idea what to do.

A moment later, most of my weight was resting on her shoulder through the inside of one knee, my other leg was perpendicular to the line of Ketka’s spine with its toes tucked against the opposite thigh, and my skirt fluttered and gusted spectacularly.

I gloried in it, doing my best to broadcast gratitude at Spark as it withdrew.

Down with as much grace as possible, even if that’s not very much. Twirl out, back in with palms together, forget about matching the other dancers, feel the beat of the drums; this is in the rhythm, everything will be fine. Forward, forward again, and once more; clasp forearms, sink into the moment.

I squeezed Ketka’s forearm, pressing my own arm into her hand. She got the message, firming up to an almost painful extent to give me confidence in the next step.

Despite knowing at least what the transition into the next sequence was, despite the confidence and having asked for it, I still had a split-second freeze at how inescapable her grip felt. It didn’t matter—the move was entirely hers. All I had to do was keep my core engaged and my arms firm as she lifted me into the air, keep my core engaged as she tossed me up more than long enough to shift her grip to my waist.

Trusting completely in her was easy; my body somehow knew her grip wouldn’t waver come key-change or earthquake. For a moment, my world narrowed to those broad hands and their absolute strength, to the warmth radiating from her arm and to how utterly stable and immovable a foundation she was. I breathed her in, smelling flowers and wood resin and vanilla mixing with sweat in an intoxicating musk, and then I remembered to do more than bask.

It was the most natural thing in the world to raise one arm up towards the sky and the other along the extended line of my body as I went horizontal across her crooked forearm, perfectly balanced and perfectly supported.

We turned, slowly and with more control than grace, and I had barely enough self-control not to giggle as I realized how focused Ketka was on keeping me steady. I’d not have guessed that I could possibly be in that position without being nervous, but I wasn’t—and maybe the care that she was taking was why, or maybe I was just mad with the joy of the moment.

Regardless, neither had me minded to complain, not the care and not the joy. My face was about splitting itself apart in a grin as she brought me softly down to my feet again, the ground feeling less steady under my feet than her arms had felt.

I stepped into an immediate twirl out and back in, trying to follow the beat and find my way back to the patterns I’d practiced. She followed suit and I got to enjoy the way her skirt looked, drinking in the way it bared her thighs as it flared out despite its weight.

Palms together, back into the first pattern; step, tap, tap, feel the smooth slide of feet and ankles and calves. Tap, tap, tap, step.

The reiteration going into the coda was smooth as silk. The steps, the taps, the brushes of our bodies, it all flowed in a way it hadn’t before. Her grip was ruthless where it had been gentle, and the way she moved, spun, and supported me was commanding instead of being a give-and-take.

As molten as I was down to my toes, as liquid and full of heat as that made me, I welcomed the final moments of the song. I was soaring on wings of glory, but I knew it couldn’t last; all of my practice had been a long distance from preparing me for our dance, and even if I couldn’t feel the metaphysical burn from running my Skills and Attributes at full tilt, I knew it was there.

Not that I had any regrets. Rather the opposite—but I was well aware that getting a muscle cramp while dancing would not be a memory that I would treasure, and the knowledge of my limits was intruding with the force of decades of habit.

Step in, hands on shoulders, lean back. Hands grasp hands reversed, move with the push to half-twirl, reverse for a double twirl with a lift. Reverse and reiterate.

I was giddy for more reasons than I could count. I’d never danced like this, I’d never even imagined dancing like this. I’d never dreamed that I could inhabit this moment, that I could be the girl being lifted by the waist, my skirt billowing out as I spun with implausible grace. There had to be more Skills, more magic in play than just my meager allotment, but I didn’t need to know, I just needed to thank whoever was gifting me with this moment by appreciating the moment.

Ketka lifted my right hand above my head as I spun on one foot, my left arm out and left foot tucked just above my right knee. She stepped in, hand still supporting me but not egging my spin on, and I dimly heard what she must have already known: the music coming to its final moments, the frieze coming up.

I threw myself back without looking, without checking. She was there, because of course she was there to sweep my waist up onto her arm. My outside hand slipped behind my back—I marveled at being able to do that—and my foot lifted to the sky, not content to pose against my thigh as I had when I practiced. I rested it against Ketka’s shoulder instead, feeling the live-wire shock of daring to do such a thing; I arched my back and trusted completely in her command of our mutual balance as my inside hand slid up the sweat-covered muscles of her arm, from her wrist to what were probably her triceps.

She held me in the dip, in the frieze, bringing her head down close enough to mine that her breath tickled against my nose and lips. I breathed her in, drowned in her eyes, feasted on the sight of her; I bathed in the heat coming from every point of contact I had with her body, and it wasn’t enough.

I could have whined into the pooling silence. I could have tried to reach out with my mind, as though by will I could develop telekinesis against all of Kartom’s judgment otherwise; I could have tried to convey what I wanted somehow with my face or, least plausibly, with my words, those traitorous words that alternated between absence and impossible profusion on my tongue.

I ran my hand from her upper arm to the back of her head instead. She was immovable when I tried to tug her head down to mine, smirking wickedly at me, and I decided I was having none of that.

With none of the grace I’d been dancing with, I threw my weight onto the foot resting on her shoulder and hauled with my hand against the nape of her neck.

I wasn’t viper-quick, I wasn’t about to surprise her in anything related to how physical bodies move in real space, and I certainly wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to move her an inch if she didn’t want to.

Her head came towards mine anyway as mine rose, and her lips met mine with a hunger that mirrored my own as the crowd around us erupted.