The Dance of Men
My short story for @litown :) I hope you like it!
Soft footsteps brought the warmth of the sun and the scent of spices along. The girl’s naked feet left and touched the ground almost without a sound. She was a true beauty and a very talented dancer. It was a great honor amongst their people to be accepted as a real dancer, it was a divine art performed by women, their unique way of praising the gods. Zawur could understand that easily enough. Oshahla was training to be a dancer, not just any dancer, but an excellent one. Zawur was her closest friend, perhaps the only friend she had, and he happened to have a good ear for music. Even if he wasn’t a learned musician, he could play his drums well enough and he never missed a beat. So he helped her practice. He played the rhythm of the song and she moved around the room gracefully. It was their own kind of meditation. They could forget the rest of the world and do this for hours.
She was always so focused while she was dancing. It wasn’t just her fluent dance moves that captivated Zawur every time, but her relaxed features too. Sometimes it looked like she wasn’t even aware of her surroundings, nothing could distract her, her every move was a prayer. Zawur never got bored of watching her, and he was almost as focused as Oshahla. He knew how important dancing was to her, so it became important to him as well. He often felt thankful for being part of her training. It was like being allowed to enter a sacred space, like approaching an altar.
Sometimes the dance was slow and filled with symbolic gestures. He knew what most of these signs meant, Oshahle always explained him after learning a new one, but often he confused them with other gestures. There were parts when the dancing was all about flexibility, showcasing the amazing angles a body could achieve. And sometimes the dance got fast and even wild. Quick steps, fierce kicks and hand gestures followed each other, the fiery red shawl in Oshahla’s hand flew in circles, painting brief images in the air.
He had to focus. Left and right, two steps back, then a turn in mid-air. Right arm out, then bending down for a moment, and kicking high with the left leg. Gaining speed, stopping suddenly, ready to fall back into the flow of movements at any second. Zawur often remembered the times he watched Oshahla train, this was similar in some way, it brought him to the same meditative state. While Oshahla used to make symbolic gestures with her hands, Zawur’s were more practical, shifting between defense and attack. She used to bend in impossible angles, spin or end up standing on her hands, now he dodged sharp blades and even arrows, sometimes with a roll on the ground, sometimes moving in unexpected directions. While she used to jump and kick into the air, he defeated his opponents with fast, expert moves, and instead of a silk shawl, he painted the world red with his foes’ blood. I have my own dance, Oshahla. he often thought to himself. The dance of men. And I’m almost as good you are.
Tales of 900 Brave Levente