Thick, worn hands clasped slender ones of silk and porcelain.Shimmering scales reflecting candle and moonlight through the open window while dusken ones only blurred their light. Boots contrasted sandals, leather pants and bare chest opposed to willowy skirts and boundless elegant lengths of cloth wound into a decorative top made to flow with motions of the dance.
Her eyes so beautiful as she guided his hand into the next step, the smooth twist of her hip as he followed through in the most clumsy of ways. She was everything he was not, every element of simply sublime. In the darkness she lit the room, in the sun she burned it out. Watching her lips curl into that irreverant, gorgeous smile as he slipped into her a little on the turn, her hand sliding around his waist in a circle. She had never danced with him and on this night there was something in the air, a sort of energy as she had twisted and twirled to the thrum of the stars that compelled him join her.
She guided him with patience, touched and tugged him firmly into her motions. He stood like a soldier, turned too hard, his feet twisted too hard into the floor as if finding purchase for a swing, his tail flicked on reflex into simple motions and spun her too far, turned her too much and she never admonished him, never gave up. Her fingers laced with his own as she let him twist her in his arm, turning her round for a switch of places, and in her whirl he saw the face of true bliss reflected in her lips, her eyes, he lost the breath in his chest and sucked in a breath until he realized she was staring back, and he grinned sheepishly before releasing her hand to begin the steps again.
He had never known someone like her. Never had his air stolen by a look, never stopped dead in his tracks to admire grace or beauty. Never touched perfection and held it close. He had known a life of struggle, of hardships, war and fury, bitterness and isolation, of hunger and striving yet here she was before him, all he had never had before.
The word love did not cross his lips, nor his mind, it never occured to him that this sensation had a true name, that it was not something undiscovered to others. How could such bliss be common, how could the world hold more of this than what was before him now?
