Kitaryn

Faking a smile, I take Trom’s hand in one of mine and my starting neighbor’s in the other. The lute plucks a rapid four-count, and then all of the dancers move in tandem for four steps forward. The tune is jaunty, and when each man releases his partner into a spin in the opposite direction, his footwork has to be swift to meet her, catch her hand, and pull her to his other side.

Trom’s count is off, and he misses me entirely. I walk to his other side anyway.

There, he regains his hold on me. “Sorry. I do wish I was a better dancer, but it is nevertheless a delight to open the floor with you tonight. I hope you can forgive me.”

I broaden my farce of a smile, but inside it's a grimace. I imagine pulling away and finding dessert, but then I imagine the look on my athyr's face after, so I stay. 

It's not his mistakes that bother me. He's looking at me with an unwavering intensity that pools dread in my stomach. His confession might have been for me. I had assumed otherwise, but then he approached me to open the dances—implicitly. He didn't break Tradition to outright ask.

“Cast it to the winds,” I say to be polite about his apology. Hopefully I can ease him away from the words he’d so carefully composed earlier.

“I consider myself lucky to work near you every day, Kitaryn. You work harder than most, yet are kinder than you need to be.”

I almost trip over his foot as he spins me. This time it’s my fault. “Such a privilege,” I hide my cringe in a mischievous grin, “to gaze upon my beauty and my missteps.”

“But it is, and you misstep so rarely. I hoped you perhaps felt similarly toward me.”

He may as well have bowed on his knees and begged for a compliment. “You are a good worker, very diligent,” I take the hand of a new neighbor and the steps start over again, “and my athyr is very fond of you.” It’s a diplomatic answer. I doubt he’s clever enough to take the hint. Intelligent? Yes. Diligent? Yes. But clever?

“Very kind, Kitaryn. I often think of what a marvelous team we make.”

Not clever. “We rarely partner on tasks, Trom.”

He fumbles the catch at the end of my spin again. “And it is a pity we don’t. We are both diligent and dutiful. We know our places in this world. When I think of them, so complimentary, I wonder if we shouldn’t...”

He falters as I step on his foot.

I force my way through an artificial apology and continue on with my dissuasion. “We are similar in work ethic, and dissimilar in most other ways.” He’s humorless, is usually consumed by his thoughts,  and is most unimaginative. Not that I can boast in my own artistic pursuits. I always lose interest after half a decade in anything I try, moving on to something new. That habit has left me barely mediocre at several abandoned pursuits. And as for presence of mind–it has taken much feigned understanding to convince the world that I can stay out of my imagination. Though neither of us can remain grounded in a moment, his head dives in the dirt while mine floats in the clouds.

“I don’t think so,” he says as he trips into place on my other side with a new neighbor on my right. “We are nearly the same.”

“I see no evidence.” I begin my steps away. “Except that we're both poor dancers.”

“We have both mis-stepped several times in this dance, yes. And we both are intelligent and committed to our duties, even though we lack a certain artfulness. Most of all, we both value Tradition above our own selves.”

He catches me, this time, as I spin to meet him. “And we both learn and improve.” He spins around me next, and then we turn together. “Is that not enough?” he asks, searching my face.

I look away, over his shoulder, as I ought to for the art of the dance. A dark-headed elfman in a green tunic-and-pant set stands on the edge of the dance floor, and for a brief moment his amber eyes meet mine. Aodan.

Trom seems to take silence as an affirmation, for as we begin the ending sequence of the dance, he presses on. “What I’m trying to say, Kitaryn...” he pauses his words as he and the other men kneel in sync, throwing their partners in a jump over their raised knees. I leap like I can fly away, wishing the winds will take me. I hit the ground hard.

“...is that I think it is time we considered a partnership closer than coworkers.”

I stop dancing entirely as the other she-elves walk or twirl around their beaus. All I can do is stare at Trom. He is either incredibly clueless, or incredibly stubborn to have gone through with saying that. I am, apparently, his Dear One. He has the wisdom not to call me that now, thanks to beauty for that.

“Trom, a she-elf is supposed to approach an elfman when she is ready and has deemed him suitable, not the other way.” He claimed that Tradition is more important to him than his own self. Let him prove it.

“This is not a formal proposition.” He stands from his knee, though the other men still kneel. We're earning glares from the other dancers. This is not Tradition. “I am merely asking you to consider.”

“Perhaps I am not ready to consider it.”

“You are of age, dear. We both are.” I can almost hear the unspoken now, as he is my senior by a couple decades. He reaches for me to strike a final pose with the others. “It's time.”

I step back, and the song comes to its sudden, climatic end.  Frosts. My traitorous imagination shows me how long Trom must have considered me in this way. “You sound like my athyr.” He will want me to affirm Trom, to agree and soon offer a matronage. 

“A wise man.”

“Perhaps, then, I am not prepared to consider you.” I can't do it. I can't doom my children to a lifeless, loveless childhood.

The dun shade of his eyes glitters with hurt. “Please reconsider, Kitaryn. Grant me another dance with you,” he holds out a hand, so desperate that the sinews of it stretch tight. It’s a bold move. He must know he has my athyr's approval.

To dance with him twice in a row would be as good as to declare us a match to the public. He knows what he asks. Dear. Dear one. He can't possibly love me. This is about little more than being the next rung on his social ladder, the one my athyr has prepared for him.

I turn my back on him, not gracing him with an answer. I flee for the edge of the dance floor, against the flow of the new dancers entering.

My feet carry me to the place where I saw Aodan. He offered me a break, and I need it. Right now.