Taken to Lemora by Elizabeth Stephens

11

Essmira

Whatever my expectations had been about the concept of a Lemoran party…Winter’s End doused them in fire starter and set match to them. The flames are as wild as ever.

Some indeterminate time later and I’ve lost the cloak Gorman loaned me…and Gorman himself. Or did he leave? I can’t remember. I’ve got a horn of some spicy concoction in my hand and am feeling the full effects of it. My head is buzzing pleasantly and my heart is pounding to the tune of the music incinerating all silence around me and I’m…I’m dancing. Just like I wanted.

I know how to dance expertly, I’ve been trained in all styles, but I’ve never danced in a group before who encourage me to just let loose and go wild.

So I do. “I’m miriga,” I whisper at the first hint of doubt that crosses my mind, telling me to dance to a set style, not to move too much for fear of embarrassing myself, not to let my emotions come out of me in wonderful, colorful bursts. “I can do anything.”

I am miriga and a miriga dances on tables, the arms of the other dancers around me looped through mine. The Hypha beside me is a new friend called Charana, but several of the other females are those that I recognize. Willa is there and so is Olga, who is quick to inform me that Jaygar is doing just fine. Twee and Holdar are both there and so is the healer Moreth.

I spend a long time talking to Twee and Holdar. They’re hybrids like me, though I don’t know what my mix is. Speculation is that I am half Drakesh and half a species called human. A newly discovered species,only two known human colonies exist in the Quadrants — one in Quandrant Four and the other just inside of the infamous and disputed Grey Zone largely under Niahhorru pirate control.

We talk for spans about the strange oddities in being hybrids and I feel a kinship with the male and the female pair that I haven’t felt with most. And then I’m pulled off of my feet and twirled around by Willa and the music takes me away to other stars in other Quadrants.

I’m twirled into one of the long benches that dot either side of the enormously long table that runs the full length of the inn. I bump into a Lemoran male who’d been in the midst of a game played with sticks and bouncing cubes and he spills his ale all down the front of my dress.

He apologizes profusely, but I just throw my head back and snort with laughter and he asks me to dance and I remind him that I’m mated to Raingar and he assures me that he’s already mated himself and that he doesn’t mean any harm by it. I blush when I look up at his horns and see that they’re white.

Guilt dares to breach the barrier of my thoughts. I shouldn’t have left him there. Not because a female must tend to her male, but because I, Essmira, don’t want to see him, Raingar, hurt. And he’d been so tired, running after me. But…I also am not sure he’d have joined me in this — I’m actually certain, he wouldn’t have. And I want to live.

So I take the male called Prilla’s arm and, hand-in-hand, we twirl on top of the long table with several other pairs. He smells like sweat and the spices from the ale and I’m sure I smell much worse as I spin between him and Charana and Olga and Willa and a dozen other pairs.

I spin and spin and spin and I realize soon that the entire inn is chanting my name. “Essmiiiiiiira! Essmiiiiiiiiiira!” And the occasional shout, “Look at our miriga dance!”

My hips are shaking to the beat and my hands are above my head, fingers flicking to the chords I can feel radiating throughout my body as powerfully as the spiced ale I’ve drunk from the horns that were handed to me. My head…my head spins. I make a high trilling sound with my tongue against the roof of my mouth and the room responds with cheers. I trip over something, try to catch myself, but the last of my coordination gives out and my feet fly out from under me.

I’m flying. Oh nob, I’m falling.

I yelp and several others shout. In my peripheries, I sense movement but when Willa and Prilla lunge for me, their chaotic, uncoordinated movements send both of them — and Charana and Olga — toppling off of the table and onto the floor.

I close my eyes, bracing for impact…but it never comes. The world doubles and triples as I’m lifted into the air and the wooden walls of the tavern revolve around and around, overlapping in kaleidescoping colors before finally settling on black and blue and purple and grey and orange and yellow and electric green right in the middle. That green glows and pops.

Raingar winces and holds me out from his body with a jerk. He tries to set me down, but I’m dizzy…so dizzy…that I cling to him. I recognize his face, but I don’t recognize it because Raingar is full of anger and knives and this male is full of hesitation and soft things like pocket lint and bulberry tufts blowing in a gentle Lemoran wind.

“Essmira?” He says, voice so rough he has to clear it several times. He swallows and swallows and swallows.

Strange, that I can hear his every movement when it’s so loud in the inn…nob, it was loud, but now it isn’t. Now, it’s quiet. And that’s why I hear him perfectly when he says, “Can I cut in?”