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invitations are nothing new to you. there is always an event, a ball, a gala that pleads for your attention despite having little left to give, every new invitation taken with wary hands and a mantra, to bring your own flask, to keep it always within your eye, to never let anyone refill it.
but this is not home, the source of your paranoia, and you fall into a wild fantasy about reclaiming a part of yourself that was once lost. the parts of you that were carefree and trusting, hope lining your heart before it was to be painted over with grief that weighs the same as lead. wild as it may seem, here feels like the first time a new beginning is plausible, even it’s to be something that, in the greater scheme of things, seems such a trifle thing.
you stare at the girl with the glowing smile, still as she awaits your answer, and you nod.
—
wear something light, she says, and you laugh. have you not had enough of the light? you say, and she laughs. her laugh reminds you of an chronometer’s twelfth chime — it awakens you, and then it lingers, and then you wait for it to end. you suppose her humor skews towards the dark like yours, but even to you there was little left to laugh over. unwilling to crush a cheerful spirit, as rare as they are either here or home, you say nothing, heeding her advice as you shift through glamours looking for just the one. experimentally you twirl once the magic takes hold, and you feel light. a simple twirl and the titles fly off you for a moment, shattering upon the floor — warrior of light, primal slayer, servant of Hydaelyn, knight of house fortemps, savior of ishgard, liberator of ala mhigo, hero of doma, warrior of darkness; for a brief moment you are nothing but you, your name, and your soul.
the titles repair themselves and settle upon your shoulders once more but you’ve found that freedom once more, for long enough to grant you a little peace, and mayhap it will come again.
you leave the inn with a lightness to your steps.
—
there is no dusk here, but in your mind’s eye, you set the scene with it — orange clouds in a purple sky, the soft glow of lantern light, the low drone of vilekin singing. you pretend the stars peer down shyly at you and the sunlight you transform into something softer, colder, sweeter; and you have your scene, a wanderer with a wayward heart and a flask of water at their hip, ready for a night filled with blissful nothing, cloaked in the spotlight of the moon and the moon alone, but once you step into the meadow proper, your fantasies are scattered to the wind, for nothing your imagination can conquer will compare.
the stage before you is a meadow, a grassy expanse brushed with flowers of every color, glowing faintly and streaked with red, blossoms open towards the ever-present sun. the trees hang gossamer threads of moss and branches above, purple leaves glittering, swaying gently though no wind stirs. blooms as tall as buildings entangle themselves among the treetops, a veritable rainbow of petals, and the shimmer from them radiates off the stained-glass wings of the pixies in flight over the twirling crowd. just in the distance lies a crystalline sea, blue and sparkling and bright, more luminous than any waters you’ve ever seen.
it’s so radiant it almost blinds, but you’ve little time to bask in the glitz of it all, for the girl with the glowing smile descends upon you, laughing once more amidst her fawning over your presence. she speaks a yalm a minute, and you’ve no time to catch your breath — does she even catch her own? — before her arms encircle you and draw you close.
and you’re dancing.
you stumble slightly as you try to match her pace, the light playing off the beads of sweat that roll along her skin. she smells of ripened fruit and salt and copper, her arms both a guide and a fortress as she steers you around in her spins. you watch her with fascination for she seems so… free, so unburdened, and you’re taken back to the moment in the inn, just you and the dressers and the journal, and your heart wants desperately to feel that again. once more. free me from the weight of my name.
with careful determination, you steal the lead from her. you spin her, and she’s delighted. her over-long laugh is now a song you wish would never end.
but you’ve no time to relish in it any further — hands tug at your arms and she relents, releasing you to the embrace of another. you glance at your new partner once — taller, masculine, freshly chopped cedar instead of fruit — and turn back to find what’s become of your friend, but the crowd’s swallowed her whole, just that quickly.
there’s little time before you’re pulled into the stream yourself.
her exuberance is replaced with grace; you feel as if you’re dancing on a sea of clouds, above the others yet mingled with them all the same. the smell of copper is thicker here, but you mind it not. you wade through a lake of grass and flowers in an improvised waltz, too quick to be one proper, but the steps are recognizable to you from galas past. your time together is brief, but enlightening, and you’re spun into the arms of another, the crisp scent of the blue apples in the orchard you past enveloping you both as you step hand to hand, chest to chest, lips just grazing your cheek, and whirl.
each dance is different, each partner different — some are mindless, twirling until your lungs are sore from laughing and your head is light; some are chases, once where you follow, mimicking their steps, and some where you’re followed, leading with moves you remember from home; some are intimate, with locked eyes and held breaths and touch drowning out your other senses. your partners are of every race and gender, with something about them that brands itself in your memory — bright eyes, a bright smile, a bright voice, a bright touch. the magic of it all is intoxicating, the feeling of being nothing but another wisp of aether in a stream. no titles, no glory, no blood staining your hands —
your foot slips against your sandals on a spin, and a burst of pain breaks you from your reverie.
you want to stop for a moment, lifting your foot to examine it, but it’s barely off the ground before your current partner abandons you and two take their place, one at your waist, the other at your hands, and you’re spinning. but now every step stings as your right foot lands. after this, you tell them, i wish to take a moment.
they don’t answer, their witty banter going over your words and snuffing them out akin to fingers on a candle flame.
you let yourself be pulled along more, careful as you move in tandem with them, determined to still enjoy the dance even as you look for an opening to slip out of their hold on you. too much time passes for your liking before they depart with lingering looks, and your foot lifts again as you turn to examine it, but someone grabs your hand with both of theirs, reeling you in until they’ve laid their touch on nearly every part of your arm, and you’re pulled into the stream, again.
this time your steps are staggered, clumsy. the effort to keep up is conscious and difficult. you feel as if you’re dancing on glass — you can’t grasp your footing properly, your legs waver, the ache in your heel now engulfing your calves and spreading towards your thighs. the copper tang in the air is heavier still, the sunlight, warm and radiant before, now truly is blinding, eyes narrowed against the glare as you try your damndest to just turn your head, and look. your partner has other ideas, however, for whenever you steal a moment to try and examine yourself do they grab your face in their hands, nose barely touching your own and whisper look at me . briefly, you forget, staring into deep, dark eyes, until another sharp pain reminds you and the cycle repeats.
no more, you say once the two of you start to slow, and your head whips around to finally, maybe —
someone grabs the back of your shirt, and you know that laugh. the girl with the glowing smile whirls you around to face her and her eyes are feverish, alight with mischief and joy and ringed with dark circles you were certain weren’t so pronounced before. are you alright? you ask, your concern for yourself forgotten, and she only laughs again in response. you choke a little on the breath in your lungs, eyes turning towards the ground to watch your step, watching sunlight glint off the red streaks on the flowers like —
wait.
finally, finally, do you have the moment you need to move your foot enough within your sandal to look, and there it is — blood smeared along the leather, glossy and crimson and —
oh Gods, the flowers . the flowers at your feet, somehow untrampled but the streaks you had thought were natural had grown wider, fresher. more of them. the streaks of red paint the grass and paint your sandals and you remember that they’ve been present since your arrival. the pain and the blood and the way the leather scrapes against a raw wound indicates a blister that had formed and burst — how long have you been dancing?
how long have they all been dancing?
you’re locked in the embrace of your strange, laughing friend, the smell of rotting fruit and salt and blood, her arms both a prison and a fortress, your head whirling to take sight of the frenzied stream you’ve only just broken the surface of, grasping onto any hanging branch of sanity and sense you can to keep yourself from being dragged away.
you nearly collapse into the arms of your next partner (how many? how many has it been?), you of fabled stamina too spent to do naught but follow numbly and search for an escape. one partner turns to two, then three, then four, slick hands grasping at you, pixie wings beating against your cheek, spun around in a sickening, aimless cyclone from person to person to person to person. your lungs burn, desperate for air that’s fresh, you can feel another blister on your heel break, and everything is now too loud, too lasting, too luminous, too much.
maybe you’re imagining it, but they’re rougher with you now. frenzied, tossing you from dancer to dancer, reminiscent of a primal passed from paladin to warrior and back again. hands grope at you carelessly, harshly — you are a fish flopping against rocks in a desperate attempt to swim against the current.
who do you dance for? one partner asks of you, and your answer is spoken in between gasping breaths. Her, you say, and that pleases them, but you’re left with an odd hollowness in your chest, the same one that forms when your words fail you at the moment you need them the most.
sing for her louder! someone cries out above the crowd, and the chanting starts — a name, foreign to you. it makes you think of metal at first, but metal is on your mind, on your tongue; you battle the haze of exhaustion choking you to think, to truly decipher what it means.
dance for her faster! another voice adds, and soon the stream is a cacophony of noise, three different cries echoing in the scalding meadow. you’re dragged around once more, head pounding, your eyes catching a glimpse of the crystalline sea and —
no.
no.
oh Hydaelyn, no.
the sea is crystalline. before you is a sea of crystals, blue and sparkling and bright, and your shoulders ache as the titles that you tried so hard to forget latch onto you once more.
primal slayer, is the one that weighs the heaviest, and as you glance into the deep, empty eyes of those who keep you chained in this festival of madness, your stomach rolls as the task that lies before you dawns on you.
dream for her louder! yells the girl with the glowing smile, and three become four, and any plea that spills from you dies amongst all the noise. the crystals glow, humming in tandem as four chants turn to one, just a name, over and over, over and over.
titania. titania. titania. titania.
you grip your soul stone tight in your pocket as wings with the radiance of cathedral windows burst from the dizzied haze of the revelers’ dreams, silver hair as bright as the moon itself.
the crowd screams in delight. so entranced are they that no one spares you a second thought, and you summon your greatsword in peace.
—
you return to the inn in silence, settling into an empty stool. you did not beckon for anyone’s attention but it comes, a drink passed your way with a friendly smile and a few kind words that fall on ears that still ring.
you pull it towards you, and then it hits you, the smell of fermented lakeland apples, and your mind spirals backwards. apples and salt and red and cedar and screaming and red and red and red —
you lean an arm against the counter for balance and heave, begging to anyone that could hear you, Her especially to please,
please forgive me.
mad from the horror of the light
lost in a frenzied trance
we dance, we dance, we dance, we dance
‘til blood paints a ground marred with light