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Ribbon Dance Hill


The Ribbons were well up in the sky, though not so far that Padi could not feel their caress, and a certain sense of lightness.

There were fewer dancers on the hill, now; the musicians’ circle was empty. The dancing itself was less frenzied, and more intimate, as if the Ribbons now bestowed benediction, after the intoxication of their rising.

Padi and Tekelia danced together, moving to the song of the Ribbons, Padi’s hand on Tekelia’s hip; Tekelia’s hand on her shoulder.

They had eaten, several times, and danced again. They had wandered the edges of the hillside, pausing for introductions, and to watch a display of acrobatics, involving meters-high leaps, sky-tumbling, and leisurely wafts, as if the athlete reclined on the back of a zephyr.

The music changed. Padi swayed closer to Tekelia, smiling into eyes that were blue and amber.

“Tired?” Tekelia asked.

Padi considered. She ought by rights to be very tired, she thought. Rather, she found herself . . . content, and full of a potent, malleable energy.

“Not tired,” she said, “and I wonder—”

She paused, looking up into the Ribbon-washed sky.

“What it is that you wonder?”

“I wonder if I could fly,” Padi said.

“To fly at a Ribbon Dance is both dangerous and beautiful,” Tekelia said, seriously. “Both attract the Haosa, of course, but I feel I should warn you that unexpected things may happen if you give yourself to the sky.”

“And yet,” Padi said, “I feel that I must. I locked myself away for so long, that it seems . . . churlish to deny my Gift a flight, if it is able to go so high.”

“Oh,” Tekelia said, softly, “I wager you will go as high as your heart will take you.”

Startled, Padi brought her gaze down from the sky just as Tekelia dropped her hand, and stepped back, arms spread wide.

“Follow your heart. Nothing holds you.”

And, indeed, nothing did.

Padi’s heart lifted, and the rest of her followed—it was simple and as exhilarating as that. Color bloomed around and within her; she laughed with the joy of it.

She danced there in the plain air and sky, while the Ribbons swirled above and about, curling round her waist, her arms—broad lavender ribbons, and lacy silver ribbons. Somewhere in the distance, someone was singing, and almost—almost—she could hear the words—

“How high will you rise?” a familiar voice called, and she spun, Ribboned and enraptured, to face Tekelia, who was dancing with streamers of crimson and gold.

“I think this is high enough,” she said, not even glancing down to see how far she was above the ground.

Guided by what impulse she could not have said, except that it seemed to come from the base of her spine, where she had been taught that her Gift resided—she caught the end of a lavender ribbon and extended it.

“Tekelia, dance with me.”

Around them the Ribbons flared, edging Tekelia with living flame.

“I will dance with you in joy,” Tekelia said, extending the end of a bold crimson ribbon. “Will you also dance with me?”

“In joy,” Padi promised, and knew it for truth.


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Framed