Solo An Evocative Etude

[Nissabella Rose]

Season of Fall, Day 53, 512 AV "Nissabella! Nissabella!" In the middle of toweling herself off, the young dancer looked up eagerly when she heard the cheerful, girlish voices calling her name. A smile spread across her face as she quickly located the source, a trio of fellow junior aerial dancers clad, not in their dancing silks like her, but in colorful, slim everyday dresses and sandals. Standing in the Cobweb's practice rooms, the giggling, brightly dressed girls struck a pretty, but incongruous note against the stark, mirrored walls and bare floors. Forgetting to drop her towel, Nissabella rushed forward to greet them, holding out her hands. Though the higher echelons of dancers might have bitter feuds and rivalries with their celebrated peers, the younger aerial dancers banded together closely even as they competed with each other. The life of an aspiring dancer was difficult and uncertain, after all, so they watched out for one another and formed an easy, tight-knit camaraderie borne of shared struggle and passion. The four of them giggled like sisters as a chagrined Nissabella nearly tripped over the towel still clinging to her hand and flapping around her legs. "Sorry, sorry!" the ruby-eyed leader of the trio exclaimed, holding up her hands apologetically. "If I'd known we'd cause such an uproar, we would've come at a better time!" "No, no, I'm happy you're here!" Nissabella protested, laughing at herself along with the others as she tugged the towel off her palm with difficulty. "It's not your fault that I'd forget my own head if it weren't attached to my shoulders. Anyway, what brings you girls here?" The second girl leaned forward conspiratorially, her inky hair forming a secretive curtain for her words. "We're arranging a very special outing, and we're inviting everyone we know who can come!" "Ooh!" Nissabella clapped her hands like a child about to receive a gift. "An outing? That sounds like so much fun. I'd definitely love to come. Where are we going?" Her eyes danced with anticipation. "Shopping in the Orchard Market? Bathing and relaxing at the Blue Grotto? Maybe drinks at the Hunters' Gather?" "Nope, nope, and nope!" laughed the first girl, shaking her head playfully at each suggestion. "Come on, Nissa, we've been there and done that a hundred times. I would've thought you'd be more original than those kinds of outings." "But they're fun-" Nissabella started to say. "This time, we have plans for something totally different and daring," the first girl swept on, interrupting her. "This time, we're going to the Sickle and Arrow. You know, the hangout for all the hunters and harvesters before they set out to bring back game or surrogates. Liseena here," she indicated the third girl in their trio, a shy-looking dancer with amethyst eyes, "managed to meet the nicest harvester, who's agreed to meet us and tell us all about the surrogates to be presented at Notok." "Yes," the third girl chimed in, "he's agreed to tell me…tell us everything about which surrogates are the prettiest and most certain to win the beauty contest. Isn't that exciting?" A chill entered Nissabella's heart. "The prettiest surrogates?" "Yes!" the first girl affirmed, nodding fervently. "We're getting a sneak preview of the best festival of the year. So, are you coming, Nissa? Doesn't that sound like more fun than shopping at the market?" "I…I…" Frantically, Nissabella cast about herself for any possible excuse or reason to refuse. She would have eagerly embraced an afternoon of enjoying simple pleasures with these girls, a respite from the endless rehearsals, practices, and lessons. But this…this… To meet with a heartless harvester who tore those innocent, helpless women from their homes and dragged them towards certain death and then to gossip about those women as if they were commodities with no importance but to look pretty at the Notok beauty contest and bear Symenestra babies… This, she could not endure to do. Not unless she wanted to end up hating her friends and fellow dancers for their callousness, possibly striking out at the harvester in a fit of rage, and most certainly losing what standing she had left as a dancer by revealing that she felt and thought differently than almost everyone else in Kalinor about the surrogates. "I…can't come, girls," she stammered at last. "I'm so sorry! But I, uh, I just realized that I…I…" Nervously, she looked down at her hand, around which her sweat-stained towel was still wrapped. "I still need to practice a new dance. So, I need to stay here. At the Cobweb. And I can't go with you to the Sickle and Arrow. I just can't." The trio of girls' faces fell, but only for an instant. "I thought from that towel that you were done with lessons for the day," the second girl murmured, "but I guess not. Oh, well, let's go and see if Soraya Orchid wants to come with us!" "Bye, Nissabella!" the three girls chorused, closing the door and taking their color, brightness, and high spirits from the room. As they disappeared from the practice room, Nissabella let out a long sigh and regarded the damp towel in her hand. She didn't have any new dances to practice, in truth, at least nothing assigned to her by her teacher at the Cobweb. The last grand production had been earlier in the season, and her teacher hadn't given her new pieces from the classic aerial dance repertoire to practice yet. Yet, she could hardly let this practice room go to waste, could she? Nor could she leave, while those girls expected her to stay inside and practice as she'd told them she would be doing. But she did have a dance of her own that she could practice: the dance she'd been choreographing and planning in her head for seasons, a dance portraying the suffering of the surrogates brought to the Nest for childbearing. At first, it had only been an attempt to integrate some of the dances that the Benshira surrogate girl had taught her from her own culture into an aerial dance routine. Slowly, however, it had grown in Nissabella's head into a richer, fuller production with a tale of innocence and naivete leading to capture, despair, and death. Now, with an entire practice room at her disposal and no one here to watch or supervise her, Nissabella could rehearse and refine her dance to her heart's content. After all, someday she might be able to hold her own recital, where she could show off this dance to an audience and show, rather than tell, the surrogates' plight through dance. When that day came, she would need to be absolutely perfect, or her message would be lost and forgotten and all her hard work condemned, rather than pondered and praised. Absently wiping a last streak of sweat from her brow, Nissabella pried the towel off her hand and slowly made her way back toward the wall of the practice room. Pressing the palms of her hands against the stone, she lifted herself up into the air and began -- without music, without guidance or audience, only the dreams and plans inside her mind -- to dance.

[Nissabella Rose]

As she was still very much a novice to the complex and difficult art of aerial dance, most of the dances that Nissabella studied, practiced, agonized over, and performed had been choreographed beforehand by masters of the dance. As with composers of music, only a particularly gifted practitioner of aerial dance could take an ordinary array of steps and gestures and combine them into a beautiful, memorable display that caused an audience to gasp and marvel. It took a skilled eye, sound instincts, and experience above all to make a dance convey an emotion or tell a story. For the most part, Nissabella was more than willing to trust the choreography wrought by those great masters, like Kanasa Curare. Yet, sometimes she could find no preset dances for the emotion that she wanted to convey or the story she wanted to tell. No one, as far as she knew, had ever crafted a dance sequence narrating the life story of a surrogate from birth to untimely death. Thus, Nissabella had made up her own dance. It had come from the dances she had shared and learned from the Benshira she had befriended. It came from the pain of her loss and the guilt she still felt for being part of the race that had killed her. It came from the resolve never to bring that suffering on another, but to undergo it herself for the sake of her people. It began with a joyful spreading of arms toward the sky and then a lively, skipping step that whirled her around and around in a loop. Benshira dancing, her friend had told her, was often conducted in circles where everyone clapped, swayed, and kicked up their feet in lively, exuberant rhythms. As she imitated from memory the twisting arm gestures and flowing turns, the voice of the Benshira surrogate who had taught her echoed in her mind through the mists of recollection. "Is harder than it looks!" she always insisted, green eyes flashing. "Much harder. We not do all the..the jumping, climbing you do, but we dance all at same time, all together. Is very beautiful, all together." Nissabella only had to close her eyes to see the lovely Benshira in her mind's eye, as slender as a willow and as graceful as a passing silk moth's flight, her faded skirts flaring as she demonstrated a complicated sequence of turning, back-and-forth steps. "Step behind, face out, step behind, face in, step behind and right," she'd recited in her heavily accented Common," step forward. Then hold arms out and step in. That is first part. See? Easy to remember!" She had burst into giggles over Nissabella's flabbergasted expression. Even now, the Symenestra smiled at the memory. Oh, Myrriam… "You, name is Nis-Nissabella," she had stammered, stumbling over the many syllables. It was the first thing she'd ever said to her persistent, inquisitive visitor who snuck into the Nest every other day to watch her prayerful dances in honor of her foreign god. She had pointed at Nissabella's chest, then to herself. "Me, name is Myrriam. See," she'd added, tossing her head, "I listen when you speak! I know what you say." Emulating Myrriam's pert gestures of self-introduction in the current moment, Nissabella made smooth, stylized gestures out of placing her hands on her hips and shaking her head so that her hair fluttered in the air. Then she tilted her head to one side and cupped a hand over one ear, as though hearing something in the distance. She clapped both hands to her mouth to portray disbelief and took off "running" toward the wall. "In desert, I chase after goat," Myrriam had sighed, grumbling. "Stupid goat! All others go back to tents, but one stays behind. I must run back, fetch it. I push, shove, fight, but goat just stopped! Very…what is that word, not move or listen or change mind?" "Stubborn?" Nissabella had offered, listening raptly to the cadences of the girl's voice. "Yes, stubborn." The Benshira smiled apologetically. "My Common, not very good. Goat just stopped and stand, very stubborn. Sun goes down, night comes, and still he stands! My father would shout if I leave goat out in the sands, but he never moves! I scream, shout, wave my arms, nothing! I almost cry, but then suddenly a man in cloak appears. "He laughs, says he can help. Takes berries from his pouch and puts them under the goat's nose. The goat sneezes and kicks and runs for home! 'Thank Yahal,' I think. I ask the man, how may I repay him, and he laughs again and says, 'With yourself!'" Myrriam had shuddered. "Before I even cry out, he brings out silk rope and ties me so tight I can hardly breathe! I try to fight and kick, but he dodges and hobbles my feet, so I only walk in small steps. Then he wraps cloth around my face, so I can't scream. Then he drags me back and forces me to drink something to make me sleep long time. The journey…it all passed like a dream." Nissabella pantomimed the capture and struggle in dance, turning her back on the wall and then flinging herself against it as though a rope had been tossed around her waist, pinning her. The minuscule hooks in her skin adhered to the wall through her silk rehearsal sheath, holding her firm so that she could act out kicking and thrashing. Then, suddenly, she let herself fall limp, as though drugged or poisoned into submission. After a moment, she reached her arms above her head and pressed them flat against the wall, which let her pull herself slowly and laboriously upward at a crawl. This symbolized the journey from Myrriam's native desert home on the floor of the practice room to the city of Kalinor, represented by the ceiling with its hanging ropes and swaths. Once Nissabella reached the top, she made a great show of opening her eyes, gasping in surprise, and collapsing in tears. "I wept like a baby at its birth when I realized where I was," the Benshira girl had confided, her eyes shining and wet. "Like a man facing death. I wept all the tears in my body and all the tears left in my life. Since then, I have never wept at all. They were all gone the first day I woke up in Kalinor." Remembering the way Myrriam's low, lamenting voice had tugged at her heart, Nissabella made much of this sorrowing sequence. Indeed, a single tiny tear welled up in her eye, and she had to wipe it away for real. Meanwhile, her legs wrapped around the silk rope and clung on for dear life. This had been only the first half of the dance in memory of Myrriam. She still had the Benshira girl's stay in the Nest, as well as her death, left to go.

[Nissabella Rose]

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Nissabella leaned backward slightly and took a flying leap from the rope toward a cluster of nearby hanging silk shrouds. Even as she glanced apprehensively down at the safety net that lay between her and the hard floor beneath, her fingers closed with infinite gratitude upon the strong, flexible fabric and the tension went out of her body in a huff of air. Her momentum from the leap continued carrying her forward, as Nissabella had intended, and she let it twist her body around into an ever-tightening spiral while she clung to the hanging shroud. With one outthrust foot, she caught hold of another shroud using the tips of her toes and flung it across her body. The circling, spinning motion of her body caused the second length of fabric to wind around her legs and up her hips and chest like a binding rope. This also slowed her momentum, so that in the end she would hang from the shroud with another shroud of silk wrapped tightly around her in uniform loops, symbolizing her imprisonment. At least, Nissabella planned for the second length of silk to wrap around her in uniform loops. She had seen this trick done before by different dancers, but had still yet to master it herself. Obeying her far less readily than it did, say, Kanasa Curare, the second fabric merely twined around her legs before sagging limply. Oh, well. It would have to do. Despite the minor aesthetic setback, Nissabella could feel herself entering that euphoric, wonderful trance that frequently came upon her while she danced. It made her forget her aching shoulders and arms and burning skin, her frightening height above the ground. The stage and the hanging silks felt like home to her, a magical and sheltering place where nothing bad could ever touch her. Her weariness melted away, leaving only vitality and joy in its place. Of course, some of that joy was tempered by the memory of Myrriam's voice in her mind, providing a melancholy guide to her dance. "They carry me to this place, this Nest, in many tight ropes and straps," she had murmured, her green eyes dark and fists bunched. "Like animal. Like stupid beast." She had lifted her chin sharply. "If not for that, I might have fought. Bite and scratch. But somehow I know the pale ones that bring me here, they expect that. I am only beast to them. So, I say nothing. I look away, think of home. It is very small thing, but I show I am strong, not weak." How astonished Nissabella had been to hear about her new friend's capture and her feelings about it. In her heart, she had never thought very much about the surrogates before now. They had just been part of life for her, a convenience that made bearing children easier for the Symenestra. Never before had she thought about the surrogate's experiences throughout it all or the interruption to their lives. As she had talked to Myrriam and slowly drawn out her story, though, Nissabella had felt herself resonating with her friend's emotions and frustrations and had realized, with a suddenness that stole her breath from her body, that she empathized with the surrogates far more than with their captors. She had been wrong to be so blind to the surrogates' suffering, and she would be committing an even worse wrong to stand by and condone it, knowing it was happening every year. "When they bring me here, though," Myrriam had continued, with a brief, wry laugh, "I think, This place is so beautiful! These soft silks, these warm lights. I even live in tent again. I even think, Maybe, maybe they mean me no harm after all. Why they would put prisoner in such lovely place if they mean harm?" In the present moment, entwined in lengths of silk, Nissabella subtly twisted her lower body, and the loops around her legs slowly uncoiled and fell away. She gathered fabric between her feet and let the soles hook into the silk, before carefully, ever so carefully letting go with her hands. The result made her appear as though she were standing in mid-air against a backdrop of silk. Ignoring the quivering of her leg muscles, Nissabella raised her face and arranged her features in an expression of amazed wonder, covering her mouth with her hands. The dancer too had been surprised and soothed by the gentle, glowing beauty of the Nest when she had first visited. Even for a Symenestra accustomed to homes strewn and hung with translucent, fine-spun fabric, it had been luxurious. To a woman like Myrriam, whose homeland was barren and thirsty beyond Nissabella's limited capacity to imagine, the Nest must have felt like a palace. Stretching her arms forward, she reached again for the second length of silk, fighting to keep her body loose and languorous. With a junior dancer's lack of subtlety, her hands closed into fists on either side of the fabric; a Weaver could probably have held onto it with their fingertips or backs of their hands alone. The strength of her grip, though, made Nissabella comfortable enough to detach her feet. With swift, smooth swoops of her legs, she wove both silks together into a tight, secure foot-knot around her left foot, while her right leg curved freely and gracefully with foot flexed and conscientiously pointed toes touching the small of her back. For a second, Nissabella merely stood there in mid-air, seemingly supported by nothing but two shrouds of silk before and behind her. Then, gathering up her right leg to push on the silk at her back, she arched her back and leaned forward into the shroud in front of her, pressing her whole body so far into the silk that her arms extended straight out to its sides and it curved and stretched around her like a sheltering pocket. The aerial fabric was soft against her face and eyelids as she let herself hang from her hands and foot, relaxing into the silk like a surrogate wilfully ensconcing herself in the comfort of the Nest. Of course, it could not last. "Before even half a season had passed, he came," Myrriam had whispered. "The women, they fed me more sleeping drinks. It was like a dream, until he…he… " Her voice had caught, and Nissabella had impulsively stroked her hand. Then Myrriam, looking down at the black-clawed fingers, had murmured, "Then the dream hurt. Then it became nightmare."

[Nissabella Rose]

Drawing back from the sheltering pocket formed by the outspread silk, Nissabella sagged and curved her body backward, seeking to bend back almost double so that her head would hang almost upside-down from her arching shoulders. With her arms sliding down the edges of the shroud toward her sides, this formed what she thought was the perfect posture of despair. From luxury to horror in a few moments, a surrogate's life could truly change that quickly, as they saw beyond their pleasing surroundings into the brief and terrible future awaiting them. Slipping her left foot out of its knotted lock, Nissabella took another steadying breath in preparation for the elaborate acrobatics she had planned for this portion. Misjudgements were still possible, even for a dancer with years of training, and even with the safety net below to save her, the last thing she wanted was to suffer a sprain from mere private practicing. Then, with a single swift gesture, she parted the silk shrouds so that they hung separate again on either side of her body, holding onto one shroud with each hand with her body suspended in between. Though Nissabella's grip was secure, her arms trembled as she exerted her slight strength to hold herself up firmly in mid-air. The weight of her entire body felt as though it was hanging from her wrists, but she did her best to make it all appear magical and weightless as she slowly cycled her legs in circles, symbolizing trying to run away. "We all think about trying," Myrriam had confided in a low voice, her eyes darting back and forth for eavesdropping Nest attendants. "Once, I thought, I could make it! The…man was sleeping, and I went to door and peeked. No one was outside! I think, I could go, I am free!" Kicking upward with both legs, Nissabella then flipped herself into an upside-down hanging position, her legs spread wide in a side split. She looped a length of silken shroud around each thigh and then let go of the fabric completely with both hands, seemingly floating above the ground with only the flimsiest loop of silk around each leg. Nissabella held the pose for only an instant before reaching for the fabric again and weaving it around her body in an intricate, under-and-over crossing motion. The silk supported and sustained her, even while it appeared to constrain her like the bars of a cage. Thus wrapped and bound, she let herself dangle and circle slowly in this pose for a few moments. "Then…the man spoke from the bed, scared me." Myrriam never called the male Symenestra who came to impregnate her anything but "the man," perhaps fearing to say anything harsher and not knowing any other details to describe him. "He ask, 'Where are you going?' and I realize…I do not know. I cannot go anywhere. I am trapped! "I go back, and he…started again." Nissabella's cheeks flamed red and then turned white as she thought of that, even three years later. She had been so young and naïve back then, her thoughts of love never going beyond a kiss, and here was her friend and fellow dance enthusiast suffering the physical indignities of what was most certainly not love. After that revelation, the younger, more foolish Nissabella had never asked again about Myrriam's encounters, fearing too much what she might hear. Now, though, she wished she had. "I dance when I can," she had whispered, her eyes wet with unshed tears. "I pray to Yahal, still. May he give me the strength to endure. May he bring warmth to my heart when I feel sad and lonely." Still bound within the intertwined shrouds, she bent and pulled herself upright, gathering her legs and tucking them to guide her torso upward. Arching her back, twisting her arms, pointing her toes, and stretching out her legs, she glided and shifted into more poses that alternated between representing despair, prayer, pain, and resignation. Ever mindful of her grip and orientation, Nissabella contorted her b ody into twisted, tense shapes with elbows and knees gathered at sharp, precise angles in an attempt to convey harshness, bleakness, and hardship instead of grace or beauty. This dance, after all, was meant to impress and inspire, but never to soothe the senses with aesthetic pleasure. The story it told had little to do with happiness or pleasure, after all. And Nissabella would be damned by Viratas himself before she told her dead friend's story in a way that made Symenestra happy to be killers and rapists. Finally, at the end, Nissabella had worked her way almost to the top of the silk shrouds, where she hung sideways with her legs in a wide split and her arms spread almost as wide. Around her waist, the twined shrouds were knotted and looped at least half a dozen times, each having been fastened in the midst of achieving and posing in a particular contortion or another. One hand clasped tightly to the knots around her waist, holding them fast. Meanwhile, Nissabella made exaggerated motions of exertion and struggle with her tensed, trembling limbs, waving them and flourishing them in wild movements that seemed to skim just on the edge of coordination and choreography. Suddenly, she went still, her limbs abruptly freezing in place, pointing straight out. Then, with what she hoped was heartbreaking slowness, they went limp and sagged in place. Quickly and subtly, her hand undid the knots around her waist, and with the thrill of free-fall, Nissabella let herself tumble in a rolling, spiraling descent toward the ground. Her hair flapped loosely and her stiff arms and legs whirled like the spokes of a wheel as she dropped downward, like Myrriam's cold corpse must have once her own child had poisoned her. Even glimpsing the safety net out of the corner of her eye, Nissabella couldn't help thinking for one terrified instant as gravity claimed her, Viratas help me, I'm not going to make it; the silk's not going to hold! The silk held. Her descent ended in an abrupt-seeming impact as the silk around her waist unwound at the end into another knotted fabric-lock that jerked her to a standstill just before she reached the safety net. For a moment, Nissabella simply lay there suspended, her arms and legs extended at floppy angles in what she imagined was an attitude of death. It was the end of life, and the end of her dance.

[Nissabella Rose]

Though it was only for a moment or two, Nissabella felt as though she stayed hanging from the end of the knotted silk for an eternity, lingering in mid-air only a few feet above the safety net with her limbs drooping loosely and her eyes closed. Slowly, she became aware of the sound of her labored breathing and the sensation of her heart racing in her chest. She felt the layer of sweat coating her skin and the ache of weariness in her muscles, forced to flex, balance and perform acrobatic feats to perform this dance. As she hung there motionless, she realized that she had finally performed it not in broken pieces and segments, but completely from start to finish, and that she was satisfied. It had all come together the way she had envisioned it would. Though there were definitely weaknesses and parts that could use improvement, Nissabella felt that her dance of the surrogate was almost ready. Ready for what, exactly, she still could not say. It might never be ready to be debuted on the Cobweb's stage, nor might Kalinor ever be ready to receive it. However, if she could perform it at a private recital, Nissabella felt quite sure it would cause all the stir and controversy she could desire. Emboldened by this thought, she raised her arms to the hanging silk and pulled herself upright. She felt a slight draft against her bare legs while releasing the loops that held her suspended and dropping onto the safety net. Startled, Nissabella glanced down through the net toward the practice room floor. Only then did she realized the practice room's door hung open and one of the friends who had invited her on their excursion to the Sickle and Arrow stood on the threshold with her mouth open. Their eyes met, amethyst and gold, looking curiously alike in their expressions of surprise. Nissabella froze, caught between guilt and fear. How much had her friend seen? What did she think of the dance? A moment later, though it felt like a hundred years of suspense to Nissabella, her friend slowly raised her hands to her chest and clapped. "I probably should have said something, but I didn't want to interrupt you in the middle of your dance," she exclaimed. "Especially when you were working so hard." "How long were you standing there?" Nissabella couldn't help asking. "Oh, no more than a chime or two, just long enough to see your last fall," the girl replied lightly. "That was really prettily done, too. I actually held my breath, wondering if you were going to tumble straight down to the ground...or the net, I suppose, in this case." Nissabella broke into a pleased smile, delighted that the impression she was hoping to convey had at least captured one spectator unwittingly. "Believe me, for a second I thought I was going to fall too! At least now I know that it wasn't for nothing. Anyway, what brought you back here?" The girl joined her in friendly laughter before shaking her head wryly. "The nice harvester that I told you about never showed up at all! Can you believe the nerve? I wonder if he was just playing a joke on us to see if we'd actually go to the Sickle and Arrow looking for him!" Making her way over to the wall, where she could scale down to the ground, Nissabella merely grunted in what sounded like assent. "So, what was your dance about, anyway?" the girl inquired, solicitously handing Nissabella a towel as she landed on the ground and walked over to the door. "I only saw the last part, with the fall. It looked like you meant for it to be a tragic ending and not just an ordinary descent. Who was falling, and why?" There was only a moment of hesitation before Nissabella answered carefully, "It was someone dropping from Kalinor down into the cavern below." "Someone dropping?" the girl repeated in confusion. "That is tragic! Why would anyone fall down there...except, well, the... Oh." She lapsed into a thoughtful silence, her expression unreadable as she looked up at the hanging silk and then toward the sweaty Nissabella. "Oh. Hmmmm." Nissabella waited a beat, wondering if she would say anything else, but the girl stood there in silence. "Well, I've got to go wash myself off," she announced, deciding to dismiss her worries about what the girl might say or think about her. They were friends, after all, or so she would hope. "See you tomorrow at rehearsals, Liseena." "S-see you tomorrow," the girl echoed, still staring thoughtfully at the silk and safety net, as Nissabella left the practice room with mingled satisfaction and concern in her heart over the success of her dance.

[Poison]

THREAD AWARD!

Skills: Dancing 5, Acrobatics 5

Lores: Combining Different Dance Styles, Benshira Dancing, Myrriam's Story

Notes: This was a wonderful thread. I liked how you combined Myrriam's Story with Nissabella's dance! More please!

If you think you should have received XP in skills other than dancing and acrobatics or more lores, let me know!