dance scene

	The four remaining travelers sat around the fire cooking, while the others walked into the woods.  When the light of the campfire was gone behind them, Luanea looked up and smiled at the beautiful moon overhead.  “This will do,” she said.

	The group came to a halt in a clearing.  Verashon shucked his jacket, and the others followed suit, until Doshellas and Verashon were down to their smallclothes, while Luanea wore her priestly fibers, and Kyria just wore the night sky.  She used her new cantrip, Create Bonfire, and a flickering green and brown light emerged in the middle of the clearing.  Verashon and Doshellas bent their knees in reverence, and inclined their heads to Luanea.  Kyria dropped to both knees and spread her arms, closing her eyes, and turning her face to the fire she had lit.

	Luanea began to dance, slowly spinning on her heel, letting the feather-light fabric slowly trail behind her hips.  She murmured a lyrical prayer, and to her delight, the smoke from the fire began to turn silver.  Eilistraee was listening.

	She sang in Old Eladrin, the language the elven peoples had all spoken when they had left the Feywild over twenty thousand years ago.  It had morphed into Sylvan, Elvish, Eladrin, and Sildëyuir over time, but the Gods of the Seldarine never forgot it.

	Her beautiful voice filled the clearing, and even over the cracking of their own fire, the non-elves perked up their ears and heard it.  Fathom and Noble looked over into the distance, as if they were listening to the words.

	Luanea released her conscious mind and simply moved to the music she had committed perfectly to memory as a child.  The lyrics spilled from her lips in time, and the smoke moved.  The coils of silver smoke spun around her, and as she sang, Kyria rose to join her.

	The two women slowly danced around the flame, which glinted off the silvered bastard sword Luanea carried in her hands.  Despite Kyria’s closed eyes, she moved in complete confidence.  She knew Luanea would never hurt her.

	Fathom slowly walked off towards the music, feeling the mixture of Celestial and fey magic compel him forward.  Noble sat upright and watched, not comprehending, but enchanted nonetheless.

	The murmurs turned into words, as Luanea spoke aloud, and her voice was as rich and deep as ever, but to the men, it sounded like silver and magic.  Verashon felt his heart surge with love, pride, and religious fervor, as his wife channeled his goddess.

	“Lady stars and caves below,
	Bathe us all in your heaven’s glow
	Show us deep and shining light
	And save us from the endless night
	Gift us knowledge of our past
	Keep our silvered hearts steadfast
	Take from us the fear of death
	Whisper your guidance on your breath”

	Luanea saw the stag wander through the clearing and kneel beside the circle, watching in silence.  She smiled, and turned her eyes heavenward.  The alternating seven-eight stanzas filled the clearing with her beautiful singing voice.

	“From deep Ysgard you send rhyme
	Flow across our lips in night-time
	We show the dark silver-steel
	With your love, to ourselves conceal
	Until mind of Lolth reveal
	Corellon’s wounded heart will heal
	When death takes us to your side
	Our souls from death you gently guide”

	At that, the men rose, and joined in the dance as one.  Verashon drew a sword from his discarded things, while Doshellas stood across from Kyria with no armaments.  Luanea turned to the fire once more and gasped in delight; the smoke was now moving independent of her, but wasn’t mirroring her.  Luanea wondered to herself if she could possibly be so lucky as to channel Eilistraee directly on her first night of the journey.  She started the final verse with a pounding heart.

	“We serve your aims to the end
	When bonds of family you mend
	In Arvandor shall we dance
	And back to Svartalfheim advance
	Give to us strength resist
	Dance before the fire in our midst
	Hear us sing our endless love
	And give the same back from above”

	Luanea fell quiet.  All three others stopped dancing, and Fathom looked up into the night sky.  Luanea looked too, and her hands flew to her mouth.  Silhouetted in the moon, she saw a very tall, impossibly beautiful woman.  Her silver hair was the color of the moon behind her, spinning and coiling in the light that spilled all around her, making it seem like she was a part of the light itself, and casting brilliant beams of fey illumination over the circle.  The Celestial stag bowed its head, and Kyria fell to her knees.  Doshellas looked up at her with hopeful, desperate eyes.  Verashon linked his fingers over his belt buckle and looked up at her, knowing full well she was listening to his heart.

	“Lady, thank you,” Luanea whispered.  Eilistraee had not stopped dancing when she had stopped singing, and her outline was all they could see.  Each elf felt their hearts lurch in their chests as her face turned to them, and the darkness of her face broke.  Each one saw dots of purple where her eyes should be, and a curl of light from her smile.

	None heard the same thing when her eyes met theirs.  Kyria heard a voice of pure music in her mind.  “Your soul is not bound to mine, little one, but you follow me regardless.  You shall know no end to joy, if only you keep to my course.”

	Doshellas heard a voice of very soft, caring speech.  “There is nothing to forgive, my blessed son, and know that no shadow hides you so deep I cannot catch you when you fall.”

	Verashon heard a clarion voice of strength under a veil of feminine calm.  “You are the wall against which the darkness breaks, sweet boy, and in the lee of which my children shall shelter.”

	Luanea heard a voice of warmth, caring, and love that rendered her knees weak.  “Daughter, your power shall light the darkness as few can, and in your flesh shall be sown the seed of a new world.”


	Linus slowly rose to his feet and stared in total shock.  A Paladin he may have been, but his bond to Torm had always been a cold and clinical one, of pure pragmatism and little love.  He had never resented it for an instant, as he knew how many millions needed his God’s attention, but that just made the stark sight they viewed all the more shocking.  He had never seen a god in person, not even in his brief death.  He had thought he wouldn’t, until he stood before Kelemvor at the end of it all.  He raised his hands and knelt, staring into the light of a goddess.  Not his, but divine nonetheless, and as good as a Dark Seldarine could be.  For the barest instant, he thought her eyes met his, and he thought he heard a faint, loving laugh in his mind.

	Suivi crumpled.  He had stood in Ryaire’s presence, but that had been through the filter of a dream: unreal and strange on waking.  Now, a goddess was literally staring at him.  Her eyes didn’t leave his, and for five minutes of hesitant, shaking torture, she didn’t break eye contact with him.  Finally, he saw her teeth glint in a smile, and a sense of relief and something else he couldn’t identify flooded into his heart.  He collapsed onto his hands and knees, and he would have sworn he felt a hand on his cheek.

	Cavria met the goddess’s eyes when she completed an arc of her turning dance, and they shared a spontaneous smile.  The High Succubus Prototype felt elation in her mind as she suddenly understood, and while the others couldn’t see it while they stared spellbound at the sight of Eilistraee’s naked form in the moon – literally spellbound, for Suivi – she pulled the amulet off and danced along.

	Axio simply rose and watched her twirl and arch in the light of the moon.  He saw her kick her one leg back until they formed a straight line from the top of the white disk to the bottom, then slowly pirouette until she was spinning on one heel like an ice skater.  When her eyes met his, he clasped his hands over his heart and nodded towards the circle of the dancing fey on the other side of the trees, without blinking his stone gaze once.  Her smile for him was solemn and stern, and when he returned her judgment without hesitation or doubt, she offered him the tiniest spark of true, innocent happiness in her expression.  He felt trust emerge in his mind, before all other emotions, and understood that it wasn’t her trust towards him he was feeling.  His gemstone eyes teared up, and he bowed his head.


	The four elves watched as her outline slowly vanished.  The smoke turned from silver to black.  The fire lost its fey tinge, and suddenly they were just four sleepy, half-or-fully naked people around a bonfire with swords and wet eyes.

	None moved for a while as they scanned the surface of the moon Selunê for any more sign of their Dark Mistress, but she was gone, and she wasn’t coming back.  Luanea sniffled and wiped away tears.  Kyria slowly rose and banished her flames.

	“I see,” Verashon finally said.

	“Yeah.”  Doshellas felt grief and relief stab him deep, and turned away from the others.  “I need to go do something.”

	Luanea turned to the scorched spot on the grass and stared into its depths, her mind whirring.  Verashon walked up beside her and wrapped warm arms around her bare stomach.  “Luanea?” he asked softly.

	“Yes.”

	He closed his eyes and pressed his lips to the crown of her head.  “I love you.”

	She gripped his hands with her own, and her silver sword fell noiselessly to the ground.  “I love you,” she whispered.  “Oh, Dancer, my heart…”

	“She saw us,” he said quietly.  “She danced with us.  She blessed us.”

	Kyria half-heartedly pulled on her clothes and wobbled off back to the main camp.  She had to pause and lean against a tree at one point, but she made it.  She walked in and squinted at the non-elves.  Axio was sitting with his back to Anholme’s flank, lost in thought.  Cavria was emerging from behind the cargo cart, barefoot and grinning from ear to ear.  Linus was lying on his back beside the fire, eyes half-shut, holy symbol in hand.  Suivi was sitting cross-legged beside a plate of half-eaten bread, both hands on the back of his head, looking strangely at the flames.

	“Guess I don’t need to ask if you saw her,” the little wizard mumbled.

	“How could we not?” Linus whispered.  “They must have seen her from the Moonshaes to Thay.”

	“I’ve never felt so alive,” Cavria said quietly.  “She knew.  She knew.”

	“Yeah.”  Suivi shuddered.  “She knew everything.  Forever.”

	Axio just nodded.  “Linus?”

	“Hmm?”

	“Does that answer your question?”

	Linus half-smiled.  “Perfectly.”

	“Thinking of jumping ship?” Cavria teased.  “You were enraptured.”

	The human Paladin beamed up into the starry sky.  “Not on your life.  I’m just asking Torm to protect her.”

	Kyria snorted.  “Think our Lady needs some divine knight’s help?”

	“Eilistraee did kind of die in the Spider Queen War,” Axio pointed out.

	The dark elf shrugged.  “True.  Think Torm’s listening?”

	“Who cares?” Linus asked.  He closed his eyes, and his smile didn’t fade.  “I don’t.  Torm doesn’t feel the need to check in on us like naughty children when we’re errant, and he doesn’t show us a dance routine when he’s pleased.  One thing he does do is have an infallible sense of good and bad, and I think he knows nobody that good doesn’t deserve his friendship.”

	“That’s cute.”  Kyria sat down beside him, belatedly noting that he had the same skin, hair, and eye color that she did.  “You have a funny way of explaining the relationships between the gods.”

	“And if I’m wrong, I am quite certain that they will correct me,” Linus said.  “I took two heads off of Tiamat with strikes my God enriched.  When I die the second, final death, I’m sure I’ll have a chance to have my questions answered.”


	Doshellas stumbled through the underbrush until he was out of sight of the clearing, then fell to his knees and vomited.  He heaved and felt tears drop from his face to the carpet of pine needles below.

	He was forgiven.  No, he hadn’t needed it.  He had never needed it.  She didn’t love him less.  She called him son.  She loved him, after all he had done.  After all that had been done to him.  She would catch him when the darkness finally overwhelmed him.

	Relief curdled his joints, and he fell sideways onto the bare ground, bawling.  It was all right.  Everything was all right.  The shocks of adrenaline, bitter fear, and desperate, frightened hope faded in his arms like the poison barbs of his slavemistress’s lash had finally fallen out, and he could move again.  It was like an arm waking up after falling asleep, or a knife getting pulled out of a wound, and the infected blood spilling away.  It hurt so much, but he had never felt less afraid.  Eventually, his sobs faded, and he lay still on the floor of the forest, unconscious from his shocks.  He would have tranced had he thought to, but he was too far gone.  The forest kept him, as it always did, and he slept through all the night.


	Luanea nearly tore the clothes off her husband as he pulled her to the ground.  The brilliant light of the moon spilled over their night-black bodies as she desperately kissed him.  Tears moistened her face in joy.

	She was no fool, of course.  She suspected that the goddess’s words about her flesh bearing the seed of the salvation of the drow didn’t imply that her husband would impregnate her that very night, but as she had turned to look into his eyes after their declaration of mutual love, they had come to the same conclusion about their proper course of action for the rest of the night.  Suddenly, it was the most natural, correct, and appropriate thing to do, and so they had wordlessly kissed, with such passion that Luanea had nearly fallen on her backside from the suddenness of it all.

	The drow priestess’ clothing wasn’t minimal for any sexual reason, despite what chuckling tavern-goers imagined.  It was to show off the attempt of the mortal women to mirror the divine beauty of their goddesses, whether the kind and regal ones like Sehanine or Hanali, or the evil ones like Lolth.  It was mere convenience that there was so little for her to remove with shaking hands.

	Her husband loomed over her in the darkness, shaking a bit himself.  His brown eyes practically glowed in her darkvision.  Normally, they enjoyed a bit of fond play before they had sex, but neither saw the need, looking at Luanea’s current state.

	She whimpered his name in helpless, unconditional love, and he whispered hers back, and the two of them made love with such abandon and passion that both suspected Sharess was helping.  Bursts of light seemed to flicker across Luanea’s eyes as she wordlessly cried out, thanking him, the Dancer, and anybody else who had a hand in keeping their hearts madly in love.