PEYDRAN

  My first reaction upon returning to our guest suite and finding Ren on the sofa with three pads hovering in front of him and earbuds in his ears was fear that he was in a composing frenzy again.

  My second reaction was giggling when I realized he was not composing because he had a giant bowl of peeled, sliced mangos on his lap and was eating mango off of a fork with his right hand while his left scrolled through the screens. I don’t mean a small, reasonable bowl of mangoes; I mean GIANT. As in, did he ask chef to bring him an entire case of sliced mangoes in a vat?

  My third reaction was confusion because in the moment I’d taken to process the scene, Ren had flipped one of the pads around, blaring Floreno, and I realized it was in video mode pointing at me. He waved a hand but didn’t look at me. And the video recorded me standing in the doorway wondering why Ren was eating a giant vat of mangoes and waving at me to do something?

  Still not looking at me, Ren said, “Give us a dance, love.”

  Okay. I was supposed to dance. While he recorded but didn’t watch. What was he doing? I wanted him to watch me, but he was definitely in some kind of genius mood. So I took a sec to listen to the music. Then I became the music. I was all undulating pelvis and rocking steps.

  The music cut off, and I opened my eyes to see Ren waving me over and offering me a fork with one hand while the other was scrolling across the pad that had been recording me. His earbuds were on the table.

  “Watch.” Ren played a series of videos— mostly from the wedding last night. Then a clip of me from a minute ago. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to see, so I just kept watching and listening. Eventually I’d see whatever it was he was trying to show me. He zoomed in on Ryst and Nayth dancing to “Helix,” up close on their faces, then zoomed out.

  He went back to Freya and me grinding to nasty Bhangra. Then to Nayth and Ren in “Before.” Freya and Nayth. Nayth and Ren. Freya and me. Freya alone. Ryst and me. Ryst and Nayth’s grandpa. Nayth and Borden. Annika alone. Ryst and Nayth.

  It was a lot of expert dancing and a lot of pelvis rocking. Then Ren playing saxophone. Nayth’s grandpa playing bongoes. Nayth playing guitar. Then me here in our suite. Then he opened up “Irony— It Happens;" me dancing to techno three years ago. I kept eating mango and waiting to see what Ren was seeing that I couldn’t.

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  “You already dance like a Florian, Peydran. You don’t need lessons. Here— see? You’re already so in time with the music that there’s no difference between music and man. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bhangra techno or Floreno. When you dance alone, you are the music."

  "Nayth plays guitar that way. His grandpa plays bongoes that way. I play instruments and sing that way. Freya dances that way by herself. You by yourself. Freya by herself. Annika by herself. Every single one of us has a solo act where we are indecipherable from the music. We are the music in that moment."

  "But Ryst and Nayth together? It’s not like Nayth dancing with me or Nayth dancing with Freya.”

  “Nayth and Freya are two of the most beautiful dancers I’ve ever watched. Experts. Probably could compete professionally. They’ve probably been dancing Floreno together their whole lives."

  "But Nayth has been dancing Floreno with Ryst for longer than that, and she supposedly just had lessons this month. They are the only couple in all of this footage that is one with the music as a couple. The rest of us are solo acts.”

  “Show me again, Ro.” I watched more closely. Mangoes disappeared.

  Could I see something different about Ryst and Nayth that I didn’t see with anyone else? “Again.” The bowl was empty. “Wait—“ I sent a command to the pad and backed up the video of Ryst and Nayth dancing to “Helix” and paused it.

  “Umm hmm. That’s the one,” Ren nodded.

  Both of their eyes were closed. Nayth was on his shins on the floor. Ryst was perched on his right shoulder, facing the opposite direction, arching backwards about to go into a backbend, left leg straight up in the air, right foot on the floor. Her shoes were off.

  We watched in slow motion as Nayth slowly rose so at the exact moment Ryst was in a handstand, his open arms went around her body in a circle from her arms up and over the tops of her feet before she stepped her right foot out of the handstand and rose up to return to him, body to body.

  “Remember what he said?” Ren asked. “Nayth said he’d only hummed this song to Ryst. She’d never heard the song. They didn’t rehearse that, Peydran. Shouldn’t that have taken weeks to choreograph and rehearse? Yet, they danced that whole song with their eyes closed like they were in another world.”

  Ren was absolutely right. I backed it up, and we watched the whole thing again. Ryst and Nayth both had that dreamy look on their faces. The look that everyone got when Ryst merged her mind with theirs. The whole song, and they never opened their eyes and looked at each other or around them at the dance floor.

  They danced with their eyes closed to a song Ryst had never heard like they’d rehearsed it a thousand times. A song Nayth wrote years ago and Ren wrote two weeks ago, blended together.

  “What are we watching, Ren?”

  “Stars Dancing, of course,” he said with a grin.