Dance Gently

There is a saying within my people and that is: dance gently or the sun won’t rise.

When we dance on this day, we must do it gently. The melody is not what matters, nor whether you dance alone or with others. What matters is movement, and breathing, and being, and tasting skin and passing through the air. Tiny trickles of sweat grace our forehead; we move as thought in treacle, as if we are swimming, taking in lashes of fresh air.

It is not just my people that dance, but yours too. I see you, around that distant, hostile world. Your dancing is alien to us, and yet you move with the same care, the same heart. Maybe in the past we have killed each other, blasted holes into each other’s ships and torn one another from our homes into the sucking abyss. Maybe, when the dance finishes, we return to hating you. But whilst we move, and whilst we all feel, all of us, we are not allowed to cling to such things.

Our ships are smooth ingots, circulating the purple gas layer of Ju’dgrassil, and yours are polished spheres, spinning gracefully around the green tides of Maen’ka. From across the void, we all see just how apart we are; how my people are so at ends with yours. We do not share the same world, nor the same language. We can’t identify with your legends, your preposterous ideologies. But we do recognise the dance.

We recognise that on one day every two years, without great hubbub, we all ascend from our worlds in our ships. Collosal battle hulks, scarred by the passing through blazing stars, journey alongside minuscular family shuttles, or brightly adorned advertising barges. For one day, our planets are set to standby, and every one of us goes on sombre pilgrimage. We rise the way we dance, gently, seeing those beautiful purple clouds sink across the top of our hulls, until the darkness of space grips us, takes us. And you do it too; we can see you.

We all dance, on our ships. Sometimes even in silence. The crooked and the infirm, they dance with their heads, with their tired hands. Those of us who dream the unrelenting dream; I like to believe that they pirouette in their slumber. When we see you spinning in your spherical ships, moving your bodies rhythmically, normally we would find reason to laugh and ridicule. But not today. Today, we are happy that you are there, our foes, who we hate with all our hearts. We cry for you, and for your pain, and I know that you cry for ours.

We share the day that the sun didn’t rise. The third planet, our joint home, our joint ancestry, lies to the side of both of ours. It is a barren rock now, dull and twisted. I was not born the day that the sun didn’t rise, and neither were you, but I still feel the pain, like roots reaching down my stomach.

That planet that we do not name any more is our shared reason to enjoy life and enjoy our distant bond. One day, the sun’s rays did not grace the world, and our elders were bathed in radiant, shining darkness. And though we will never know why, their atmosphere dissipated, left their planet, as if letting go of its hand. Our ancestors were sucked into space, their frozen bodies gliding around one another, families beginning to drift apart for the last time. They all danced gently with each other, swaying in death. Dancing as the sun’s rays finally hit their desolate world again.

I know you know this story. I know as you hold your lover, or your friends, or even fly your ship alone, that this story does not leave your mind. It’s why you won’t kill me today, and I won’t kill you. Because breathing, and feeling, and moving, is all we share.

Today, we dance gently. And tomorrow, we hope that the sun will rise, one more time.

© Copyright Sam Kearns 2011. This work may not be reproduced anywhere else without the Authors permission.