twenty
“So, you’re here with your husband?”
Sulim was still standing by the table of two dining julah, although their dinners were sparse and their tabletop instead covered in tea and imported tesatah wine.
Sulim couldn’t help but calculate how much that must have cost in her mind, but julah were wealthy compared to even the Gardiah family.
The daughter of the High Priest and the lauded Master of House Marlow?
They could buy the whole town for pennies on the dollar.
“I’m… yeah.” Sulim had to act normal before someone around her noticed that she was not all right. “We came into town to run a few errands and decided to stay the night, I guess.”
“Wow, really? Funny, that.” Mira almost couldn’t contain her laughter.
“I’m staying in town for the night as well!”
Before Sulim could express her surprise, Mira continued, “Do you know anything about the band playing tonight? Because I insisted this man get some human culture before his brain turns to mush.”
“What she’s saying is that she thinks I need to get drunk and dance. Which is not happening.”
“Right, right, he only does traditional julah party dancing. I hear his mother was the queen of soirees back in the day.”
“Where do you think I learned to dance? At school?”
“I keep telling him that human dancing is messy and rowdy when they’ve had too many drinks. Which I think will happen tonight.” Mira winked at her. “Am I right?”
Sulim was so caught up in the verbal game she played that she almost missed her cue. “All I know is that it’s live traditional Arrahite music. So, woodwinds, strings, a drum…”
“The classic trio.”
“But yeah, lots of beer and dancing. I guess one of the band members is my husband’s friend. I think he came to our wedding.”
“You don’t know?” Ramaron asked.
“We don’t get to see people very often.”
“It’s why they must have a date to come into town!” That was it. Sulim had guessed it before, but now she knew for sure—Mira was tipsy. “Gotta get away from the dour woman running the house and that invisible man! Oh, and the creep.”
“The creep?”
Mira ignored her. “Promise me we’ll dance later, huh? I doubt I’ll convince this old man to join me, and I need to cut loose.”
Sulim had to step away before she blushed.
The band had set up most of the stage by the time she returned to her booth, where the waitress had arrived with dinner. Sulim picked up her utensils with a sigh. Sonall’s friend had made himself scarce.
“Anything good?”
Sulim barely had a bite to eat before she was on the verge of defending herself. “What?” Did he mean the food? Or…?
He jerked his head toward Mira, who was back to drinking and conversing with one of the most well-known julah among humans.
My Void, that’s all the ones running around here!
Only a matter of time before the High Priest or the award-winning actress Tansim Sanarah strolled through Harksplit—probably arm-in-arm!
“Oh. Apparently, the man with her is Master Ramaron Marlow.”
Sonall did not know who that was. Even when his wife reminded him of A Thousand Years of Bliss, the most she got was an arch of the eyebrow. “That’s a famous book,” he said.
“It certainly is.”
“He wrote it?”
Really? Was he this ignorant? “His father did.”
“Oh. How’s your food?”
Every time Sulim thought her supposed best friend was showing a side of himself that she could further bond with, he opened his mouth.
Far be it from me to assume that a privately educated lordling from a massively powerful family on a well-respected planet would have any idea who wrote what famous book.
Hadn’t they established that Sonall didn’t read anymore?
“It’s fine.”
More people filed in, waiting in line for a table that probably wouldn’t come, not with the band about to start up.
The section of the floor right in front of the stage was cordoned off for a standing audience, while behind the rope was the proper dance floor where, inevitably, people would get up and stomp around with cheers like they were at a wedding.
Maybe that’s my only frame of reference anymore.
Weddings were on the mind again, what with Graella’s coming up.
Sure enough, the leader of the band’s voice projected over the claps and hoots of those dining and standing around.
The waitress waved at him before asking the Gardiahs how their meals were.
Sulim busied her mouth with the beer her husband pushed her way, but the face she made must have implied that it was much too sour for her, because he took it back.
“No, give it back,” she said while the bandleader introduced everyone on stage and announced that they would be playing old and new classics. “I’m gonna need this.” The Void knew it was already loud enough in there.
The first hit of the drum and pluck of a string went straight to her teeth.
Sulim powered through it by sticking food in her mouth and drinking it down with the beer.
Now that it was impossible to hear anything even from right across the table, Sulim didn’t have a conversation to distract her.
She could stare at the man sitting across from her, but unless they started communicating in signs or wrote on paper over the table—well, they had their communicators on them, but that was ruder than paper.
The dance floor was filled with people in the middle of their meals, and just finished.
It was the kind of local music faire that encouraged both singular and pair dancing, with the drum thumping in Sulim’s skull and the strings carrying a tune that she knew all the words to.
Many of the revelers called out the lyrics once they got into it.
The servers had to use walkways built into the perimeter to get to the diners.
Sulim knew she had about five minutes after finishing her food before someone looked at her with Shall we dance? shining in his eyes.
With her food barely settled in her stomach, she agreed to scoot out of the booth and take his hand on the edge of the dance floor.
The thing is, he’s a good dancer. Sonall may not have been much of a book reader, but he knew music, even sharing that he once fancied himself a future musician if he had not been born the son of Lord Vern Gardiah.
He knew how to play the strings and could keep a beat on the drum—hell, he could carry a tune, which was more than any of his family could say.
I’ve heard them sing. She had heard herself sing!
If she could just let go, for two seconds…
A few months ago, she would have given anything to feel the rush of bliss coloring her cheeks and threatening to fuel her blood with the energy to dance.
As they made their way closer to the center of the dance floor, where revelers were their most energetic and likely to form a circle of merriment, Sulim thought back on those past two years, between marrying the man whose hand she held and coming to this planet that had more free time, more money,
and a greater sense of community than anywhere on Qahrain.
Arrahites had a solid identity within the macrocosm of the Federation—they were proud of their unspoiled landscapes, their fervent belief in the Void, and their ability to see the best in any bad situation.
This should be home. Sulim was one of a few people, in the realm of the universe, who had migrated to another planet, let alone Arrah.
One couldn’t even live on Arrah without a proper visa to control migration numbers, even if they were Federation citizens.
Yet all Sulim had done was volunteer at a local Temple in the middle of Farm Country, Nowhere, and she happened to meet this boy who had fallen for her. Love at first sight, he had confessed.
A few months ago, she would have given anything for this moment.
Just a fleeting moment of convincing herself that she was also in love, that this was where she was meant to be, and that everything would work out in her favor in the end.
Wasn’t that why she was here? To better her life?
To grab opportunities that her parents would have been eager for her to claim?
She had told this man that she loved him.
Many times before. And it was true, wasn’t it?
She cared about him. Deeply. She enjoyed their inside jokes and the fact that he almost always took her side when it mattered.
If he were to perish tomorrow, she would be distraught, and not only because she would have no idea what it meant for her future as a childless widow.
Hell, she would give anything to want to have children.
Wouldn’t that make everyone happier around her?
What’s wrong with me? Her husband spun her on the dance floor, the rush of warm air kicking up around her making Sulim dizzy.
She was laughing as she crashed against his chest and almost lost her footing, but her mind was a hundred miles away.
She experienced this moment, in which Sonall brushed a kiss against her cheek, as if it were another life. One she honored but didn’t miss.
“I love your smile,” he said when they clung together to avoid getting smacked by another couple.
It was a simple expression of affection, but it made Sulim’s heart skip a beat, and she didn’t know why.
At the end of the song, they had made it to the other side of the floor, and there it was…
The look of longing on Mira’s face as she watched them dance.
“Whoa!” Sonall laughed as Sulim tripped over his foot. The two of them twirled toward the corner, where Sulim could drop down and lace her boot. Sonall stood between her and the dancers until she was finished. “Maybe you did drink a little too much.”
She had barely drunk half of her beer, but sure. “Just got really into it, I guess.”
His sweaty hand took hers again. When Sulim glanced over, Mira was still watching them, a slight twitch playing with the ends of her lips.
Jealousy was not a color to touch her complexion, but Sulim couldn’t help but wonder if Mira was envious of “Young Lord Gardiah” even a little bit.
They took the walkway back around to their table, where Sulim slumped into her seat, and Sonall stood beside her. She drank from her glass and caught her breath.
“Don’t tell me you’re done already,” Sonall said.
She shook her head. “Give me a moment. I have to find my footing again.”