The Dancer
by R. Bail

She was dancing in an intersection the first time Mad saw her. Mad didn't usually care about dancers, but this day they'd set up right in the middle of an intersection she usually passed through on the way to Joe's bar.

Tens, maybe even as many as a hundred people ringed the intersection, beating drums, clapping hands, and stomping feet. In the very middle, all alone, danced a girl. No, girl wasn't the right word for her; girls were angular and skinny with adolescence. The dancer's belly and hips curved round and full, nipping in to a slim waist.

Mad stared as the dancer pivoted, thrusted, and shimmied, causing the slender chains that looped from her belt to arc wildly. Mad shouldered her way through the crowd to get a better look, heedless of the stares her scarred face attracted.

The dancer swept her bare foot in an arc along the pavement and turned to follow it, jerking her hip up at the end of the movement. The drums picked up their pace, and Mad caught her breath as the dancer slid into a rippling move, her belly undulating. Another change in pace and the dancer stopped almost directly in front of Mad, where she slid into a backbend, her fingertips brushing the ground behind her head.

Mad watched beads of sweat roll down that smooth curve of flesh to disappear in the waistband of the dancer's low-slung jeans, noticed how very much the dancer's breasts were straining against the tight, short t-shirt she wore.

The drums thrummed frantically for a brief moment before they stilled and fierce applause broke out in the crowd. Only then did the dancer curl herself upright, a grin of triumph on her face, and she ran to the opposite edge of the crowd to fling herself among a group of other young women, who hooted and cheered as they clapped her on the back and offered her bottles of water.

The crowd started to disperse after that, the drummers slinging straps over their shoulders to carry off their instruments, knots of people breaking off while babbling excitedly. Mad grabbed a dreadlocked young man who kept looking back at that knot of young women that the dancer had disappeared into. "Hey, what the hell was this?" she said, gesturing at the intersection.

"Dancers of the Divine Circle," he said, hefting the strap of his drum up onto his bare shoulder. "You never seen us before?"

Not only dancers, but Dancers. "Nah, and I'm through here a lot. You lot move in here recently?"

He shook his head. "Been here for ages, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, 'cept when the weather's cold. Then we have an old factory down on Front."

"Shit, that's it, then. I started coming this way when they blocked Davidson in March." Mad didn't generally keep track of days other than to know what month it was, so she supposed it was entirely possible she'd never come through on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon before. "Every Tuesday and Thursday?"

"Yeah, rain or shine," the guy said with a grin. "We gonna see you again?"

"I think so," said Mad.

When Tuesday rolled around five days later, she was there. She stood in the crowd beside the guy she'd talked to on Thursday, who had strings of beads laced through his dreadlocks today. Even though Mad was there to observe rather than to participate, she stomped her foot along with the drumbeat as people danced in the center of the circle, dancers of all shapes and sizes skipping in and whirling out as it pleased them.

Eventually the circle cleared out and a lone dancer entered. It was one of the group of young women from Thursday. At first she danced alone but, one by one, others from around the crowd joined her, attempting to copy or harmonize with her movements.

When the drums slowed and stopped, the dancers all came to rest in more or less dramatic poses. The crowd applauded as they left the center. Mad leaned down to talk to Dreadlock Guy. "This happen every time you meet?" she said, gesturing at the dancers as they left the circle.

He looked up at Mad as he wiped his brow with a dirty handkerchief he'd pulled out of his back pocket. "Whaddya mean?"

"People joining in with that girl. That didn't happen last time I was here."

He grinned. "That's because you only saw Annie dance last time. She's different- aw, shit, we're starting again." He shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket and started beating on his drum.

Annie. Mad said the name to herself while she looked through the crowd, trying to catch sight of her. The knot of young women sat in the same place as before, but they'd crowded around so tightly that Mad didn't see any more of Annie than a flash of sunlight off of her short blonde hair.

In between sets of dancers, Dreadlock Guy explained that in this part of the ritual, the first dancer established the kind of dance and others joined him or her as they felt ready, attempting to harmonize with the first dancer's movements. No one was discouraged from entering at any time, but those that entered were expected to keep to the mood set by the first dancer.

"So, that Annie chick - why wasn't anyone dancing with her?" said Mad.

"Too hard to follow. Most people 'round here have lots of enthusiasm but they can't keep a beat worth fuckall. You've seen it. Ones that can, still can't move like she can." He glanced over to the knot of young women and grinned lewdly.

Mad arched an eyebrow. "So why hasn't she got guys like you hanging all over her?" she said acidly.

He snorted and looked uncomfortable. "'Cause she's got the Light. It's intimidating." He shrugged. "Nobody else shines like that."

Dreadlock Guy dove into a bunch of gobbledygook about 'spiritual rhythm' that made Mad's eyes glaze over. She nodded absently while she tried to catch sight of Annie again. Mad didn't believe a word of what he said, but that this chick had something about her that kept people at arm's length Mad did believe.

Mad fully intended to watch Annie closely when she came out to dance and feel out if she had some sort of latent magic to her, but the resolution scattered away when Annie rose from her place and walked to the center of the circle. The way her hips swung wasn't the outwardly lascivious, like the walks of Opal District fashionistas, but it made Mad bite her lip hard.

Annie turned and looked around the circle, meeting the eyes of everyone in the front row - absolutely everyone, including Mad, and Annie didn't so much as flinch. She smiled at a particular group of drummers and made a gesture to them. One drummer started the rhythm and a few at a time the others joined in. She nodded at them and a moment later whirled into her dance.

As the rest of the drummers picked up the beat, she twisted, undulated, and turned. The part of Mad that wasn't transfixed on the way sweat glistened on Annie's cleavage thought that the movements reminded her of nothing so much as the rolling clouds that tumbled in before rain.

The dance hovered at the tense point of a storm just before it breaks. Watching Annie's slow, undulating movements made Mad tense in anticipation and lust, but the release never came. The drums died away in a rumble reminiscent of thunder, Annie's full-body undulations dying away with them to the merest quiver as she stood on her knees, back arched to the sky.

"God, I hate it when she does that to us," groaned Dreadlock Guy as the applause began. Mad grunted in sympathy; she ached with unreleased tension.

She left soon after that, the tension of the crowd making her own worse. It was only when the sky darkened and grumbled halfway to the Abandoned District that she realized that she hadn't even tried to feel for any magic coming from Annie or her dance. When the clouds opened up with a torrent of rain, Mad wondered if she had her answer right there.

Mad thought about Annie frequently in the days before the next Dancer's gathering. She had no way of knowing if the dancer would be as interested in her as she was as interested in Annie (oh, and how), but the thought of not trying to catch Annie's interest never crossed Mad's mind.

Mad's lust aside, Annie and the near-awe the Dancers held her in presented a challenge to her. She had a strong urge, perhaps a perverse one, to shake up their worldview, cause some chaos and, better yet, to see if Annie was as confident as she looked. God, Mad hoped so.

It'd been a long time since Mad had had any reason to dance. She'd never had a lot of interest in the Dancers of any sect, and she'd fallen out of club circles years ago. Even so, anxiety didn't taint her thoughts when Tuesday rolled around again. Indeed, she couldn't help but meet the gazes of the gathering dancers with a secretive, predatory grin. It made Dreadlock Guy stare.

"Good weekend?" he asked, fiddling with his drum strap.

"Fucking boring," she said, and her grin widened. He raised his eyebrows and looked away.

Mad stomped her foot with enthusiasm through the various sets, dancing with the crowd and getting into the music in a way she hadn't allowed herself to previously. By the time the long break between the regular dancers and Annie's set came, Mad's heart beat fast. Her fingers couldn't unfasten the buttons of her coat fast enough.

"You're gonna need to hold this for me," Mad informed Dreadlock Guy as she shrugged her shoulders out of her coat.

"Huh? Why for? This is Annie's set. I gotta drum, man!"

Mad turned her shark's grin on him. "Do a person a favor, will you? You're gonna have too much to look at to bother drumming, anyways." He gaped at her in confusion as she dumped the coat into his lap. "Don't try lookin' through the pockets if you know what's good for you."

Dreadlock Guy continued to stare at her, but her grin kept him from protesting. When the crowd quieted down she focused her attention on the center of the circle and Annie, her blood pounding in her ears as she watched the other woman walk out. Annie scanned the circle like she had before, and Mad wondered if it was her imagination that Annie's eyes rested on her a moment longer than on anyone else.

A gesture later and the drums began. Annie spun herself into the dance, something faster and livelier than before that had a more obviously sensual feeling. Mad had to force herself to breathe deeply. She rocked back and forth on her feet, waiting for just the right moment, heedless of the glare Dreadlock Guy had turned on her. And there was her opening, a roll of the drums while Annie undulated snake-like with her back to Mad. Just as the beat rolled into the regular tempo of the dance and Annie pivoted on one foot, Mad swung herself into the circle.

It was a credit to Annie and the drummers that they didn't miss a beat. Annie's only reaction was a quirk of the corners of her mouth as Mad stalked towards her. She jerked one hip back and tossed her head defiantly, inviting Mad to just try it.

Mad wasn't interested in dueling, however. She danced forward, her feet making a complicated series of steps, then while still a safe distance away, she swept into a bow.

Annie quirked an eyebrow upward before she whirled away. '"Not interested," her movements said, but halfway across the circle she stopped with her arms crossed behind her head and began a series of slow rotating movements with her hips.

Mad circled around, moving lightly from foot to foot in a crisscrossing path, her movements martial, but in a display of prowess, not of threat. She stopped as Annie looked over her shoulder at Mad through the gap between her bicep and forearm, the movement of her hips shortening into a shimmy. Mad sidled towards her, polite, asking permission, but Annie grinned and spun away again.

Mad kept up this game for a few more approaches before she decided to change the rules. Instead of letting the other woman get away, she moved into Annie's spin and whirled herself around so they ended up back to back. Mad looked over her right shoulder at Annie's startled face and grinned. Annie leaped away but Mad spun around her in a series of steps. She ended up behind Annie again, just in time for the blonde to turn into her waiting arm.

She dragged her fingers across Annie's taut, sweaty belly, leering at her over her shoulder, head close enough to hear Annie's gasp over the drumbeats. Then Mad was away, but even that or the accompanying hoots from the crowd didn't break Annie's steps.

Now they truly dueled, attempting to see who could make the other falter. Annie often sidled close on purpose, rolling her hips or thrusting out her chest, making small but lascivious moves, her lips pouted invitingly. She also tried to catch Mad unawares and touch her as Mad had touched Annie, but Mad was far too good at not being touched when she didn't want to be; Annie's fingers only brushed against empty air, for while Annie was the more practiced dancer, what Mad lacked in grace she made up for in agility.

Mad, however, could have touched Annie whenever she wanted. Whether her steps put her in front or behind the other woman, the wind from her movements grazed Annie's body. Mad smirked at Annie's frustrated pouts and made them deepen by letting her eyes linger across parts of Annie's body that polite people didn't stare at.

The crowd ate it up, their hoots and hollers growing as the tension between the two women in the circle increased. Feet both bare and shod stamped the pavement in time with the drumbeats in a vain attempt to release some of the tension that grew within them, tension that radiated out from Annie and Mad.

The strain was audible in the drummer's drumming, the beats hovering on the edge of frenzy. Sweat rolled down the back of Mad's neck and into her sleeveless shirt, which had plastered itself to her skin. The searing sun only intensified the aching fire that raced from her groin to her head, and as she escaped Annie's hands once again she noticed that they trembled. Time to end this.

On the next go-around Mad intentionally stepped into the grope Annie had been reaching for. Despite the reversal, Mad still leered and Annie's eyes once again went wide. Mad danced out of the other woman's grasp and stepped around her as Annie tried to spin away. Once again she had the advantage, and in between one step and another Mad dipped her head down to run her tongue across back of Annie's exposed neck.

Annie gasped and started. She tried to pull her surprise into a another movement, but her fatigue was too great and she stumbled backward and almost fell - but Mad had anticipated the misstep and had moved to Annie's side, where her left arm waited to catch the other woman. Annie arched her back as she tried to get away, but Mad swiftly pulled Annie to close to her. Annie stared at the scarred woman in surprise as the drumbeats thundered to their conclusion.

Mad and Annie gazed at each other for a full breath - not that either of them were breathing - before wild applause shrieked out at them. Mad released Annie and bowed to the startled dancer before turning and stepping lightly back to her former place in the crowd.

Dreadlock Guy gaped at Mad as she plucked her coat from his limp fingers. "Holy shit. Holy shit! I can't believe you did that! I can't- You have balls of steel - no, balls of fucking titanium!" Mad grinned as she shrugged the coat on over her sweat-drenched shirt. Dreadlock guy frowned and shook his head. "Man, I wonder how they're gonna take it..."

Mad shrugged. "If they thought I was trouble, they wouldn't have played along." She jerked her head at the crowd.

He shook his head doubtfully, then looked over at the knot of dancers and sucked in his breath. "Oh, man. Here she comes."

Mad looked over to see Annie's short platinum hair bobbing towards them. Dreadlock Guy swore softly as he packed up his stuff and dropped things because he was rushing so much. Mad thought he was a pussy; unless this girl was a real freak, the widening grin on her face as she approached couldn't be anything but good.

"Hey," she said when she was a few steps away. Beside Mad, Dreadlock Guy froze.

Mad returned Annie's grin; she couldn't have frowned if she tried. "Hey."

"Here." Annie thrust a bottle of water at Mad. Mad took the bottle gratefully and started chugging it. Annie tilted her head as she watched; when Mad offered the half-empty bottle back, she shook her head and gestured at Mad to keep it. "That was really great," she said as Mad finished off the rest of the bottle. "How come I've never seen you out there before?"

"Ran across you guys just last week."

Annie blinked and her eyebrows furrowed together. "You're not a Dancer?"

Mad shook her head and grinned wider. "Nah."

"Whoaaa. That's really crazy." Annie looked Mad over. "My name's Annie." She stuck out her right hand.

Mad resisted to urge to say that she knew. "Mad," she said, and shook Annie's hand. It was just as sweaty and callused as hers, but the bones were finer and more delicate.

They stared at each other for a long moment. A grunt beside them made Annie's eyes flick to Dreadlock Guy, then back at Mad. "Hey. You up for talking somewhere else? Like... Joe and Sugar's Diner on 43^rd and Front? About seven p.m.?"

Mad knew an invitation when she heard one. "Sure. That's close to Riverside, right?"

"Sure is."

Mad grinned at her for a while before she finally let go of Annie's hand. Annie chuckled and looked away, embarrassed, as she absently wiped her hand on her jeans. "Seven, then," Annie said, and hurried away.

Mad rubbed her fingers together and grinned after the blonde. Beside her, Dreadlock Guy started breathing again. "Holy shit. You got a date with Annie."

***

The diner squatted at the edge of a cracked, abandoned parking lot. Despite the decrepit exterior, the interior was clean, friendly, and above all, air-conditioned. Stripes of golden evening light peeked in from in between the slats in the blinds, striping Annie's tawny skin like a tiger's.

"You sound like you're the shining star of your little group," said Mad as she dragged a clump of fries through ketchup. "The guy with the dreads just about shat himself when he saw you coming."

Annie laughed and covered her face. "Oh, Ryan," she said with exasperation. "He's got a little... he's really into the Dancer philosophy."

"Philosophy?" Mad said through her mouthful of fries, eyebrows raised.

"Faith, then."

Mad rolled her eyes. "Dogma."

Annie laughed more. "Oookay, dogma." Mad chuckled and nodded. Annie spread her hands. "A lot of the Dancers are really Into it, you know? It gives them a circle of love and faith, a place to pass it along to others and feel safe doing so. It's real important to them, you know?"

Mad's first instinct was to be a smartass and say no, she didn't know, but she goddamned well did, didn't she? That's what the gang was for her, way back when. She shrugged and said, "You sound like it's different for you."

"Mm." Annie looked away, suddenly shy, her green-and-brown eyes refusing to meet Mad's.

"Ryan said you have the Light."

Annie laughed and rolled her eyes. "Ryan has a biiig mouth."

Mad watched Annie shift in her seat, the strips of sunlight playing across her skin. She looked embarrassed, uncertain what she could say to God-knew-what Mad was. Ryan isn't the only one with a big mouth, Mad thought with annoyance.

Annie had a hand cupped around her milkshake. Mad placed her hand around Annie's and turned it over, exposing Annie's palm. The dancer looked over, wary, curious. "What else you do, besides dancing?" said Mad. She ran her thumb across some of the calluses on Annie's palm. "You don't just dance, huh?"

"I dance my way through all of my life." Annie propped her head on her free hand and gave Mad an appraising look, but didn't snatch her hand away. "It isn't just with my feet. Things need built or made or grown, the Dancers help each other out."

Construction work and gardening, then, all part of their holy dance. Mad didn't quite understand, but she couldn't disapprove. She looked down at the mess of fries and ketchup on her plate, a starchy massacre, and smiled. "Hands, feet, the dance is all about bringing joy to your fellow man, isn't it?"

"You got it," Annie said, cheer shaking the wariness from her voice. She flipped her hand over, then, to run her fingers across Mad's. "What do you bring to your fellow man?"

A hard head and an appetite for destruction, Mad thought, and smirked at herself and her talent for self-depreciation around a pretty girl. "A free agent." A street thug. "I take care of major inconveniences for other people."

"Inconveniences?" Annie's hand stiffed over Mad's as she squinted and lifted her chin.

Mad knew what she suspected. She met Annie's stare. "Inconveniences. The kind of person who feeds off of our kind of people. The monsters in the dark."

Annie's eyes flicked to Mad's left arm, then back to her face. She squeezed the scarred woman's hand. "You bring safety," she said softly.

Rows of silent, still children flashed through Mad's head. She felt uncomfortable, but she didn't argue.

***

Mad went to watch the dance again on Thursday. Ryan asked her lots of careful questions, skirting around the issue near and dear to his mind: did they, or didn't they? Mad figured the questions were his delicate way of figuring out Annie's preferences. She took pity on him and used the gentlest words she knew to tell him he'd have to ask for himself.

He took it like it wasn't any kind of answer at all, but Mad couldn't help him out any more than she had. Since Annie's preferences obviously ran towards her, it was a little hard to tell him where else they might run. Annie probably wouldn't appreciate it if it got back to her that Mad had told him to stick his face in a blender and then try his luck, so Mad held her tongue even when Ryan pressed her further.

He lost his words when Annie came out to dance. Today her dance seemed to tell some sort of story, but Mad couldn't make out what it might be. Annie's movements entranced Mad as much as ever, but the way the dancer kept meeting her eyes made her nervous.

Mad didn't want Annie to think that she was anything other than someone who killed things for money. She didn't have any use for the Dancers' beliefs, but she respected what Annie did with them. Mad couldn't stand the thought of causing Annie disappointment, even if the scarred woman barely knew her.

When Annie asked to meet her again that evening at the diner, Mad could hardly refuse. They made polite conversation over burgers and fries, and the food chased away the awkwardness that had accumulated over their two days apart. Over milkshakes they competed at making each other laugh.

The sun hung low in the sky as they left the diner. They shuffled their feet in the parking lot, unable to think of a way to keep their game going but unwilling to part. Finally, Mad said, "Up for a walk? The river's gonna look gorgeous in about half an hour."

Annie grinned at her, relieved. "Sure."

They walked in silence to the greenway that bordered the river. This part grew wild, Night City administration having given up on maintaining it but unwilling to allow its citizens to garden it. This hadn't stopped people from sowing wildflowers, and it was important enough to someone that they kept it trash-free.

The pathway was cracked and crazed but relatively level; Annie had less trouble navigating it with her bare feet than Mad did in her boots. They walked north at an easy pace, pausing sometimes for Annie to pluck a flower from a bright clump in the greenway. She'd woven quite a few of them together when Mad asked, "What's this Light Ryan mentioned?"

Annie bent her attention onto her flowers. "He been preaching again?"

"Nah, he's been trying to figure out if he has a chance to get into your pants by trying to figure out if I got into them." Annie groaned and raised her eyes to the sky. Mad chuckled and said, "Don't worry. I told him he's going to have to ask for himself if he really wants to know. I was even nice about it."

Annie flicked a glance at her before she returned her attention to the flowers. "You aren't usually?"

"Fuck no. I don't appreciate anyone trying to edge in on me because they're too much of a coward to do their own footwork." Annie gave her a sharp glance, and Mad shrugged. "Ryan seems okay, though. He's one of your folks and he clued me in on what the hell I'd walked into when I asked. 'Sides, he seems more inept than asshole."

Annie's shoulders relaxed and she laughed a little. "Yeah, that's Ryan all right. He's only seventeen, y'know, so I can't really... well." She bent down to pick another flower.

"Yeah." Can't really get it through his head without humiliating him in the process, Mad thought. She relaxed too, and watched Annie weave a few more flowers into her wreath. "So, about that Light thing."

Annie sighed and up at Mad from her crouch. "You're not going to let that go, are you?"

"Nah, I'm a nosy bastard," Mad said cheerfully. She crossed her arms and arched a brow, ready to wait all evening if need be.

"Huh." Annie smiled a little and shook her head. "Oookay, but on two conditions - you tell me why you started hanging out at our dance circles, and you promise not to laugh. And you gotta tell me first."

"That's three conditions."

"It's two conditions and a stipulation." Annie stuck out her chin.

"Aww," said Mad, grinning. "I thought you knew the answer to your question already." At Annie's headshake, she grinned wider. "I started coming to the dance 'cause the first time I saw you, I knew I couldn't stay away."

Annie blushed and laughed and looked away. "No, really."

"Don't be stupid." Mad crouched down beside her and reached out one brown arm to grasp Annie's chin and gently turn her head. "I didn't join in your dance just for a chance to show off."

They gazed at each other for a moment. Mad brushed Annie's cheek with the back of her hand and the dancer's face grew even pinker. Annie pulled away and pushed herself upright. "Okay, oookay," she said with a shaky laugh, "but you do promise you won't laugh at me?"

Mad straightened and put her hand over her heart. "I swear."

Annie fiddled with the wreath in her hands for a while before she began. "The Light is... well... it's something Dancers believe in. They think that people with the Light are... special. That they have more insight, or can prophesy, or..." She chewed on her lip for a while. "Can change reality a little."

Mages. It's just another word for latent mages. I thought so. Annie gave Mad an anxious glance and Mad grinned at her.

Annie looked away. "You said you wouldn't laugh..."

"Who's laughing? C'mon, look at me." Mad brushed her fingers against the short, soft hair on the back of Annie's neck to make her look over. "I believe you, Annie."

Annie's face wore a frown full of doubt. "I thought you didn't like religion."

Mad drew her hand back, tucked it back under the other arm. "I don't have much use for it, myself." She hadn't for over a decade, not after the Rooks of the West Church Flats had prayed to the twin angel goddesses of the two rivers to protect them in their raid against the child-thieves - a raid which Mad had been the only one to make it out alive, cut to hell and with a head full of fire. "That doesn't mean I think it's all bullshit."

"Why not?"

Mad looked around. They were alone on the greenway; even with the breeze coming off the Angelus, no one else wanted to be out in the stifling evening humidity. Even the road bordering the greenway was silent, empty of foot and bicycle traffic until the light dimmed and the evening took on a faint chill. She motioned Annie closer, then rolled the glove on her left arm down to the elbow.

"Are those tattoos?" Annie asked, the wobble in her voice telling Mad that the dancer already knew the answer.

Mad shook her head. "Go ahead, touch one."

Annie ran her fingers over the raised black lines and whispered under her breath. "When did you get these?"

"Same time I got my face mangled, twelve, thirteen years ago." Annie's eyes met hers. "Big explosion in the Church Flats."

"I remember..." Annie looked away, whispering to herself. She eyes grew round and she whipped her head back around to stare at Mad, her lips shaping the words "marked ones".

Mad pulled her arm away and pushed the glove back up. "Do you get it now?"

Annie pulled her hand back from where it cupped empty space and nodded. They walked forward again in uncomfortable silence, Annie's fingers picking at her wreath, Mad's heart beating fast. The sun sank ever closer to the horizon as they walked for a quarter of a kilometer, maybe more, with not a sound out of either of them.

"You keep talking about the Dancers like you aren't one of them," Mad said suddenly.

"What?"

"You keep saying 'they believe this' and 'they think that'. What do you believe?"

But Annie didn't have an answer for her, not that night.

***

They met again Saturday evening for another walk along the greenway, south instead of north. They passed clumps of thriving community gardens, a pleasant shock of vibrant life between the dark Angelus and the searing concrete. Bits of conversations fell from their lips like stones into a dry well, and after a time they stopped trying and walked side by side in silence.

Mad looked over at Annie frequently, admiring the way the waning sunlight turned the dancer's skin into gold, wanting her fingers to run through freely Annie's hair like the wind did. She opened her mouth and shut it, wanting to break the silence but for once at a total loss as to what to say.

The greenway had turned back into unkempt grass and wildflowers when Annie finally spoke. "I wonder if I'm fooling myself," she said as if she were talking to the flowers.

"About the Dancers?" said Mad, trying to match Annie's tone, but her voice still a raven's croak.

"About me." Annie stepped off of the path and onto the grass, started walking toward the river. Mad trailed along behind her, fingertips brushing coarse grass and tough stalks of bachelor's buttons. Annie sat down and pulled her knees to her chest, where the grass thinned before the ground plummeted into the river; Mad sprawled beside her.

Mad watched Annie watch the river. She peered over her knees and didn't move a thing except for her toes, which dug into the dry soil that showed bare between short, dying clumps of the type of grass that only survived in Magnolia Hill lawns. A breeze from the river washed over them, ruffling their hair and sweeping away some of the heat that stifled their words.

"They think I'm really important," said Annie. "Like I'm doing things none of the rest of them can do. I mean, everyone dances and contributes, but I don't do any more than anyone else. They still think I'm special, that I have this 'Light' and can change things just by dancing. I just..." She shook her head and rested her forehead against her knees. "I dance really well. When I'm dancing I think I can feel something else, but it's... I can't tell if I'm doing anything. The Dancers want to give me credit for making things happen, but I can't take it when I can't tell if it's just coincidence."

Mad shifted her weight to sit upright and get a better look at Annie. "How often do these coincidences happen?"

Annie shrugged and buried her head further into her arms. "A lot, I guess. But it doesn't mean anything. I mean, I danced for bountiful food last fall, and we ran out of money by January. We barely had anything to eat for a week when we got a contract to work in Jansen Foods warehouses and got to take away the old stuff for ourselves. That's more luck than coincidence."

"Luck a lotta people didn't have."

Annie grunted. "I don't know. I don't know if there even is such a thing as the Light." She turned her head to peer at Mad over her arm. "We had someone like you a while ago... Riley. He was really good, he made me believe. But he got into some bad trouble, disappeared. We thought he was dead but he came back a few weeks later with... His face was like your arm, but different patterns. Wouldn't talk anymore." She shut her eyes, her face pinching with grief. "He tried to dance, but everything came out weird... it scared me. He went away again... haven't seen him for a couple of years, now. Last I heard he was in the Church Flats when the Black River flooded again."

Annie looked away again, her face hidden by her arms. Mad fought an urge to draw her close, afraid the attempt would make the dancer flee. She folded her hands, then pulled them away and hooked them under one knee and rocked, wishing the ground wasn't quite so hard. "That's not the only way it works," Mad blurted finally, unable to take the silence anymore. Annie peeked out at her, and Mad raked her hands through her hair. "You don't have to be broken for it to work."

Annie raised her head a little. "You aren't broken," she said, the statement trailing off into a question as Mad winced and crossed her arms.

"It doesn't have to work that way for everybody," Mad insisted. "Look, your Riley - did you know he could make things happen with his dancing? Not believe, know, like you know the sun's gonna come up tomorrow morning."

"I..." Annie closed her mouth, opened it, closed it again. "When Riley came back, I did," she managed. "That's why it scared me."

Mad stared at Annie intently before she drew the glove off of her left arm. Annie's eyes went wide as she saw the full extent of the patterns marking Mad's skin. "Watch," said Mad, extending her arm and concentrating.

A layer of heat bathed Mad's arm a second before her left eye discerned the ghostly flicker that surrounded it. She glanced at Annie, who stared, puzzled, not seeing anything. Then her breath caught and she fidgeted, feeling but not understanding.

Mad pushed the magic up another notch and the flame flared into the visual range, a thin flicker of silvery blue barely visible in the sunlight bathing her skin. Annie gasped and flinched. "You can touch it," Mad said softly. "It won't hurt you. Try to take some."

Annie stared at her for a moment before she swallowed hard and extended a tentative hand. Annie flinched repeatedly in anticipatory fear as her hand came close to Mad's arm. The scarred woman held her arm steady, palm up, unthreatening. Annie pressed her lips together and plunged her hand in to scoop blue fire from Mad's palm.

The dancer stared in open-mouthed wonderment as the fire danced around her hand, not extinguishing no matter how she turned it around. She turned her hand palm up and squinted. The fire raced to the center and formed a small, swirling pillar that sculpted itself into a tiny figure. The figure pirouetted and leaped to the end of her middle finger. Annie made a little shriek and the figure faded into nothingness.

Annie looked over at Mad in shock. "Did you...?" But her answer was there; only the rays of the setting sun illuminated Mad's left arm.

***

They talked well into the night, sitting there on the riverbank, and if it hadn't been for bugs and hunger they might've sat there for days. They parted with a promise to meet each other again the next morning at Joe and Sugar's for breakfast.

Mad wandered borders of the Abandoned Distract for two hours beforehand, finally giving up and arriving at the diner half an hour early. Annie was already there, drinking coffee and looking embarrassed. "I couldn't wait," she said to the table.

Mad grinned down at the formica. "Neither could I."

They talked about a lot of nothing over bacon, eggs, and fresh fruit, Mad making Annie laugh and blush with her innuendoes with the peaches. Their conversation flowed easier than it ever had, but a tension still hung between them, vibrating in the cool air of the diner.

After they finished, they chose a street by silent agreement and started walking to nowhere in particular in the rising summer heat. The tension kept them close but not touching, on the edge of conversation but unable to speak, until thunder grumbled in the distance. Dark clouds dimmed the horizon to the south. "Huh, looks like we're gonna get another storm."

"Oh, it'll probably end up swinging to the east," said Annie, her voice uninterested. She ignored Mad's narrowed eyes to leap forward and spin around and walk backwards in front of Mad. "Sooo," she said, "what do you do for fun?"

Have an on and off love affair with a bottle, thought Mad. She swallowed her bitterness and said, "Talk to you? Watch you dance?"

Annie crossed her arms and pursed her lips in mock-irritation to keep in her giggles. "What did you do two weeks ago, before you saw me?"

Mad smirked and shrugged. "Lots of things," she said, hiding her evasive glance under the black waterfall of her hair.

"Oh, c'mooon."

"What do you do?"

"I dance, dummy." She pirouetted and skipped back into place beside Mad. "And that's not fair; I asked you first."

"Well... I read."

"You read?" Annie looked at her sideways, her smile incredulous.

"What, did you think I couldn't?" She narrowed her eyes and grinned at Annie.

The dancer laughed. "No! I mean, not no, but I didn't - you don't look- Oh, shit." She ran her hands through her hair, her laugh intermingling with Mad's.

"I know how I look. Nah, don't worry about it," she said, ruffling the hair on the back of Annie's head and not missing the other woman's little shiver. "But I'm serious. I read a lot, newspapers and shit mostly since I like to stay on top of things. Books too, though, when I have the time."

"When you're not talking to me, you mean?"

Mad grinned down at her. "Yeah."

"So where'd you learn to dance?"

Mad hesitated. In street brawls and dark corners, pressed up against walls and gasping into someone's ear, any way I could find to let the fire loose for another night so I didn't go completely crazy. She swallowed that, too. "I used to go to clubs. When I was younger. It... helped me get out some of the fire in my head."

"The Dancers would've loved you," said Annie.

Mad snorted and looked away. "Nah. Too violent."

Thunder rumbled again, louder than before. Mad eyed the approaching clouds, then looked back at Annie. "Gonna swing to the east, is it?"

Annie shrugged. "Prooobably." She didn't look at Mad or the clouds, but she had a little smile on her face.

"Sure." Mad shook her head. "It's your turn."

"My turn?"

"What do you do for fun?" Mad held up a finger. "And you can't say 'dance', I know that one already."

Annie giggled. "That's most of what I do, though. Everything I do is a dance." She made another pirouette.

"Is that why you can walk around out here without burning your feet off?"

"Yep." She grinned at Mad and tossed her head. "I was always dancing as a kid, running around with bare feet... drove my mom nuts. She wasn't too happy when I said that dancing was all I wanted to do. She really wasn't happy when I joined the Dancers."

The wind picked up around them. Mad pushed her hair out of her face and wondered what it was like to have someone care what you did. "Why didn't she like it?"

Annie gave her a hard look, then started and blinked it away. "Oh, um... she didn't think I'd amount to anything. She didn't want me to be poor all my life. Heh." Annie shoved her hands into her pockets and hunched her shoulders against the wind - or maybe against the memory. "Not like we weren't poor already, but I couldn't get her to understand that I'd rather dance my feet off than work in a factory all day and spend all evening in a bar for the rest of my life."

Mad made a strangled sound. One part of her wanted to ask what was wrong with spending all evening in a bar, but the rest her felt ashamed. Sure, Mad had some good reasons for spending a lot of time in bars, but that wasn't any good reason to snap at Annie about it. Besides, Annie was talking about herself, and Mad had to agree; it would've been a waste for the dancer to have chosen the 'respectable' path, made old before her time by passions squashed down until they festered.

"You okay?" said Annie.

"Er, yeah, just swallowed wrong or something." She gave a cough for show. "I think you made the right choice."

"Hmm. Sometimes I wonder. Like after last winter." Annie shrugged.

"You look healthy enough to me," Mad said, letting her eyes rove over the dancer's curves until her eyes caught on Annie's now-protruding nipples.

Annie noticed where Mad's gaze rested and turned pink. As she opened her mouth, though, thunder boomed overhead and water poured from the sky. Whatever Annie had been about to say turned to a shriek as she covered her head with her hands.

Mad wiped water out of her eyes. "So much for the storm missing us, huh?" she yelled over the hammering rain.

"Oh, shut up!" laughed Annie.

Another flash and boom of thunder, and the rain needled down even harder, cold and sharp enough that both women flinched. "C'mon," Mad shouted, tugging on Annie's arm.

Mad didn't try to explain - over the rain and the thunder she'd waste her breath - but she knew that nearby, closer than the diner, stood an office building with a porch of sorts they could shelter under. Annie ran beside Mad, keeping pace regardless of her bare feet, and in a few minutes they arrived at their shelter.

The two women huddled against a wall and looked out at the sheeting water beyond. Their running had gotten them out of the punishing rain faster, but not drier; Mad was soaked where her coat and boots didn't cover, and even at that water streamed from her hair and down the back of her neck. Annie was worse off, completely soaked from head to toe. Every inch of visible skin on her showed gooseflesh, as well. The dancer wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

"You look like you're freezin' to death," Mad said.

"I'm f-fine," Annie said, shaking her head.

"No you're not. C'mere." Mad pulled the dancer over by her shoulders and wrapped her arms around Annie's middle. She stiffened for a moment, then bit by bit relaxed against Mad.

"Your glove is sticking to my belly," she said after a while.

"Oh. Yeah, sorry about that." Mad repositioned her arms. "Silk feels gross when it's wet but I haven't found anything better."

"Why not leather?" Annie craned her head around to look at Mad.

"Silk keeps the, well, the magic damped down so I don't have any untoward visual effects when I get pissed. Now stop wiggling or you'll never get warm."

Annie stopped wiggling. Mad moved her arms a little more, her arms wrapping alongside Annie's so that the dancer could absorb her heat. Her lips and nose pressed into Annie's hair, and Mad breathed in the scent of the other woman before hugging her a little more tightly.

"You're really warm," Annie murmured after a while. "How do you stand wearing so much black in the summer?"

"Don't really notice the heat," Mad said into Annie's hair. Something about surviving a thousand-degree fire that burnt her attackers to cinders did that to a person.

"Mm." Annie fell silent and fidgeted. "I... guess you wouldn't, huh?"

"Hey, I told you to stop wiggling," Mad said into her ear. Annie stopped and relaxed back into Mad's embrace.

They watched the rain for ten minutes or more, until it stopped as abruptly as it started. Even then they still stood under their shelter, reluctant to move, reluctant to let go despite their wet, chafing clothes. When Annie started wriggling free of Mad's grasp, Mad couldn't help but sigh before she let the dancer free.

Clouds still roiled across the sky, and Mad thought that it could start raining again at any moment. Annie apparently thought the same, as she said, "I don't think I'm ever going to dry out if this keeps up. I'd better go home."

"Oh," said Mad, her voice sounding far away even to herself.

Annie looked at Mad out of the corner of her eye. "You're pretty drenched, too - wanna come along? I live pretty close by." She clasped her hands behind her back and looked away. "You don't have to stay long, just long enough to get dried-"

"Oh! Sure."

They shared a grin, and Mad followed Annie down the street. They came to a low concrete building only a few stories tall, huddling in a block with others of its kind. The bottom floor looked to be shops, while the other floors showed curtains and potted plants in the windows. Annie led the way around the back and up a couple of flights of stairs to a door at the end of the building.

The flat beyond looked to be all one huge room, with a door immediately off to the left that had to be the bathroom. Concrete floors, brick walls, a serviceable but extremely old kitchenette just beyond the bathroom door. Clear tape held up the various posters, things cut out of newspapers, and a collage of dried and pressed flowers. Other than a table and a single folding chair, the only visible furniture was a couple of mattresses made up into a daybed in one far corner and a pair of folding screens blocking off the other.

"I thought Dancers all lived in a commune or something," said Mad as she took in the room.

Annie snorted. "Some do, but I like to have a little space every once in a while. Most of the building is Dancers, though," she said as she dripped her way to the bathroom.

Mad took a step in, only to be stopped by Annie whirling around and holding up a hand. "Oh, no you don't. I don't want you dripping all over my floor."

Mad spread her hands. "What? It's just concrete."

"That I'll have to mop. Huh-uh. Your boots are dirty and besides, you'll never dry off if you sit around in wet clothes. Take off anything that's going to drip and hand it to me."

After an overdramatic sigh, Mad stripped off her glove, unbuttoned her coat, and handed both to Annie. That still left her boots... and her pants. She was soaked from calf to knee and rather damp in front where the coat didn't cover. She glanced over at Annie, who was at that moment wriggling out of her jeans.

She forgot what she was doing and watched as Annie struggled out of the wet denim, cursing under her breath as the jeans tried to take her equally soaked underwear with them. She finally divested herself of the rude trousers and hung them to dry, and turned to find Mad looking at her, head tilted.

Annie put her hands on her hips. "Are you gonna stand there all day?"

Her underwear were pink with little black hearts, and almost as see-through as her t-shirt. "Cute panties."

The dancer turned bright pink. "Hmph!" she said and stalked behind the screen. "Fine, stand there and drip."

Mad chuckled and bent to remove her boots. She took occasional glances up at the screen, but it was high and mostly opaque, and she didn't catch more than a glimpse of Annie's arms as she pulled a tank top down over her head.

Mad hung her pants and belt on a clothesline strung up in the cramped little bathroom. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the battered, cheap mirror and snorted. "Yeah, you're one sexy bastard, y'drowned rat," she said to herself. "Wonder if Annie has a towel around here."

She did - she stood in the middle of the room in a dry tank top and underwear (Mad noticed with amusement the clothes were a matched set, green and yellow striped), rubbing her head furiously with a rather threadbare excuse for a towel. As she handed it to Mad, she burst out laughing.

"Aww, c'mon, I know I'm ugly but you don't have to laugh."

"Nooo, it's not that," said Annie as she tried to stifle her giggles. Mad pulled a face and buried her head in the towel. "I mean, you're not ugly - shit! Mad, quit doing that to me!"

Mad grinned out at her from under a mess of towel and tangled hair. "What do you mean?"

"Well... white socks?"

Mad looked down at them. "What's wrong with white socks?"

"They don't match."

Mad gave Annie an incredulous look. "What the hell does it matter? It's not like anyone but me sees 'em."

"Iii'm seeing them."

"Aren't you lucky." Annie smirked and Mad threw the towel at her.

"I guess I've gotten to find out your little secret, too?" said Annie as she draped the towel over the back of the chair.

Mad stared at her from under the tangles she was finger-combing out of her hair. "What?"

"Men's underwear?" Annie raised her eyebrows.

She looked down at her black boxer briefs, then arched an eyebrow at Annie. "Hey, don't knock it. The loose part in front is great for storin' spare change." Annie gaped at Mad until the scarred woman grinned, which sent the dancer into another burst of laughter.

Neither wanted to sit alone with the wet towel at their back, so they both sat at opposite ends of the makeshift daybed, the tension almost tangible. As Mad leaned against the wall she thought about how much the dancer looked like a picture she once saw - reclined but not relaxed, her body language beckoning but not quite open. Mad's hands twitched with longing, and finally, she reached out to touch one curvaceous, muscular leg-

They both jumped as a loud rattling started against the window. Mad turned and rose up on her knees to look out - the rain had started again, blown sideways by a heavy wind. "Good thing we came back here, 'cause that doesn't look like it's gonna let up for a while."

"Mm." Mad felt a feather touch on one of the scars across her left leg. She looked over to see Annie tracing a finger across one. "You got hurt pretty bad back then."

"Yeah." Mad sat back down, curled up against the wall so that Annie could examine her scars. "All up my left side, 'cept my arm and my back."

"Do you have those... markings on your back, too?"

"Yeah, kind of."

Annie raised her eyes to Mad's. "... Can I see?"

Mad swallowed. "Sure." She pulled off her sleeveless shirt and turned her back to Annie.

"Oh... oh wooow." Annie's fingertips lightly traced the patterns that marked the expanse of Mad's back. Mad shivered as she felt the whisper of Annie's breath on her skin. "These are... they look like words. Do you know...?"

"Nah," said Mad, shivering from more than Annie's touch. She didn't like thinking about the unknown letters the fire had etched on her skin. "No one does."

Annie didn't ask again, but traced her fingers up Mad's spine, against the fine hairs on the back of her neck, and across one of the scars that marked her jawline. "Turn a little," she said. Mad hesitated for a split second before she turned to face the wall. To her left eye, Annie was just a faint, gray shape with the slightest hint of a shimmer around her.

The dancer ran her fingers along all of the scars of Mad's face, her touch as delicate as a summer night's breeze. Her fingers traced the scar that ran up Mad's chin and over her lip, then moved on to caress the lips themselves. Mad let out a shuddering sigh and closed her eyes.

Annie didn't lean in closer as the scarred woman expected, but dropped her hands to tug Mad's shoulders around instead. Mad gave Annie a curious look as she scooted around to face her, but the blonde only gave her a glance before she resumed her exploration.

She puzzled over Mad's unmarked shoulder before she returned to the scars, her fingers and eyes following one nearly parallel to Mad's left collarbone, another in the center of her chest, and finally, the large gouge that cut diagonally across the top of her left breast.

Annie's fingers brushed over the nipple, and her lips followed. She flicked her tongue over it and Mad gasped and dug her fingers into her thighs. A moment later she ran her fingers through Annie's hair and pulled her head away. Annie looked up, a question in her eyes, but the question changed to understanding as Mad tugged her upright and onto the scarred woman's lap. Mad pulled the dancer close and after a second's shared gaze their lips met.

As Mad slid her tongue into Annie's mouth her hands slid up the dancer's back and under her top, pressing her against Mad's scarred body so she could drink in the blonde's firm roundness, her soft skin, her warmth. Annie whimpered into the kiss and buried her hands in Mad's hair.

Mad moaned, herself, when Annie ground her hips against Mad's. The scarred woman broke the kiss to pull Annie's top off and caress her breasts. She wasn't the only one with greedy hands; Annie's drank their fill as they traveled down Mad's body and finally tore at her underwear.

Two could play at that game. Mad had no trouble pinning the other woman and helping her off with her panties, only to find her own underwear pulled around her knees. Annie had curled around Mad's legs, and just as she noticed the blonde broke free, wriggled around, and ran her tongue up the inside of Mad's thigh.

Mad gasped in both pleasure and shock, then cried out as Annie thrust her tongue against Mad's clit. The scarred woman's breathing went ragged as Annie licked at her, but when her legs started to shake she hauled the blonde away. She half-fell across the bed, pulling Annie on top of her, twining her brown legs around Annie's tawny ones.

Annie smiled slyly at her before they kissed again, harder and more frantic than the first time. Mad soaked in the feel of Annie's softer, rounder body against her taut one, caressing the other woman's curved behind, squeezing it and moaning when Annie ground against her again.

A wriggle, a push, a guiding of hands; by body language they agreed to slide apart and lay side by side, facing one another, their top legs still twined as their free hands caressed one another's bellies and thighs. Annie pushed herself hard against Mad's hand, and with a chuckle she obligingly slid it over the other woman's mound and labia before she slipped her fingers between the warm, wet folds.

Annie moaned and writhed at the touch, but didn't become so overwhelmed that she couldn't reciprocate the action. Her fingers rubbed Mad's clit in sure, swift strokes that soon brought Mad close to the edge. She groaned and bit the blonde's bottom lip; in response, Annie plunged her fingers deeply into Mad. Mad cried out and arched her back and clenched her thighs so Annie would keep her fingers right where they were.

The strokes of the blonde's fingers inside of her kept her lust near the boil as Mad teased and stroked Annie to a fever pitch. The dancer trembled, so close but unwilling to let go, until Mad leaned over and breathed into her ear words of how much Mad had dreamed of doing just this since the first time she'd seen Annie dance.

Then the dancer went over, crying out and shuddering with great gusts of passion, her moans and cries sweet on Mad's ears. Mad pressed her face against Annie's neck as the dancer spent herself, drinking in her lust and trembling on the edge from empathy and Annie's deep-thrusting fingers.

Soon her own need reached the boiling point and she groaned for Annie to go faster, harder. Annie complied, pushing Mad down to look into her face as the scarred woman's breath came faster and faster and her nails dug into the dancer's back a second before she cried out, her voice like an entire murder of crows, her body arching against Annie's and radiating with intense heat as her lust peaked.

When Mad fell back onto the bed, panting, she saw Annie's lips had curved into a blissful smile.

***

Afterwards, they laid entwined again, Mad's heat keeping them both warm against the rain's chill. They murmured teasing words as they exchanged kisses and stroked each other, and soon, spent and utterly relaxed, Annie drifted off to sleep.

Mad watched her face for a long while, marveling at the trust that had allowed the dancer to relax so completely in Mad's arms. Eventually Mad slid into sleep as well, feeling, for once, completely at peace.