Ravens

Yes!

A good rehearsal. I smile as I make notes, shifting the old-style cold pack to reduce the bruising where I fell on the bars earlier.

This is dancing within a framework. Some will call it dancing within a cage, and while that's not entirely unintentional it's mostly dancing in the graph-lines. Moving through time and charting the choices on the old axes of group and self, duty and freedom.

The maths of movement as we dock safely in each other's arms and then spring forth. Impulse; moment; trajectory. The strong and weak forces of attraction and repulsion.

Kerem and Auntie Gytha have been bringing Maia and Maako in to watch the rehearsals. It's important that they see, even if they don't yet understand. Maia's doing her first dance classes: part running around pretending to be spaceships, and part learning her first elemental movements and exercises just like the big dancers. Auntie Gytha's been doing the rounds of the teachers while she's in the city, and even teaching some classes herself. It's good to see.

Wind-form. Wave-forms. The subtle difference between parabolic and catenary.

We light the axes of the arena red and blue. Our pale costumes take the colour of the light as we plot our courses, branching even from our origins, and spreading widely from our marking times.

Fire in my left hand, water in my right, as I speed into the void.

Some patterns repeat over the generations. Some alter. Some remain unfinished as data sequences end abruptly. We look forward, and back. We reach for things we cannot hold. We dance branched formulae of public lives and private longings, even as we claim that among our people they're the same.

This could be done in space. I've been dreaming of the dance re-imagined for the void, but I haven't yet found how to dance hope, or regret, or longing, from inside a hull in ways that people who've not been pilots would understand. And all of those are in the dance.

Erendati, I am not your vessel to fill any longer, but I will think, and shape, and remember, and work, and kindle the sense of you within me.

Krusu

Grief changes the tang and timbre of all things.

The year's delay took none of its power. Left it more twisted, perhaps: grief, relief, guilt, loss. The months of trying to acknowledge the good while all the rest was still there, and the stresses on us both of trying not to be whatever it was that would bring all those things to the surface... and failing too often.

And my warlord and touchstone lost the will to work within our constraints; once guardian of our ways, now flouter of them. I understand. It does not lessen the grievous losses of his counsel and his company.

The troika parts. We go our separate ways. We had good dreams together.

Arac's grieving, too; for deaths of some close to him. We were apart for the first blows, then subdued together, trying to endure.

Which brings us here, to the source of the Tronhadar in the Krusu ranges. Stone and sky and winding ways. Vistas that require focus beyond the distance of a room. The ache of unaccustomed muscles taking all their minor injuries and, perhaps, becoming stronger for them.

We passed ruined Salvation and headed to high hills. The mountains are. In the heights, ice cracks. Winds surge and flow. Mother-of-Snows lets slip her cloak of cloud and glories in the light.

The winds here speak of freedom. I don't know which hurts more: freedom, or the compromises we make to be together.

It's easing a bit. Enough. The other worlds call, and I can answer them. Enough. It surges like the winds, and is sometimes still.

They say grief keeps its own calendar. It does. I place on my own calendar the things that must be done so I can get through this, discharge my duties, and then take time to be and to become.

I need more changes. This is no way to live.

Dust

Sometimes there is no good resolution.

I had my chances to handle this one in the same way as always before. I knew what I was doing.

Doesn't mean I can't wish it were otherwise.

Take this reality away and bring me another one!

How can the duality be so strong? Still?

Am I mad? Are we both? If I'd just tried one more time...

Sometimes there is no good resolution.

Accept that, grieve, and move on.

Storm

Apparently it's inappropriate to say I danced with Storm Wind, although fine to say that Storm Wind deigned to dance with me.

There was dancing.

I started it.

Real

What is and what isn't. What's been too long neglected. 

Always strangers, though.

Will we still all be strangers after centuries of this, defined by our first years in the cradles of our kin?

We need specialists in new fields: things like "reconditioning bodies after long-term storage without actually changing them" and "really long-term relationship management".

Tumbling

They lined the systems up, and knocked them down. It didn't go quite as they'd hoped: we held our fortresses and made them pay dearly for our farms. We spoiled their plans of cashing out most profitably, and take some pleasure in that.

And then we started work to take it all back.

Nulli left, having done as much as it could do, and having a timeframe to leave to do Important Things with golden ships. Fweddit switched allegiance. The swarm decided to speculate on our success again. 

In another theatre the Caldari are pushing hard. Our old allies may need our aid.

Not the only Caldari on my mind.

Once I would've chastised myself for my taste and choices. Now I know that others will do that for me, so it's attended to. That leaves me free to feel, and think, and shape will into words. To consider morale and consistency, and the joy that cuts through the grind and makes it seem worthwhile again.

He turned up in my home fortress. Harassed our foes; worked with our fleets; was shot by one of our blues. Left a jump clone with me. He was irrepressible: the energy enthralling even as it seemed a form of madness. And he asked if I'd come and visit him. Couldn't get me safe passage or docking rights, though.

I haven't used InterBus for ages. Years, I think.

Until yesterday. Lust, curiosity and adventure are strong persuaders.

Hadn't had a soft scan done in a while, either. Slightly grotty headache and taste of metal. Always makes me wish I could take out my implants and clean them.

So here I am, under the cool glow of Deklein's skies, in the Isararach.

His implants mean his combat clones run hot. We share fevered joining and some of the most analytical pillow talk I've ever known. It intrigues me.

I'm growing fond of him, bonding over time and pleasures shared. Our lives do not fit together. I don't want to force them to. I like these stolen days. 

We have Kamela now.

Circling

A week of tracking and buzzing away at the vulnerable system count as the Mary militia and nullsec associates try to lay out their set of dominoes. It's been enjoyable work, despite the official seriousness of the situation. Weather reports say incoming thunderstorm soon.

In my quarters as I write my reports I wrap myself in a jacket far too big, enfolded in its firm and unfamiliar warmth. Then I hang it up, push the furniture aside, and dance.