Table after table of food had been lined up along the far edge of the plateau, and I lost Tamlin while I waited in line to fill a plate…Music started near the giant, smoking bonfire—fiddles and drums and merry instruments that had me tapping my feet in the grass. Light and joyous and open…
Inspired by this quote from A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah J Maas, 2015
Elven Dance, by Danielle
There was a flier for the festival hanging on the door of my toilet stall the other day. Faerie Mingle, it had said—wear your true majestic. I scoffed at it while squatting down, bare, to let out my least majestic. But I kept looking at it, involuntarily committing it to memory like one does an unsolicited picture of their ex.
The address led me here, to the rooftop of this fantasy bookshop in Brighton. It’s dressed up, amazingly, as a poised, fanciful michelin starred deck, but embellished by high fae serving lesser fae. I suppose I am one of the lesser fae.
Another day is all it was. Another trip to the toilet between classes—classes in which I’d scramble through the back auditorium amidst a hundred other lost and found kids, and place myself, gently, with caution—who knows why—in the very last row.
On this particular trip to Death and Mythology—the most coveted class of my grad school’s Study Abroad catalog—after having just left the bathroom in which I’d chanced upon a meeting with this flier, I had, fettered to me, some unfounded, unexplained sense of optimism—odd, I’m never looking up.
It was as though the flier was no flier at all. An apparition, more like it. If I’d touched the glossed paper, it would have been translucent; would have been air. I was so affected by the damn flier, in fact, I swear if I’d gone back to that same toilet after the end of the professor’s lecture, it would have been gone. Proof of it having been just some enigmatic advertisement pinned up by some divinity who’d already pushed the motions to get me there. Pushed my bladder, I guess; urged me to drink some extra coffee that morning or some other mundane, inconsequential sequence of events to lead me here.
How silly we are in this existence.
In class we talked about The Epic of Gilgamesh. I felt compelled to raise my hand as the professor began writing notes about the significance of Enkidu’s sexual experience. I wouldn’t have said anything groundbreaking—likely all that would have come out was a stifled admission that yes, I read that part. Would’ve embarrassed me, really, but I did nonetheless wish to be noticed as a piece in that moment.
But the professor wasn’t actually asking our insipid, student interpretations anyhow. What the professor was prepared to write on the board was too important—too fact, too concrete—to be up for discussion by amateurs.
Enkidu’s sexual experience made him human. It made him lonely.
The faerie festival isn’t all that populated yet. Waiters walk around with elven ears and skirts of leaves covering the jolts between their forest-like legs. Some wear tunics that flaunt nicely the rounded muscles of their chests. There are no female waiters, but I do see some women—beautiful, they are—with sparkly eyeliner and cosplay wings that look way too opulent to have been purchased at a generic costume store. They’re dancing on and around a platform where one woman in a leafy bikini sings. Her voice sounds like the cello.
All the decor is black and white—modern, which is strange for a faerie party, but the green, earthly accents and the poised, pretty people help it.
“My lady, may I refill your glass?” An elven male asks. He curtsies as he approaches. He has dark, thick hair that I imagine would resemble pubes when he sweats. His hair curls, generously, around the frame of his head, and he has deep, feminine eyelashes that, against the rest of his heavy-jawed face and olive skin, come off as droolingly masculine. He wears tan sweatpants—less fit for the occasion than many of his coworkers, but more fascinating to me—and no shirt, but a sash of leaves that adorns his chiseled chest.
The wind roars a bit, coming from the ocean. The sun is setting, and from where I sit beside the ledge, I see the waves acting up in the distance below. Clouds shine in patches above, pink and purple. Night’s coming on. It’s probably more windy than the hosts of this rooftop bar were hoping it would be. A disappointment, I wonder, that the near-naked creatures on display are feeling an unanticipated chill.
There’s an active carnival down below; I can smell the fried fair food and buttery popcorn; I can hear the faint sound of an ice cream truck; I can see long lines of ants dressed in light sweaters and flip flops draping off each of the ride entrances like curtains.
I bet this elven man caught me looking at them—longingly, the children awed at the top of the Ferris Wheel.
“I’ll take some water, thank you,” I say to the beastly male in front of me.
I don’t know why I settle on water. It may be a thing of embarrassment, shame—why would an American girl be at this literature-based faerie party alone and let herself lose her wits? Or, when I think about it further, why would an American girl be at this literature-based faerie party alone and not let herself lose her wits? That may actually be the less settling outcome.
Elven man pours into my comically large glass from the pitcher he holds in his henna marked right hand. There’s a moment of awkwardness after he begins that it seems he may never stop pouring—my glass must hold at least double the normal serving of wine. This, I believe, is done by design.
The sparkling pink liquid casts a slight shine on the white table cloth. I look up as he’s still pouring, and I notice there are double the amount of partiers than before. They’re all in some “majestic” apparel. Sparkly blush and metallic eye make-up; sequined undergarments. This realization makes me notice—in a way I wish I didn’t—my own presence.
I’m wearing straight-legged jeans that fit baggier than I’d like, and a laced purple bralette with green embroidered flowers weaved around the areola patch. My hair is naturally waved down my back, and my shoes are beach-colored sandals I bought from a Brighton shop when my Study Abroad group and I first arrived in England. Everything seemed novel then, but looking at them now, they’re just a pair of beachy sandals. I could’ve bought them from Payless.
The most effort I put into today’s outfit is the headband made of leaves which I, serendipitously, found in a crystal boutique on my walk back to my flat after leaving Death and Mythology this morning when I saw the flier.
“Water pink with sparkles?” I ask the elven creature once he finishes pouring my drink. It must have been at least 15 seconds that’s gone by, the drink purely spilling into my cup.
“Just what you ordered,” he says, and smiles down at me, the slant of his head creating maybe a flirtier smirk than he intends. I nod my head. If he says so.
He walks over to the next table and pours the clearly excited couple there the same drink. We all line the ledge of the roof, leaving the middle arena for a light, spacious, open dance floor.
I taste the pink drink. It tastes like sprite, but more floral. Lavender sprite, rose-petal sprite. I taste it again. Wine sprite. I think of Gilgamesh—so civilized he had to be thrown into wilderness to balance his obedience on Earth.
Below me, I hear the laughter of the kid’s carnival. The sudden drop of a rollercoaster.
There aren’t much other thoughts that riddle me while I drink my ‘water.’ I fall in and out of awareness—not drunk, not drugged, but I’m in England, goodness. I’m studying abroad, I’m a literature major, I’m at a faerie cosplay rooftop bar, and I’m alone. There’s got to be some built-in psychedelic effect in a setting like that. And I somehow feel it. There’s a waviness tuning through my head.
Every five minutes or so, I become conscious of how much dimmer the night has become. At one interval, I notice fairy lights turn on through the entirety of the roof’s ledge, as well as across and above the bar, and even on some of the entertainer’s clothing. There’s lights everywhere, really. This urges a smile to my lips when I notice.
For a quick moment, I worry if I look strange just sitting here, observing. It is obvious that’s all I’m doing here—observing. But I don’t like this moment of self-awareness, so I let it go.
When the wine is finished, there’s groups of ladies and some men dancing on the dance floor. It had looked large and spacious earlier when it was empty, but that must be close to an hour ago now, and it suddenly looks cramped; swarmed; lively. The elven dancers are animated, wings budding one another like crickets mating; many of their faces grotesque—or are they happy?
A woman this time—ash blond, braided hair, and a golden gown with slits down each leg starting at her hip bones—refills my glass. She smiles at me with possibly the same flirty smirk the elven male had. There’s some anticipation somewhere around me. Something coming next.
This time around, while sipping this same beverage, I make myself hyper-aware of the feel of the fizzies on my lips. The burn of the tongue, the sizzles down the throat. Sips become gulps, and the smile I’d felt earlier at the turning on of fairy lights is no longer a thing I can feel. It’s just there—stagnant—I’m just smiling.
I hear a group of children’s screams—again, the nice, anticipated yet shocking drop of a rollercoaster. I feel a drop of my own heart too, simultaneously with their carnival scream when I see my initial elven pourer reappear at my side. It takes me probably a few seconds too long to notice him; I’m enthralled by how collectively the inhabitants of the dance floor move. I think of myself watching musical dance numbers as a child and teasing that there’s no way they all know the same dance in unison at once. But here, it seems they might.
“You liked the faerie wine, huh?” The elven says, though he no longer seems like an elven creature, not against all the rest of them. He, I believe, seems to be aware of this too—aware of his meta-awareness—because he no longer approaches like an employee, or like someone at all in the middle of an act, which is so clearly what he’s been called to do. He seems, in fact, very human. Comfortingly so. And possibly tired. And, when I look at him—eyes so deep they must have once been drowned—I have an instinct that he is back at my table, my lonely, solemn table in the corner of the ledge, because in me he seeks and finds some solidarity. Could that be?
“Hmm, wrong gal. I was drinking water pink and sparkly,” I say. I smile up at him, hoping to wear a face with the same propensity of flirt that I’d sensed from him earlier. Of course I’m not so practiced in wearing my face this way—a risk it is, really, but it must have flown by some measure because the elven man seats himself at my table with such a calm audacity it doesn’t even occur to me to be wary.
“Yeah, I thought you could use some wine,” he says, giving concord.
“You thought so?” I ask. I’m feigning perplexity, but, oddly, I am not actually perplexed.
Why would a man, a stranger, think anything about me? And be…well…correct? The answer is, precisely, because I am as easily understood as I think I can understand. I am also human, that is. Akin to the rest of them. We’re all here at this faerie party. We all walked the same spiral stairs to reach the top here; tapped the same handle of the door. We all watched the same pinks and purples of the sun set. We all see the same ocean below; are calmed by the same waves crashing. We all hear the same kids at the carnival. We all, I’d even postulate, were those same kids once, ages ago. If we’d found we’d all met at some adventure park in the early 2000s, we’d probably share a small chuckle and a sweet small world!, and then forget the coincidence by the hour. We could all have been together all along.
Of course he knows me, this man. I know him just as well.
“I did. I thought you looked like you could use a crutch. I asked my friend there to pour you another glass. Something to get you talking,” his head undergoes a nod of impulse here—seems like something that just jerks out of him when he’s saying something he’s purporting confidence in without actually feeling it.
Yup, human.
“My goal tonight, if you must know, was to get you talking,” he adds.
“And what if I mustn’t know?”
“Why else would you be talking?”
He likes me, I think way too quickly.
I shouldn’t have a thought like this yet. Something so final. At this rate, we’ll be cuddled into the same blankets at the end of the night. I imagine his blankets black and white, an extension of this modernly decorated party, though it’s likely he’s no extension of this at all. This is all for pretext; all exposition; all the before.
Another sound of screams—again, children being dropped on a rollercoaster below—and I’m becoming suspect that the children are all in my head. A simulation, they must be. They drop when I drop. And, gosh oh gosh, as odd as it is, I am dropping. Falling. Dropping. I don’t know this man, but I like it this way. That’s why I’m having baseless thoughts about how deeply I could love him. Thoughts about falling. Dropping. Like kids on a coaster.
“Dance with me?” I offer.
I don’t have to tell him I’ve never danced before. I don’t have to tell him anything. He won’t notice anyway—I am not myself. In fact, I can bet, when I get up to dance, when we’re mixed amongst that verberating dancing consciousness, I will have danced before. I trust in that disillusionment the same way I trust in the warmth of the Sun.
He nods again, but this time there’s agency there, he’s saying yes. He picks up my hand, which caresses the empty wine-glass like one does a lover, to take me into the mob.
The dark of the night is now in full stream. There’s lights everywhere to balance. Luminosity of faeries all over—even strings of lights on dancers—and disco lights shining like stars down from above. I look up to make a wish, as mother says to do so whenever entering a new Church.
Energy, loads and loads of energy; it is making me high. I don’t know when it became this way; I don’t know when the music switched from folklore acoustics to techno pop, but it is dragging me, lifeless and full of life all at once. It has only been two hours since I stiffly sat down myself, and now I am someone else entirely.
On the dance floor—no, no dance floor, it’s a stage; this is my performance—my elven man feels his way up and down my sides, again and again like his hands are a snake slithering through grass. I am the grass; I am the meadow. We rock together—with each other, and with everyone else—and I know I’m laughing. Nothing’s funny, though I’ve never been part of a more consummate amusement, and I’ve never had such a compulsion to express the thing bursting in my chest.
Or, actually, I may not be laughing at all. I may be looking at him with deer eyes—doughy and unlike me. I may be imploring him. I feel his hands warm against my skin—not sure which one of us is sweating but there’s humidity brewing where our bodies touch. We gradually get closer to each other and, where we first began ringing to the tune of our number at the outskirts of the mob, it feels we are now in the very center of it.
I forget who I am. I kiss the guy. Another whirl of kids screaming—yup, they do not exist. It is my own body falling. My own ego, crushing down in the most majestic and freeing rapture. I hope we stomp on it to the beat of the music.
And then I kiss him again. But he may not be himself any longer. He could be any of the hundreds of bodies that I’m dancing jointly with. He could be a male, or he could be a woman—and he’d be beautiful; he’d be just as sensual; just as desired either way. I feel him everywhere; in all my breath, like cigarette smoke. There’s smoke somewhere—a bonfire in the sand below. That may be where the sober stragglers have gone to escape the crowd. I bet even that—that quiet, which I by no means am looking for—has some cosmic charm of its own.
Our tongues are going—gnawing—of their own volition. His, hers. The sparkles of the dancers are floating to me through the air like pollen, becoming masks on my skin like I, too, wore it here. We’re bathing in faerie dust. It wears me in the same manner I wear it, and I’m cleaner this way. I’m forgetting myself. I’m not in England. I’m not studying abroad. I’m not home either. I’m nowhere. But if I have to be—if God complains he put me here to be a presence in this spacial, temporal existence—then fine. I am in a dream. That’s what this is. It’s a dream, and I am glad to never be gone from it.
The wild and the civil. There’s some ecstasy here—a shine vibrating my bones—which blasts the need for either, or begs the need for both. I’m not Enkidu and I’m not Gilgamesh. I’m neither, and I’m all.
We dance. Me and my elven man, and then me and somebody else. Somebody else afterward, and somebody else after that. But it’s no matter. We dance. I—just me—I dance.
