Mesnyi

She’s a pale, waxen taper;

he time makes little difference to her when she has the freedom not to care. (Fun can be found anywhere, as can romance, and wealth, and danger, and war.) So the Mesnyi of then is hardly different from the Mesnyi of now.

(But which is which?)

(Then is now). 

The glass violin peals out a long and inquiring note as the pale mare drifted back to her clearing. She was awaiting a student. On occasion, Mesnyi had taken up teaching dance and music and her host of other skills to those that could offer money and (or) influence. While she always found an enamored Someone to foot the bill, she did spend some of her time alone. And so it was her money to spend, those days. She had no proper work - never had, never would - and what could be better than being paid to have fun?

Do you truly think she would answer you that?

No, never. Not then-today or now-today. She would tell it to you on never-today.

The letters Eik had sent were approached with vague interest by Mesnyi until she starting asking who he was. She would rather teach a Somebody than a Nobody (you could feel the difference in the weight of the coin). 

He was a Somebody.

Mesnyi was polite and willing as ever.

”Good morning, Eik,” she beams, with all the confidence of someone who has gossiped enough to pronounce every member of one’s bloodline four generations back. Mesnyi offers him a low bow-curtsy of some manner, ankles crossed and mane draping low and cloudlike across her face. In a moment, she is up again, the violin snapping from its discordant idling to its master’s desired sonata. She huffed and spared it a glance, ”My apologies for the abrupt change. It does not care for my choices very often. Ready to dance?”

Mesnyi

A circle scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall;

hesitant dancer was no stranger to Mesnyi, though she could not claim to understand the behavior. She had taken to dancing like a bird to seed, and there was little of Mesnyi that did not sway like the branch of a weeping willow (branch always seemed like too harsh a word for those sorts of things, anyway, with all their curling under the weight of so many blossoms and leaves). She smiled and walked forward to meet him, doe-like and fragile in every context but the dance floor. ”I’ve spent some time learning the dances of this land, and I must say they are quite beautiful, but most are not dauntingly elaborate. Let us start with something from Denocte,” for when she grinned, rumor bled from her lips like sap from a tree, initials crudely carved into its unyielding flesh.

Though most things yield to love, she thought.

The violin sped into a downscaling of notes and Mesnyi turned on it, staring the glass creation down from across the clearing. ”Oh, don’t you scare him.” She looked back to Eik and smiled. ”It likes to play tricks when my attention wanders. We will start with something slow, worry not.” The violin fell under her command as she stepped back, inviting Eik to venture farther into the glade. ”I imagine that you will be leading in such dances, though I do not mean to assume what manner of partner you may have…” Though she knew, oh, like the eyes and the ears of the courts knew, all-seeing, all-hearing, all-witnessing.

Mesnyi

a palace of broken glass stands within me
(it is for dancing on)

esnyi passes over the withered attempt at gossip like a doe across a brook, thirst quenched. She already knows, she has drunk of the whispered word and swallowed, swallowed, swallowed until it filled her belly with candyfloss powder and upside-down birds, butterflies in reverse and something like a stomachache. She did not need to push him for anything more than a humph., and she is happy to oblige his request. Mesnyi’s skin does not prickle with the nearness of unfamiliar bodies, she knows this dance and it should matter little to her with whom she dances. How often did it feel - dare she say it - special? 

If she were the humphing type -

The violin drawled out a thin, high note, like a stuck songbird, and Mesnyi took a step back.  ”Follow me. I step back, you step forward. I step forward, you step back. That is how this song begins.” That is how she would continue, granting that there were no trips or questions. The violin would hold its note for an explanation or a mistake. The song was, of course, meant to be some beats faster, but she had endless patience for a perfectly held note. 

After a good while of this back and forth, back and forth, the rhythm changed.  ”This is a story,” she said.  ”You take two steps forward, and I take two back. We pause - here - and do this twice, and if the room is full of my students, no one will collide.” She smiled, hoping to comfort him, but in her head she saw the rows of couples skipping backwards, glittering under light and liquor. The dream, the dream, the attainable dream. Attainable, yes. All things are within reach for Mesnyi. All things, all things, all things… 

 ”It is a story about star-crossed lovers.”

Mesnyi

   There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

   There is society where none intrudes,

   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

t was not that she did not know what it felt like to be in love. She remembered strongly that desperate urge to cling to the side of her beloved, to sing in hymns that burst worlds like eggs, to show him and then the string of universes they traveled that she did, indeed, love him, very much, and no one could have a moment to doubt it. 

But that was then.

Now, she could fake it. She could fake it for those wishing desperately that it was true, and she could fake it for those that didn’t quite believe, so that they did. Unicorns were made for making miracles, were they not? Even if such miracles were only illusions, sometimes seeing was enough to make one believe, and that was all a true artist needed. What she saw in Eik, she knew, was all truth. 

He was not very good, but this was not a noteworthy thing; most people who did not know how to dance were not good at dancing. He apologized here and there, but Mesnyi hardly acknowledged it; they were not here to dwell on the mistakes of the ignorant. They were here to teach, and to learn, respectively (Mesnyi had come hoping to learn a bit about Eik, too, but that had gone nowhere). 

”It’s a sad ending?” 

They grew close to the heart of the song now, and Mesnyi only smiled as the violin rose up in a hollow, wailing note. ”To some,” she began, ”but not all.” She dropped her head low as the note concluded. ”She seems to die, to curl in on herself. Step left now, and now, and right now, and now. He cannot tell she is alive.” For a long moment there is silence in the clearing. ”We stay still, then. And…” The violin tore away at its strings in chattering sixteenths. Mesnyi raised her head slowly. ”She is new again. For you see…she is, or is like - it depends on who you ask - a butterfly. And when she goes away from him to grow, to become a woman, or a stronger being, to become herself, she is more beautiful than he can imagine.” She stretches out a leg, ”And stretch yours, here, so our ankles touch.” She sighs through her nostrils, tranquil, eyes closing a moment, to open and stare into him. ”You take this time to look your partner in the eye and see them for what they are…and when the moment is over, you look left, at the adjacent person’s partner, who looks right, and then switch. You all must see each other, and consider - do you understand?” There was something to the teaching of the story that made learning the dance easier, more powerful. The violin hit a sharp downward note. ”Not everyone does,” she sighs, taking a wide step forward, neck arched, ”So curl your neck, like so, two swans meeting, if it is correct,” and then, she whispered, as the violin sang its final note, falling into silence, ”In the end, they are the only ones who understand each other.”