The Captain's Log: #86: Formal Event

Author's note: This piece is part 2 of a longer narrative I'm calling the Sugar Soirée arc. Part 1 can be read here.

“...Stir it up ‘til it’s a rich golden-brown, then turn off the heat. It’ll be runny, at first, but once it’s cooled, it should be just a little thicker than honey, slow to drip off your spoon.”

 

“I never knew so much work went into making caramel,” Eltanin replied, jotting down that last bit onto his scrap paper. He twirled his hand, and paper and quill vanished, magicked off onto his desk somewhere out in the Conficean skyway. “I’ll never look at a butterscotch the same way ever again.”

 

Cera buzzed and rubbed xeir forelegs together like a scheming fly: an apparent sign of arthropod glee. “Always happy to share with friends. Oooh! Speaking of friends. Here comes another one.”

 

Eltanin braced himself for a second scrambling escape into the crowd, but the woman approaching him from one of the snack tables was decidedly not Harlow. She had the bearing and perfect posture of a noble, her head tilted upward at a slight angle that was polite, but detached. She was draped in a pearlescent pink evening gown that fell in thick, luxuriant layers like fondant, and her dark brown hair had been braided up underneath a white fascinator hat. Her skin was pale and unmarked, almost deathly so, like a porcelain doll. He couldn’t possibly guess her age, but at least forty, perhaps, based on her forthrightness alone? That was the phase of life, in his experience, when women stopped flushing and flustering when approaching a potential dance partner.

 

The woman smiled serenely. She held out one opera gloved hand. “May I have this dance?”

 

“Most certainly, madam,” Eltanin replied, placing his own in hers. Soft, he thought, like a kitten’s paws, which surprised him all the more when she led him across the floor with surprising strength.

 

The live bear band struck up a lively 3/4 time signature as the dancers took their places, fumbling with foot placement before the song started in earnest. Eltanin checked for space behind and to the side, allowing the alulae of his wings to come to a comfortable rest over his shoulders. The woman bowed and raised her arms with palms facing up, indicating that she would lead first.

 

The dancers were off at first fiddle, and the audience began to clap in time. Eltanin watched her feet, and noticed she’d put her left foot forward, putting him on his back foot, walking them across the floor in swift two-step. He followed, half a step behind until he caught on to the song’s rhythm. Quick, quick, slow, slow, counterclockwise, repeat. With the general metre down, he focused on reading the woman’s connection, the subtle hints that came from her hand on his shoulder and vice versa. Her leverage told him when to lean in, her tension when to move out, and when he felt her arm raise up, he loosened his own grip and twirled twice, taking the opportunity to shift his right arm up onto her shoulder instead.

 

Now he was leading, setting their pace along the line of dance. Even a hobgoblin with two left feet could have figured out that the woman was on a whole other level from him. Her footwork was on point, she followed every weight change, and even executed a perfect promenade step when he thought he was being sneaky with his hip turn. All the while she kept her eyes fixed on his, only flicking downwards in a blink of a second as they swayed to the beat.

 

Then the song was over, though it felt like they’d only been on the floor for a minute, and they were halfway across the room from where they’d started. They parted, bowed, and made for the sidelines so the next sets of dancers could move in.

 

“Thank you, madam. You’re an exceptional dancer.”

 

“Years of experience in the highest courts of Soujel. You weren’t half-bad yourself. I imagine you took lessons during your time at Kilblane, Eltanin?”

 

Eltanin looked over his shoulder. A bunch of bees were clustered nearby, chatting over a bowl of fresh flowers, and the nearest other Avangardians were two tables away, just far enough that he could probably beat feet and/or have witnesses in case things got ugly.

 

“You knew all along.”

 

“You’re all anyone in the courts would talk about, since that little spectacle on Aldewike. You’d scoff at some of the things they believe about you. But I wanted to judge you myself, direct from the source.”

 

“And was I found wanting?”

 

“Suffice to say, I have an inkling of what the good admiral saw in you. Fare thee well, lieutenant.”

 

The woman melded into the crowd, just another candy outfit into a sea of sweets. No sooner had she done so than a pastel lollipop of a figure emerged, rainbow-swirled hood drawn up over her face. It was his ship’s purser, Hester, doing her best impression of a skyfish gasping for air.

 

“C-cap’n… you know who that was, right?”

 

“Just some Soujel noble. Wanted to see the face that launched a thousand warships, I suppose…”

 

Hester held up a gold florin. Embossed on the obverse was the portrait of Empress Soevna Serenita, after whom the Avangardian calendar was literally named, a fifty-year-old woman with pinned braids and perfect, smooth skin like a porcelain doll’s–

 

“...Oh.”