The Dance - A Short Story

Short Story #9 for the year is due today. The prompt was "duck" and the word count was 1000 words exactly. Here's my entry.

The Dance

Manon leaned forward slightly in her comfy corner chair so she could see more clearly out the rain-steaked window. It had been a hectic and tiring week at work, and now the long, wet weekend was dragging slowly by. It had rained non-stop since she left work Friday afternoon. She had cleaned and taken care of household business through the long, saturated Saturday; and today she had read for a while after church and had watched a little TV. Now she had time but lacked inspiration to write or paint. So here she was -- simply BEING!

She gazed out the window and wondered when her life had become so gray and stagnant? Where was the romance and excitement that had filled her life last summer? Where was the joy and love she had thought were hers?

She sat up suddenly. What was that movement she had spotted out at the start of the woods? She wiped at the window to see if she could get a better look. The water forming rivulets down the windowpane distorted the view, so she wasn’t quite sure what she had seen. Was it someone (something?) ducking under that low-lying limb of the dogwood tree at the edge of the yard? She squinted and concentrated. Nothing there now, but she could swear there was movement there a minute ago. Perhaps the neighbor’s dog? Surely not an escapee from the jail on the other side of the woods! Probably just her imagination. She sighed. Then she also smiled, remembering ducking under that very same dogwood branch last summer. They had been seeking respite from the sudden rain under the huge sweeping branches of the large oak behind the blooming Dogwood tree.

She and Bradley, oh yes, she remembered Bradley! What a week they’d had! They had been caught in the rain that day - during that special week a year ago. It had been a lovely, early-summer walk until the sudden downpour had sent them scurrying and squealing. Bradley had grabbed her hand, and they had run, laughing, into the woods to find shelter, hoping the shower would be as short as it had been sudden. How quickly she and Bradley had become comfortable with each other during that week of pre-wedding activities! Such happy memories they had made! She had thought maybe the relationship would continue and grow. So sad, though, that now she was reduced to searching for happiness only by imagining and remembering! Presently, there seemed to be life only outside the dreary confines of her routine life. Outside the walls of her lonely apartment.

Manon leaned back again now, trying to close her mind to the memories and her eyes against the pain. As she drifted, the ghost of a remembered tune began tickling and teasing in the back of her head. It would quickly touch base there before skipping off to hide again. It was just a ghost of a melody, but somehow it persisted and held enough reality to capture her full attention. She couldn’t shake it loose, so she slowly breathed out and let her mind float on the haunting tune as it began to develop a full body. The music began to fill her head. The music lifted her arms and her heart. It pulled her from her comfortable reverie, and she began to sway with the music accompanying the memory that was playing inside her very core.

Time and space dissolved, and Manon was in the arms of the tall groomsman at her sister’s wedding last summer. Bradley held her like a precious jewel; a diamond. Or no! An emerald! One of those brilliant, rare red emeralds valued beyond the most priceless diamond. It was he, Bradley, who glided around the dance floor with her that night. He proudly glided -  happy in the knowledge that his arms were tasked with protecting and displaying this treasure. He held Manon with reverence and joy, delight and confidence. Her steps moved in perfect synchrony with his, although their entire history was encapsulated within that single week. He bent to position his lips near her ear and whispered the words of the love song as they moved together. He whispered, and the dance floor disappeared. They became the music, and the room dissolved. She rested her head on his chest and listened to his steady heartbeat, and her own heartbeat began to keep time with his. They were alone in time and space, dancing to the music of the spheres.

As she circled under his arm in another smooth, elegant turn, her shadowy green eyes met his sparkling brown ones. They smiled in mutual remembrance of their romantic walk on the beach the night before, after the wedding rehearsal. As the waves had rushed into the shore and back out again in the twilight, they had strolled hand in hand along the shoreline. They walked long stretches in companionable silence punctuated by occasional pauses for soft kisses – kisses that mirrored the gentle ones the waves were dropping on the face of the shore.

He had held her hand, often in both of his. He had shortened his stride to accommodate her shorter steps. She had listened with rapt diligence as he tucked her hair behind her ear and told her of past disappointments and his dreams for the future; and she had become drunk on his undivided attention as she detailed the important life lessons she had learned and treasured from her faith and family. Their time together had seemed as rare as that 2-karat red emerald, and she had thought that it would be as enduring at that rare stone.

Now, as Manon danced alone in her room on this rainy Sunday evening, she smiled. An amazing man had loved her last summer. He never said so, and his absence now weighed a thousand pounds; but the wonder and the wondering lit her up as she remembered. Having almost certainly been loved still made her dance.