13 of 100: Dancing
Bah.
Let's get descriptive for no good reason!
It was the end of things and the dance was getting heavy, wobbling and pitching. Wine had started velvety and then got heady but was now a weight, a sour grape fume habit developed through the evening and carried on out of reflex. A long, broad room, depopulated but for the two of them, music out of a player that just about sounded bored with itself, was where they moved, flopping, insensate. The remains of dinner lay on a table they had pushed against the wall, giggling, giving each other ridiculously playful looks. He still moved his feet cleverly over the carpet, though much slower than he had earlier. She spun and spun like a rose petal caught in a breeze, having forsaken his hands for the feeling of skirts and hair billowing out from her. Legs did what they could but centripetal force and basic biology did her in. Toes dug in to the low carpet (shoes had been abandoned over an hour ago) and for a moment she hovered over a geometric design like an hour glass before collapsing. He stopped and, as much from his own diminished balance as from an innate instinct to copy his partner, dropped to his hands and knees.
Under ash blond hair she looked at him as he crawled to her like a cat picking its way through uncertain underbrush. "I can't," she said to him, "anymore." She heaved in breaths and expelled them, making her hair wave fitfully over her mouth. He had no words, breath wheezed through his lungs. Next to her he sunk to his side. They rolled toward each other to accommodate looking out the window. They held hands, still warmer than usual, and watched the end of all things rush in.
Let's get descriptive for no good reason!
It was the end of things and the dance was getting heavy, wobbling and pitching. Wine had started velvety and then got heady but was now a weight, a sour grape fume habit developed through the evening and carried on out of reflex. A long, broad room, depopulated but for the two of them, music out of a player that just about sounded bored with itself, was where they moved, flopping, insensate. The remains of dinner lay on a table they had pushed against the wall, giggling, giving each other ridiculously playful looks. He still moved his feet cleverly over the carpet, though much slower than he had earlier. She spun and spun like a rose petal caught in a breeze, having forsaken his hands for the feeling of skirts and hair billowing out from her. Legs did what they could but centripetal force and basic biology did her in. Toes dug in to the low carpet (shoes had been abandoned over an hour ago) and for a moment she hovered over a geometric design like an hour glass before collapsing. He stopped and, as much from his own diminished balance as from an innate instinct to copy his partner, dropped to his hands and knees.
Under ash blond hair she looked at him as he crawled to her like a cat picking its way through uncertain underbrush. "I can't," she said to him, "anymore." She heaved in breaths and expelled them, making her hair wave fitfully over her mouth. He had no words, breath wheezed through his lungs. Next to her he sunk to his side. They rolled toward each other to accommodate looking out the window. They held hands, still warmer than usual, and watched the end of all things rush in.