Jul 08, 2005 21:54
Here, in the firelight, in the forest, she dances. Her
people around her, making music and feeding the fire, and she whirls with
sticks held loosely and lightly in her palms, spinning and ready against the
opponent who does not come from the sky tonight, but has in the past and will
in the future.
This is the battle that they will never win. That the
ancestors could not win. The Athosians possess not the hubris that would allow
them to believe they could prevail where the ancients and their wonders did
not.
They will not win. They will die, over and over and over,
screaming their lives away under the hand of ghouls that haunt the night. But
before they die, they live, and while they live, they celebrate that it remains
so.
She dances.
Under her feet are needles and old leaves, comforting-this
world is not so unlike their home, after all, for all that Teyla spends her
time in the magical city of the ancestors, where bare feet encounter only hard
floors and slick surfaces. Here she can feel the earth under her soles, as she
can feel the firelight glowing off her bare skin-and around her, the eyes fix
on her, the children in awe, and the adults in hunger. She is the leader of
their people, touched by the ancestors to sense the enemy and guard against it,
chosen by the elders to travel to other worlds and speak to foreigners-she is
their chosen warrior, and her body and her dancing shows it to be so. The most
fit of them all. The most desirable.
She has seen Major Sheppard look at her in these clothes,
which she wears to fight with the sticks, at the exposed thigh and stomach,
breasts high and firm and held tightly by the top. When she first stepped into
the practice room so clothed, his eyes went wide. Desirable, even to someone
who has never known the Wraith, never known the driving need to choose the
fittest, the fastest, the strongest, so that their children may survive the
next culling.
She will choose someone tonight, sure as she feels the sweat
trickling down her back and the fire rising in her blood. She spins, one foot
kicking up, and again, and a higher kick, and again, until very little is left
to the imagination of the watchers.
They do not need it. They have seen it all before.
When her breath comes in gasps and the dance has taken her
over until she would not sense a Wraith were it standing in the circle around
her, she undoes the clasps to her shirt, and unfastens the skirt, until she
spins naked, glowing in the firelight, strength and fertility proven to all who
watch.
Major Sheppard asked once why the Athosians had so young a
leader. In fighting the Wraith, she explained, one needs not only wisdom, but
strength. Proof to the old ones that a new generation rises strong, and the
Wraith have not taken all this time.
The drums are growing louder. She stamps, kicks, spins, and
comes to a halt next to Lycos, who watches her, gasping for air almost as
deeply as she is.
Behind her, Mara spins out into the firelight, and Teyla
pulls Lycos out into the dark of the trees, tripping him onto the forest floor
and landing over him, feet and hands to either side. She waits, impatient,
while he fumbles with his trousers, and lowers herself onto him, slowly. His
head goes back, sweat standing out on his forehead.
“Teyla,” he gasps. “Teyla. Have mercy.”
She bites his exposed collarbone, and he yells, the cry
echoing back to the firelight where Mara dances, blending in with the music.
The woods will be full of young men screaming pleasure tonight, while the women
show the Athosian people that they may not be able to prevail against the
Wraith, but they will stay alive.
amnesty i,
challenge: darkness,
author: frostfire