Some of the girls went to sleep, exhausted from the performance. The more seasoned dancers like Avenay found their way down to the restaurant part of the in. Avenay, Palli, Liera, Cemeda, and Sorede, the oldest dancers and the closest group, made a bee line for the bar.
The bartender was a round looking man, though he didn't seem at all flustered at the approach of five beautiful women. A few unnatached males in the restaurant gave catcalls, which were ignored by all except Sorede, who glared daggers at the man nearest to her. "You must be Fire Dancers," the bartender chortled.
"How'd you guess?" Avenay half-sighed. It seemed like no matter what she wore, a man could smell a Fire Dancer from a mile away. It wouldn't matter if they had walked in in rags, they would have recieved the same response.
"You always make quite the entrance," the man chortled. "Now what can I get for you ladies? Care for some wine? Or perhaps ale, our house special has recieved compliments from high places, you know."
Palli, Liera, Cemeda, and Sorede all delicately ordered wine. "The strongest thing you've got," Avenay told him. Sorede shot her a questioning look which Avenay replied to with the smallest of shrugs.
The bartender was not so subtle. "Had a rough night, eh?"
Avenay shot him a look that read clearly "don't ask if you'd like to stay in one peice". He nodded and began fixing their drinks.
"Alright, who is he?" Cemeda demanded.
"Who is who?" Avenay asked.
"Who's made you, who usually doesn't even finish her first glass of wine, into a drinker?" Palli elaborated.
Avenay shuddered. There it was again, that eerie sameness to their thoughts. She'd known what Cemeda had meant the same way Palli did. "There's no him," Avenay assured her friends.
"Then what is it?" Liera asked. "Something's eating you, has been since tonight. And it seems to have a good hearty appetite if it's still going."
Sorede understood in a way the other women didn't. Being a Fire Dancer longer connected your mind more with the others'. "It gets to us all at some time or another."
Avenay frowned. "It's never bothered me before tonight. I'd never even thought about it. I used the spells and did my dance and just figured knowing what you all were thinking was part of it. I didn't know I was losing... me."
"It's not exactly losing," Sorede told her. Sorede was thirty-five and the oldest dancer, though she looked barely older than Avenay thanks to spells, and she had seen enough other women go through this to know what was going on. "It's more of a mixing. You're still there, you just also have parts of other people in you. It's part of what makes the Fire Dancers such an elite group. We never make a mistake because we can compensate before it happens. You, as lead dancer, should have realized that by now."
"I guess I have known it," Avenay admitted, "I've just never thought about it like I have been tonight."
"Stop thinking about it," Sorede advised her. "It'll only slow you down."
The bartender brought over their drinks and there was a relative silence from the bar as the women sipped thoughtfully at their wine. Avenay grimaced at the sharp bite of the liqour delivered to her in a tiny glass but downed it in one gulp anyway.
The fire in her throat as the liquid made its way down was almost refreshing. This was a pain she could feel properly, not one that lurked dangerously in the dark corners of her mind and came and went as it pleased. Avenay could easily have spelled the pain away, but she enjoyed it, closing her eyes and smiling. The other dancers exchanged worried looks.
"Care for another?" the bartender asked. She nodded and he produced another tiny glass. This one she savored more, taking tiny sips, enjoying the firey feeling of each.
"It doesn't burn so bad if you take it all in one gulp," the bartender advised, but she ignored him and kept sipping, eyes closed, a contented smile on her face.
After they had finished their second glasses of wine, the dancers dispersed for their nightly flirt. Avenay stayed at the bar. She was the least flirtatious of her little group and only joined in when she was in a good mood. Tonight, she just watched.
There was no rule that said Fire Dancers couldn't Choose a husband, it had evolved from how they lived. What man wanted his Chosen dancing the way Fire Dancers did? Children were another problem altogether. There were spells to prevent a pregnancy, there were even spells to end one.
Spells could prevent the bodily effects of pregnancy, but not those of the mind. And what one Fire Dancer felt, in some distant way, so did the rest. It would not fit their lifestyle to be even remotely maternal. Pregnancies that began were promptly ended, and few men would put up with that. The Fire Dancers were notoriously easy by reputation but also known as heartbreakers. It was a very stupid man who fell in love with a Fire Dancer.
The dancers responded to this in different ways. Most, like Palli, Liera, and Cemeda, accepted it gleefully as it was already their nature. After an incident with a man because of her reputation, Sorede had begun to hate men and turned instead to women. It was not unusal for a Fire Dancer and women who felt the same way were as flattered by the attention as any man.
Avenay did flirt, on occasion, but though almost all the rest of her qualities were ideal for a Fire Dancer, she had always felt an annoying yearning to Choose a man and settle down. She supposed it came from being the product of generations of house wives. She was a skillful flirt when she wanted to be and as experienced in bed as any of the other dancers, but while the others could make it all meaningless and forget about it the next morning save for what-I-did-last-night stories to swap at breakfast, Avenay's house wife blood told her there should be some meaning to it.
So Avenay watched from the bar, now sipping at coffee to soothe her throat and clear her mind. Palli was dissapearing up the stairs with a man, still flirting and giggling as they went.
"Those kind of people make me sick," a man commented from behind her. Avenay turned to see a quite handsome man hunched over a mug. He didn't even look up as he spoke.
"What kind of people?" Avenay demanded, ready to defend her friend.
"People who have someone else," the man told her with a sad little smile. "You're a pretty girl, why aren't you out there flirting?"
"You're a handsome man, why aren't you out there flirting?" Avenay asked in reply.
The man grinned ruefully and then studied the rim of his mug. "I guess this'll sound strange to you, coming out of a sex-crazed man's mouth, but I just... I've never been very good at meaning it when I don't mean it."
Avenay smiled. "Not any more strange than it'd sound to you coming from a Fire Dancer."
The man gave a low whistle. "Didn't know I was speaking to one. No offense, but you don't seem like the type..."
"None taken," Avenay assured him with a dismissive wave of the hand. "It's almost refreshing. Most men seem to just know. I'm glad there's at least one who doesn't."
The man smiled warmly. "That's me, Selinan, the only man alive who can't recognize a Fire Dancer when he sees one."
"Avenay," she introduced herself. "The only lead Fire Dancer who can't flirt for beans."
Selinan began to say more but he caught himself as a man in the strangest clothes Avenay had ever seen, entered the room. Wordlessly, he slipped down from the barstool and used a minor version of the invisibility spell the Fire Dancers used at the end of their performance. The man who had entered the room scanned it with a deadly gaze and then, with a confused frown, stalked back out the way he had come.
"Selinan?" she whispered to the air beside her, but he was long gone.
