Another Night

Mira tucked her feet under herself and leaned back against the couch. Valentine glanced at her and away. He seemed to find the dancers very interesting.

“Did you know what was happening to you, the first time?” Mira asked, pulling a gold cushion over her legs. She was just slightly chilly; the wind from the garden drew goosebumps on her arms and legs. It felt like summer – if this place had seasons – was fading fast.

“I didn’t,” Valentine said. The tone of his voice didn’t invite her to ask further questions. His face didn’t lend itself very much to emotion, but Mira saw his hands curl into fists on his legs.

“Tell me about it,” she said. “If you’re- if it’s all right.”

Valentine watched the dancers for several long seconds. Mira considered getting a glass of wine, but there was something distinctly disturbing about the viscosity of it. It was darker than any wine she’d ever seen, such a dark red it was nearly black, and viscous as sludge. She sipped the drink Valentine had poured for her. It left her feeling more hollow than before she’d drunk it, but it warmed her chest. She cradled it in her hand and waited for him to reply.

“Another night,” Valentine said finally. He pressed a knuckle between his straight dark brows and closed his eyes. Mira wondered if, sometimes, the noise and the sound got to him. She imagined what it was like, to live in this world of constant revelry, where the wine kept flowing and the dancing never stopped and the music was forever playing. Perhaps he did tire of it. She had the impulse to put a hand on his arm.

She didn’t. Mira let her gaze wander to the band, and the green-eyed musician. His eyes were closed right now, and she didn’t watch him too long in case he opened them and saw her staring. It wasn’t magnetism that drew her gaze to him, or the feeling that she knew him from somewhere else. It was the feeling that he was as much an outsider here as she was. That he wore this place on him like a skin that he could shuck off when he returned to the real world.

Assuming this isn’t real. The more time she spent here, the more Mira felt like the real world was less solid than she’d first thought. If real was what she could touch, taste, hear, then why was this world not as real as her own?

“Don’t let yourself be fooled by appearances,” Valentine said. She felt a draft of heat, as if someone had lit a fire nearby. “Reality is not as crude as this.”

Mira turned to the women in brocade, and the velvet drapes, and the crystal wine glasses with coloured flutes. “I don’t see anything very crude about it.”

“Then you are fortunate.”

Art by Natalia 

Text by Lucie MacAulay