Dancing in Fury

3: Fury

Last night, she dreamt that she was dancing. Alone, but completed. Her bad leg didn’t bother her – in fact, it felt normal, even powerful. She spun and leapt and wove through the air, her hair cascading in waves around her like silk, swirling against an indigo sky dusted with stars.

For once, her body wasn’t broken. It wasn’t clumsy, and it listened to her. Her movements were controlled but free, and her body was alive. She was strong. She was dancing.

Dancing.

Gloriously. Furiously.

That’s what she was doing. Dancing in fury.

*

Fury.

He woke up the next day with that word pressed into his eyes. A bold cursive scrawl that dominated the space in his head. He wasn’t feeling particularly irate or even irritated, but the word hounded him all the same.

He grabbed a pen off his study desk and dragged it across his skin, scrawling fury the way he saw it in his mind.

It didn’t look angry on his skin. It looked, for some reason, beautiful.

*

Some days, he liked to count the number of syllables in a word. Amateur. Apothecary. Persimmon. Mauve. He would repeat the pattern, and fall in step with the rhythm in his head, slowing down when he got to the diphthongs and increasing speed when he reached the staccato ones.

That day, he had those four words in his head. Quickly, he scribbled them down on his arm, dragging out mauve and squeezing in apothecary. When he went on his usual route to school, his feet responded to the loop of words replaying in his head.

Amateur. Apothecary. Persimmon. Mauve.

Amateur. Apothecary. Persimmon. Mauve.

An even number of syllables. Even numbers gave him comfort. No one left out. Nothing extraneous. There was balance in the world.

Amateur. Apothecary. Persimmon. M –

He stumbled – a misstep – and paused, leaving the last syllable hanging. It nagged at him, urging him to move, keep moving to complete the loop.

But he stood where he was, his sneakered feet anchored to the ground.

Because there she was, doing her crazy skip-step down the lane. He hadn’t seen her at all that day until now. All morning, the words had spun around in his head, crowding out the need for sustenance so he had even decided to dispense with breakfast.

He hadn’t realised he had been thinking about her with every step until he finally saw her standing before him. His internal chant died out, and he was getting parched with each passing second. Get back into the loop, get back into the loop!

But his feet only took him closer to her step by step in a regular one-two rhythm.

He didn’t even feel compelled to count the number of steps he took.

*

She could see only one word on him. The word in her dream. The word of her dream.

Fury.

It was strange how much force, how much power, could be packed into just those four letters. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. She was sure he could see beauty where no one would think to look. He could see beauty in a word as terrifying as fury.

It was only then that she understood why she clung on so tightly to her idea of him. The idea of being redeemed was one she needed to believe in. Redemption. Not just by anyone, but by someone beautiful in all his strangeness. Someone who carried power that frightened those who had none for themselves and had to steal it from others.

Even when he stopped before her, her eyes remained fixed on that word. How wonderfully he embodied the word, how right at home it appeared on his skin, stretched across his lower left arm the way it ought to be.

“Fury is a beautiful word.”

Had she said that out loud? The way his eyes widened slightly told her she had. She bit her lip, ready to turn and leave –

“It is. I woke up with it burning into my eyes. Funny thing is, I don’t even feel angry.”

It had to be a sign. She was well aware of how silly that sounded, but she told him about her dream anyway, the one she had the night before. She related every detail in its full glory -- the sensation of being airborne, her feet light and coming to life, her body taking over.

It was the first time in a long while that someone had listened to her as she talked in a manner so uninhibited it frightened her. The first time in a long while that she did not feel the weight of fear or shame. Under his gaze, she was free, much unlike the last time they had met. She wondered what had changed since then.

When her words petered out, he caught her before she could descend into embarrassment.

“Do you feel,” he said, “like the only time we can truly live is in our dreams?”

She nodded, mute.

He took a step closer. “I saw you a long time ago. It felt like a dream. But it wasn’t.” His gaze fell to his arm. “I’ve been writing more ever since.”

“It was raining that day. I was worried the ink would smudge,” she said, gesturing at his arm. “It seemed very important that it didn’t.”

There was something that was quite important to him too, before he saw her. He couldn’t remember what it was – maybe the number of steps he took, or the number of black cars that passed by him? But that hardly seemed to matter now.

“Funny how these words make no sense now. They seemed very important when I was asleep.” He took a step closer. She forced herself to keep her breathing steady. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

She could have danced right there, if only her bad leg would allow her to. But she only said, “It’s nice to meet you, too,” before her bus arrived and collected her.

He stayed at the bus stop for a long while after the bus rumbled away.

They had parted without exchanging names. There was no need to. Names were irrelevant, a label that gave the world some claim to you. Much like the words that claimed his every thought, dictated his every move.

In dreams, there was no need for names and no need for words. Only the knowledge that you exist. Gloriously. Furiously.