Terpsichore, Not by Michael Praetorius
At a break the next day--the last before going home--she went into the courtyard. Dan and Russell and others stood talking in one corner, but she went straight to another. It was chill but she hurled off her sweatshirt and began to do stretches.
“Care to dance?” said Dan.
“Certainly.”
He reached out to her, she took his hand, and in the midst of everybody else’s political whining and debate they pressed close and danced to an inaudible tune.
Thinking about it all afterwards, she was largely content. Yes, she desired him intensely and smelt his scent lingering in her hair; but this was more than unfulfilled lust. The experience was deeply satisfying in itself despite provoking other hopes. If she never danced with Dan Vannet again, she would nonetheless carry this memory deep within her as a physical and mental image of focus and a certain uncommon joy.
Karla Huebner has appeared in such literary and genre venues as Northwest Review, Colorado State Review, Magic Realism, Fantasy Macabre, Ceilidh, Weave, and Opossum. She teaches at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio (where they went on a very long faculty strike last year) and her book Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic is now available for pre-order from University of Pittsburgh Press; her novel In Search of the Magic Theater is forthcoming from Regal House and her collection Heartwood was a finalist for the 2020 Raz-Shumaker award. Karla recommends the House Rabbit Society, Doctors Without Borders, and the Nature Conservancy.
