The Last Dance Before Midnight

A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance

The last hour of the Beginning-of-Spring festival, and the crowd is still turning in the square while you work the back row of lamps. She is already behind the stalls when you notice her: red hair, four horns, a white mask she has not taken off, a tail she cannot keep from giving her away. The musicians have slowed to something with a long walk in it. She learned the fast dance badly and broke a hand doing it; this one she has never dared try where people can see. So she asks you — the lanternwright, who has kept this row alight for years and is out of oil tonight — to teach her here, in the dark, before the bells. Her hand shakes in yours the whole time. It does not let go when the music ends.

You play a festival-goer she singled out from the crowd