Author's Note: After a hectic and dramatic (for once from me, not in the humorous way) summer I started reading Bessa again. A bit of Bessa practice is in order. I didn't realize how much I missed this pairing. Please enjoy and review (if it's not enjoyable please review too).
Dance
Sometimes, late at night when Nessa was sure that Madame Morrible was asleep in bed and the partygoers had already stumbled back to rooms not their own, the Governor-to-be would slip from between her blankets to her chair for a late night trek to the grounds. Her late night rendezvous with the stars left her breathless after her struggle to roll her chair over the hill towards the border of the school grounds. However, the ground there was flat and paved with row after row of square stones that let Nessa's wheels glide over them with no resistance. It was then, with her arms raised and her eyes closed, that she imagined she was dancing.
The one dance she had experienced gained new movements each night even though the Oz Dust song was unchanging, and her invisible dance partner joined her in each new twist of the arms. Boq smiled at her during these dances. It was the only thing that had no real counterpart.
It was only when she could no longer feel the tips of her fingers that she would lower her arms to her lap, hands folded and eyes still closed, and bow her head to Boq.
"Thank you for the dance, Master Boq."
And the phantom of Nessa's mind would bow back and smile. Sometimes, if Nessa were feeling particularly fearless, he would lean forward and kiss her cheek with one hand covering her folded hands. The return trip, though, always seemed to last longer than the journey there. Then, the next night, she would return and remember every move she had taken that night at the dance and match it to her specter of a lover. She could never see him there when she opened her eyes. Sometimes she wondered if it was due to her fear of feeling the tears hit her palms or the idea of seeing nothing before her. On her last night of university she wondered if it were both.
The one night she opened her eyes he had been there with his head cocked to one side and his glasses askew from falling asleep reading.
"Madame Governor?"
He had never understood why Nessa had cried.