She is dancing. Such a simple thing, she thinks, but she knows that she does it well, graceful as a gazelle and oh so pretty. She knows this, and he knows this and the rest of the room are hopelessly envious of her grace and status. It doesn't matter that the rest of the room consists of some of the most beautiful people she has ever seen (she notes this without really noticing) for the moment, she is one of them and he has eyes for her alone.
He is smiling at her. He always smiles at her, as if she is the best thing that has ever happened to him. They twirl around the dance floor in intricate patterns, to stately waltzes and slow ballads and all the while he whispers the most delightful things in her ear. He tells her how long he has waited for her, for someone just like her, how happy he is to have finally found her again after all this time. Time, is an odd fluid thing under the hill, he explains, it can be gone in an instant or it can drag on until the minutes really do last hours, it is difficult to make it keep pace with the world above.
Sometimes she gets tired, and she wants to stop dancing. He doesn't like that, under the hill there is always dancing, and her purpose here is to dance with him. He looks so sad when he tells her that to stop dancing is to cut short their night together that she resolves to not bring it up again and swears that she will dance with him until she physically can't anymore.
He is stronger than her, and a prince, and he controls this world under the hill with ease and a grace borne of age and experience. He is powerful, this she knows, because he keeps the beautiful wolves that dance around her at bay. They may smile and laugh, their voices silvery works of art that go well with the sway of the women's hips and the wicked curve of the men's smiles, but their eyes are hungry in ways that she can't begin to comprehend. So she presses closer to him and matches their mocking, all knowing, all consuming eyes with a challenge in her own. She is hungry to prove herself to these people, to be more than just a thing to be protected, to be stronger. There are many mirrors in this room and sometimes she will glance in one as they twirl by and sometimes she will hold her own gaze and she won't recognise herself, she feels that every night spent in their presence brings her closer to being like them. She thinks she loves him, so this doesn't always seem like an entirely bad thing. He is a constant in her life, her nights have been filled with him for a very long time and she finds it hard to remember a time when she was without him.
Secretly she wonders if he would let her stop dancing if she tried. He never tires and his arms around her are so firm and assured. She has thought, on occasion, with horror of the things he could make her do if he was so inclined. But every night they do stop, eventually, and he gently kisses each of her eyelids and bids her goodbye for another day. She used to beg him to let her stay, promised to dance forever if he would just keep her with him, he told her he would, but he had found her too late. Someday, he promises, he will find her at the right time, no one will stop them being together, and she will be his forever. Someday.
She feels that he has been promising this for a very long time.
Every morning Anthea Burdock wakes up and feels as un-refreshed as she did during her student days when she would survive on a few hours sleep for the sake of a party or a deadline, or a boy. Every morning she stares at the ceiling, perplexed and convinced that she's forgotten something, something important, and feels that by forgetting she has lost something utterly precious. Every morning she turns to look at her husband and, for an instant, resents him so fiercely that she thinks she could hate him for the rest of her life for what he's done.
Every morning Anthea Burdock forgets who she was and kisses her husband softly before going to feed their baby daughter and make breakfast for their young family.