Her meditative breaths came faster than normal as she tried to focus on the next steps her body would take upon the dais. Difficult steps underscoring the difficult decision made with them. The music, a single flautist, who at the moment was weaving a ghostly tale of thanks and passion, would play for her dance.
Smoothing the gentle silk within her fingers and that of the other dancer's melos swathed around her waist, Ziva took another deeply inhaled breath and walked onto the dais while the other dancer left. She touched the charm that hung gracefully around her long neck, a golden piece of metal stamped and painted with the sign for Ahnleh or Fate, and exhaled her long held breath as she rose and poised herself upon the balls of her feet. Finally opening her eyes, she glanced towards the other professional dancers in the nest and her eyes landed upon a woman who, with the historic avian reserve holding her straight backed within the confines of her spot upon the rugs laid about to lounge upon, looked back at her in a mildly observant manner.
She stretched into the starting position of one of the more challenging melos dances and the flautist started playing a haunting melody. Ziva's body, a dancer's body, was strong and agile. It writhed with the beat and sensuously fabricated a world in which it was only her and the avian woman within the nest. In the middle of the song, she left the dais and made her way towards the other woman, wrapping the melos she had held within her hand around the other woman's waist. And then, the music finished with Ziva anxiously waiting for a reaction from the woman she had approached with her gift.
The melos, a beautiful silk the color of deep brown was embroidered with gold, the color of an eternally bonded pair, and beautifully crafted by hand. A gift like this among the serpiente was revered and given to one's mate most commonly right before marriage. Kate, that was the other woman's name, was someone Ziva knew she wanted to keep by her side forever. This was the person Ziva wanted to be her mate, but courting an avian woman was much different than courting a serpiente dancer. Ziva had gone through both cultural rituals, from the avian tradition of bringing flowers and chocolates to loved ones to the serpiente gift of a lovely dance performed with the loved one in mind. This was her last step, a traditional seal in the serpiente world that was echoed by proposals in the avian world.
A long tense moment for Ziva stretched to what seemed like hours before Kate gingerly moved past her and, to her surprise, upon the dais motioning a hand in Ziva's direction for her to join Kate. Curious, Ziva placed herself opposite Kate on the dais, and Kate raised her body into the beginning of the Namir' da, the raciest and most sensual of all the dances that mimicked Maeve's seduction of Leben. Ziva too gathered herself and the flautist started on another haunting tune.
Ziva, at first, didn't know how the avian would dance, didn't understand how Kate knew the beginning stance for the historically important dance. She was soon distracted, however, by the twisting, intertwining of Kate and herself. They complimented each other perfectly, fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle paired together since their creation. It was phantasmagoric, it was exotic, and it was mythical.
Feelings ebbed and flowed with the tides of the song and she and Kate followed. They danced the alluring and exotic steps in-sync in mind and body.
Breathing hard as the song came to a close, spirited applause erupted and many admiring whistles burst upon deaf ears as Kate and Ziva, two individuals of different worlds, kissed upon the dais for everyone in the nest to see.