The Mating Dance:
a story of love and marriage

by Karena Andrusyshyn

Chapter 1:

Nealah thought she heard the door whisper open and glanced at her watch on the side table. Nope, too early, so she turned to see her best friend, Julie, arrive with the wedding supper. It was a sumptuous feast of the yummiest treats the chefs at the Beijing Royal could possibly make: all nibble sized and with only a tray of dipping sauces on the side. Julia put them in the little fridge with the Champaign and sat for a few minutes with Nealah to chat. Nealah tried once more to pry out of her friend just what James looked like.

“So, tell me something, so I will know if the right man arrives. What if some stranger shows up and I think he is my husband? What a disaster!”

Julia  grinned, “So you think some strange will have the key to the roof?”

Nealah admitted that was impossible, and said she just had to try. Julia assured her that James was quite nice looking,  Nealah wondered why she had ever agreed that they should not exchange pictures nor describe their looks. She couldn’t remember whether this was her idea or James’s, but she was a bit shy, so she was probably the first one to mention it. Seemed like she remembered typing something like. “looks shouldn’t matter in a real relationship.” How foolish. Of course they mattered. Julia had tried to convince her that smell mattered more, and she had to admit that it was certainly important, but looks had to matter.

Now he was coming here and she would welcome him without ever having seen him. Nealah was scared, more that he would not like her looks. Once more she went back into the apartment to check how she looked and take a little nap. After all, James would not arrive for another four hours. She turned on her stereo and lay down on the sumptuous pillow-top bed, drifting off to sleep in minutes since she had not really slept well last night. She drifted into multicolored dreams of silk and velvet, ocean waves and starry nights. She was glad she was out from the city. She could usually see the stars if there was no dust storm.

James was also sleeping, but on a plane, almost comfortably in business class. He relaxed with stereo music through noise cancelling headphones and nodded off as he wondered what Nealah looked like. Joseph would not tell him at all. All he would say is that she was nice looking and she had red hair, so maidens with flowing flaming red hair danced through his dreams, as they had for the last year. She danced in silken veils of gossamer clouds, half naked, but he never saw anything but her hair. The rest was simply blurs of flesh and fabric.

The woman who danced through his dreams changed continuously: one minute she was tall and lithe with smooth golden legs that joined round hips adorned in festoons of her red hair. The next she would be diminutive with exquisite feet and slender legs ending in tight hips that vanished under feathers of blue silk. Even her eyes changed, but her voice was always the same, because he had heard that over the Internet as they exchanged their vows as their proxies stood before the preacher in Thailand. Her voice and the flowing red hair had haunted his dreams ever since.

Stay tuned for chapter two, coming soon!