Stars Dancing [Dreams-To-Lovers Romance]

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RYST

". . . few wedding questions to go over. Oh, hey, Ryst," came Peydran's voice from Nayth's video screen. I took the smoothie my husband handed me and pushed freshly-washed hair away from my face.

"Hey, Peydran. What's up? Where's Ren?"

"Sleeping off a three-day musical storm. I want to go over a couple of wedding things quickly. First of all, the Travel Acceptances have all been processed for our 9 Galaxies Collab friends, and their entire retinues are approved, which is good since they have a long trip to get to Shurwinn from their home worlds."

"Our next meeting with them is in three weeks, and if you two are up for it, I think it would be fun to introduce Nayth to them during that video. Don't you think that would be a good way to introduce the Living Foods viewers to your 'fiancee?' By introducing him to your friends, and vicariously to the public? Or did you want to do an official media presser, Nayth?"

"As far as I'm concerned," Nayth responded, "I've accomplished all I need to as Galactic Minister, and the public doesn't need to know anything about my private life. Yeah, it's good to play the part on the public stage, but I'm not concerned about image anymore. All that to say: I don't really care. What do you wanna do, Ryst?"

"Peydran, I think you're right. It's much, much less gossip-cast material to have a conversation amongst our friends, right? But I don't want our marriage to take over the whole meeting. Let's still have research be the biggest agenda item. Salamrial from Tucana Galaxy should be able to present his findings from his most recent study, so let's make that the number one topic. Then, I can introduce Nayth at the end of the meeting."

Peydran grinned, "I think you're underestimating how excited your friends are going to be to meet your fiancee and hear about the wedding of the millennia!"

"Hah! Yeah, maybe so. Well, let's at least try not to make it all about me, okay? Then we can just play it by ear. But I don't want to do it live. Let's record it, okay?"

"Yep. What are you two up to now?"

"Tomorrow morning we're heading to The Cove for a diving trip for a few days. Should be perfect weather for it. Did you get to snorkel at my family's villa yet?" Nayth asked.

"Yeah, this morning, with your cousins and Freya while Ren was asleep. It was perfect. The water is so calm and so warm. Like bath water. We had a great time. Ren is going to love it. I'm gonna let you go so I can go get some lunch. Sunshine!"

"Sunshine!"

"I think I might need some introvert time," I said to Nayth as we rinsed smoothie glasses in the tiny sink of the hover yacht.

"Sounds good. I'm gonna head into town, so I'll be a few hours. Will that work?" he asked.

"Perfect," I nodded, and kissed him good bye.

I wasn't sure what was wrong with me, but I felt off. Nayth and I had been scuba diving four days of a hover yacht at The Cove, one of Carmidee Hospitality's luxury vacation properties. There were seven yachts in a secluded cove on a very small Florian island, and it was a hot spot for upscale scuba diving. It was also popular for very small weddings or intimate celebrations. The water was crystal clear, and the diving had been fantastic.

But I was feeling worn or like something was bugging me, but I didn't know what it was. So, I'd decided to take the morning off of diving. Journaling hadn't helped. I hadn't known what to write. I just felt mentally tired or distracted, but not clear on what was bothering me.

I picked up my journal again, reading through recent dreams, but couldn't focus on the words. I suddenly realized it wasn't fatigue that was bothering me. It was a headache, a low constant pressure behind my eyes that wrapped around my head.

"No. No. No," I said aloud, shaking my head. But accomplished nothing. Denying it didn't help. I pushed the heels of my hands against my eyes, frustrated. It wasn't the tangle exactly; it was more than the tangle.

Suddenly, I wished I was at home. Home in my quiet house in the desert. Without people. Without wedding decisions. Without choices. Just quiet. Far away from people who needed me to tell them what to do or send invitations or plan big events. I just wanted to be left alone.

I started hearing a violin that I'd heard so often when I was in my casita on Shurwinn. It was Ren's violin, playing from the speakers in my little, cozy house, and I heard Ren's voice singing to me. Comforting me. Years before I'd ever met him, he'd been comforting me with the song "Dance Among the Stars." I sent a video request to Ren, and his face appeared on my screen. "Ren—"

"Come here, Ryst." I let go of my mental curtain, and flew through the video and wrapped around Ren's mind, around his whole being. And everything softened.

I felt like I was sitting in Ren's lap with my head on his shoulder, and he was hugging me and massaging the back of my neck, loosening the tension that had my brain and spine gripped in a painful squeeze.

Ren sang softly, "I'll be a song, a song so beautiful. . ." and the sound of it was a soft cloud working it's way from his fingers against my neck through my spine and up around my brain. I felt the soft cloud of Ren's voice spread over my brain, and little plings started unraveling from around my mind.

Connections— thousands, or millions. I couldn't say how many there were, but there had been too many threads. Too many threads inserted into my mind, overwhelming my senses, filling me with too many decisions and choices that were not mine to make. The choices of too many other people.

Ren's song gave me permission to let them go. "You are all love and all things . . ." Ren kept singing, switching songs, and together we unplugged me from parts of the tangle that I didn't want to belong to anymore. The headache receded, and the pressure waned. My breathing deepened, and everything that I was relaxed and let go.

"Please don't stop singing, Ren," I whispered.

"I saw you dance. . . all things that could be, out among the stars. . . . We danced among the stars," Ren closed the song, and I sat up, realizing that I wasn't in his lap. I was far away from him, in a hover yacht, sitting on a sofa with my head against the back of the couch, not on his shoulder. But I had felt like I had been with him.

"Thank you, Ren. Thank you!" I said, emotion thick in my throat. "Did you see? Did you see us unwind parts of me that were too tangled up with other people's choices?"

He nodded and asked, "Better?"

"Much. The headache is gone. I don't know if we should do that again sometime, but maybe. I'm not really sure how to interpret all those metaphors. But I think the tangle of the wedding was too much. I think I should be less plugged into the tangle, but I don't really know what that means? Any ideas?"

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Ren wasn't looking at the video; his attention was elsewhere. "What is the tangle really, Ryst? What is it to you?"

"I— I don't really know, Ren. I think some of it is our marriage, but it's a lot more than that too. I can't even see it all."

"But is it all about you, Ryst? Does it have to be in your brain? Or can it be someone else's?"

"Like Nayth's? I don't—"

Peydran butt in, "No, not Nayth. Me. Someone whose brain you can't attach to."

"What?" I asked. "What? Peydran? What does that even mean?"

Peydran's eager face looked at me, "Think about it Ryst, can you let it go? Can you just give it to me? Like how Freya planned everything for your secret wedding? Give me all the choices, so you don't have to see it all the time? It'll be in my brain, which you won't have to sense? I think it could work."

I laughed. "What, we're going to trick the tangle? We're going to tell reality itself that you're in charge? Oh, stars. Stars! Can it actually be that simple? Well, I guess it won't hurt anything to try, will it? What, you wanna just do everything? Just leave me out of it? I don't really care about the wedding--"

Peydran interrupted me again saying "The 9 Galaxies Collab— all of our friends. They are all coming. I'll plan something nice for us to do together—"

"Wait, Peydran," I said, cutting him off. "As soon as you said that, I saw something. A garden of some sort—a collab garden of everyone? Something like that?"

A huge grin spread across Peydran's face, accompanied by a look of triumph. "Perfect! I know exactly what to do! Okay, Ryst. You got all unplugged from a bunch of stuff, right? So, let's try this. I'll do everything. You forget about it as much as possible. And if you get anymore headaches or anything is bothering you, call Ren. Okay? Is that a good plan?"

"Yeah, I like it, Pey. But, I think this is more than the wedding." Ren nodded his agreement. "Wait, are you two telepathic now?" I asked, pointing between them. "You said something about forging a mystical telepathy thing you wanted before Ren's writing storm a while back. Did you figure something out?"

Ren responded shaking his head, "It's not like you, Ryst. Not a mind merge. It's our belly buttons."

"Hunh." I mused, looking in the distance.

"Belly buttons? Like an umbilical cord? Between you two? You know that placental blood circulation is a very complicated process? That's actually really lovely. I wonder how that works? How is that different from a mental merge? Is it some type of electrical process like nerves, but some sort of flow like fetal-maternal blood?"

I looked back at my screen to see Peydran's eyes bugged out and Ren staring down at him where I couldn't see. "Placental blood flow?" Ren asked quietly.

"Did you know that the Delphic Sybil of Ancient Earth was considered the Navel of the Universe?" I said softly. "They had a special temple to the god of divination there. It's where they thought it was easiest to see beyond this world into the hidden mysteries."

Ren's peered at me intently. "Why the navel?"

"Unfortunately, I don't know, Ren. I don't know why they chose an umbilicus as their symbology. But there's a really famous temple on Earth called the Sistine Chapel, and it has beautiful ancient paintings on the ceilings. It's still there. Look up images of Sistine Chapel, Delphic Sybil, and Creation."

"Their god is painted to look like a pale grandpa, and he's in a womb, a uterus, reaching out to a limp man lying on the ground, touching him to give him the spark of life. Maybe that's part of the symbolism too? The umbilicus— the umbilical cord— the navel; they connect us to the womb of creation? We receive what we need to live through the umbilical cord like a fetus?"

"That's kind of like the Cruxinglizt, too, isn't it? Opening the womb to the creative force of nature. I think we can take that as another metaphor. Choosing to open the womb of our inner selves. Isn't that lovely symbolism?"

Ren's shoulders started jumping as he hummed and patted a beat on his chest with the palm of his hand. Peydran started bopping next to him, and I started rocking.

"Umm, Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah," Ren sang. "Umm. Hmm. Been working on that one awhile. Thanks, Ryst. I think it'll be done soon."

"A pop song, Ren?"

"Sounds like it. Ungh. Ah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. . . The umbilical thing. I don't know exactly what's going on, I just know that we keep connecting through our navels. It's not the same as with your mental merge, but we can feel each other and sort of combine for short periods. I can experience Peydran, like Sibsil said to do in the caesura, but it doesn't have to be then. We can do it without the caesura, if we really open to each other. We're getting better at it."

My heart surged. "Ren! It worked? My book! It's working?! It actually did something? I helped?! I made a difference?"

The two of them laughed and laughed and laughed, and I overflowed with joy and happiness at something that had been mortifying to publish, but had helped them forge a connection that was uniquely their own. I had actually accomplished something! What I had done had mattered! And it mattered to the two men that I loved most besides Nayth.

"Peydran, thanks for pushing me to publish that book. I'm sorry I balked."

"It all worked out, Ryst. I know it couldn't have been easy to write or to share, but I'm so glad you did. Thanks for sharing it with me, and with Ren and with everyone else who needs it. It helped me heal from the fears I had from being an augment, and it helped me open up to Ren. I don't think our relationship would've been what it is if I hadn't read Within and Without before Ren asked me out."

"I'm so, so glad. I love you both so much. Thank you. So, really, we're doing this with the wedding? I'm just gonna let it go?"

"I think it's worth a try," Peydran said. "We can always adjust if it doesn't work. Are you gonna stay in Floria for a while?"

"Honestly? I need to talk to Nayth, but I'm ready to go home. I think he'll be fine with that. Are you two staying here? Do you wanna come back with us on Nayth's starliner? We've gotta go pack up at LaGrange. We could come back here to get you? Or do you want to get your own trip home?"

Peydran rolled his eyes. "Yeah, we want to get a tiny cabin on a public starliner, not your beautiful, private ship."

"Well, I wasn't sure if you'd consider it our honeymoon still. I know how you feel about being on our honeymoon, Peydran."

They laughed and Ren asked, "Would you really come back to pick us up here? You can do that?"

"I think so. I'll ask Nayth, but you know he will give you the world, Ren."

I heard the hovercraft outside. "Hold on, Nayth is coming. He's happy. I can feel him. He knows I'm talking to you."

"Guys!" Nayth called out, carrying bags of groceries. "Ryst feels so much better. What did you do?"

"Ren sang all her troubles away, and we have a plan to help her be untangled. You game?" Peydran asked.

"Absolutely! That's amazing! Wait— baby, are we going home to Shurwinn?" Nayth turned to me, grinning.

I nodded, "Are you ready? I think I am."

"I'm past ready," Nayth agreed. "Okay, what are we doing? The four of us?"

"Why don't we go pack up at LaGrange, then come back for them? How long do you need to wrap up on Sturm?"

"Hmm," Nayth mused, rubbing his chin. "Can we come back for you in about a week? Will you be okay for that long?"

"We're doing great with your family, Nayth," Ren replied. "The snorkeling right here at the villa is so good. And the seafood is amazing! We'll be fine."

"Okay. Perfect. Hey, baby, let's go get ready to go home!" Nayth declared.

"You got it!" I said, pulling him down for a kiss.

Play "Come Slammin'" by Ren Crieve and Peydran Madrano.

PEYDRAN

"Come Slammin'"

Take us to the place where we want to be.

The Hidden sanctuary of mystery.

Umm. Ahh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We dove into the navel at Delphi

Then we went through to the other side.

Come slammin' into me, baby, every time.

I'll give you what you need.

I know you're mine.

Umm. Ahh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Take us to the place where we want to be.

The Hidden sanctuary of mystery.

Umm. Ahh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Two worlds collided in the stars—yours and mine

We opened up ourselves, and things got fine.

Umm. Ahh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Take us to the place where we want to be.

The Hidden sanctuary of mystery.

- Ren Crieve and Peydran Madrano, 2737

"'Things got fine' isn't my best lyric," Ren complained.

"This is an awesome pop song, Ren. It's supposed to be fun. I mean, it's called 'Come Slammin.' Play it again. I like the sax too. Sexy. Love the riffs."

"Umm. Ah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. . ." blared out of the speakers, and I danced with my man to a song we wrote together. The "Come slammin' into me, baby, everytime" line was 100% Peydran. The rest of the song was 100% Ren, and it was hilarious. I thought it would be an instant hit, but Ren wasn't sure he wanted it out there with his name on it.

I'd told him to blame the Florians if anyone complained about it.

"Turn that up! Yeah, yeah!" Freya sang out. Yes! Freya could get Ren to publish our song. "Come slammin' into me, baby, every ti-i—ime" Freya harmonized with the vocals, grabbing Ren's hips to hers. "What's this called? 'Umm, Ah, Yeah?' So sexy!"

"Come Slammin,'" I said proudly. "My first song lyric."

"Hell of a first lyric, Peydran!" Freya declared. "This song is gonna get constant play. Where's it on stream? I'll promote it right now! Instant dance hit. A Ren Crieve original right here in Floria. Yeeeee!"

"Whaddaya think, Ro? Gonna publish it?"

Ren rolled his eyes, and groaning said, "Alright, 'Come Slammin,' a new pop song by Ren Crieve. Arrrgh: 'Things got fine. . .'"

Freya and I laughed and played it again.