The fifth night of the closing ceremony began a two–day break. It was the time to let your hair down, party until late, and start celebrating work. Rites were improvised for the house and the land, future plans were made, and old stories were told. Newly planted trees were consecrated, and the people who had planted them gave them names, promising to return to see them many years later. Community feasts were organized with the contributions of each tent. Games, dances and songs until dawn, and well into the deep night!

 

Just beyond the esplanade where the tents had been pitched was an embankment leading to another meadow below, near the river. In the morning there were already many people there preparing the ground for the party tomorrow night, trying out different music and rehearsing some performances that different houses had prepared. The afternoon was calm and most people rested or went to bathe in the river. At sunset musical instruments began to be heard, while in the space between the tents and the ravine, food and drinks were being accumulated for sharing, placed on some of the tables that had been removed from the house. Those who were not in the mood for siestas had been busy making garlands of flowers and leaves selected from the ground disturbed in the previous days.

 

The sunset was beautiful on the horizon in front of Hazada, and many sat down to watch it in silence. After dinner, the quieter people went back to their tents, and the rest continued to play, sing and dance throughout the compound. Each group met a few meters away from the others, so as not to disturb each other. A group returned to bathe in the river under the light of the moon and the power stations. Another was leaving for an evening walk. Another gathered to smoke and talk. Another did stunts. Another was playing guessing games. Another read ancient texts and current poetry. Another jumped to the beat. Others practiced couple or group dances. Others finally played in person what they had been preparing as an orchestra from their homes. And many people were wandering between different groups looking for their friends or wanting to meet new people.

 

In the dance house there was a somatic communication session. This was an immemorial practice spread across the entire planet. It seems absurd to have to explain it but, sinking its roots in many traditions prior to the invention of writing, communication through contact had been the beginning of the science of empathy since before the Great Transition. Since they were born, people were used to communicating not only through words and gestures, but also through movement and energy exchange. It was said that, in its beginnings, this practice had been considered a form of dance. Although now somehow it was still that, people did not feel it that way, since it constituted a language in which, just like in the common language, everyone could more or less function. In fact, this was the form of communication that was practiced along with collective conversation, and when the latter failed it was often considered that the best thing to do was to resort to it to unblock it. That is why in the meeting centers there were always rooms for the solace of the body. Because it was known, for certain, that where words got stuck, somatic wisdom could reopen them, and that where the perceptive body could not express what else was happening, words opened a possible translation. With these techniques, humans had managed to understand the breadth of the body and the folds of the spirit, and therefore collective conversation and somatic communication were considered, along with veganism or renewable energy, two of the most important advances of humanity. However, there were those who believed they had skills for one of them, but not for both. It was the case of Xurde who, sullen in words and graceful in movements, considered themselves gifted only for somatic expression. So the opportunity to share with other unknown bodies during the closure of Hazada was for Xurde one of the great attractions of the holiday weekend.

 

As Venus disappeared over the horizon, the dance house began to be inhabited by different bodies, resting and breathing, rolling or shaking on the wooden floor. They felt the energy of the wood, of their own body and of the bodies around them. Xurde remained moving alone in a corner for a long time, until they could begin to perceive the shapes and colors of the space between the bodies.

 

Little by little some of the people got closer to each other, perhaps too quickly, Xurde thought, and the atmosphere began to fill with the vapor of all the respiratory systems that were in the room. That was intolerable to Xurde. They thought that when several people come together, it seems impossible that no one can continue to keep their attention on themselves as well as on the space around. This annoyed them terribly, as did many other things, by the way. They were about to give up and go to sleep, but then they remembered the painting in Roane's room, the one of the city without people that looked like a photograph, and with a stroke of a pencil their eyes emptied the room of bodies and only the traces of the trajectories of the masses of fresh and hot air that the bodies inspired and emitted remained. These clouds of different pastel colors expressed everything that was emerging inside the bodies, which was not unsympathetic to Xurde at all. Perhaps it was when they personalized the bodies that Xurde could not bear their lack of commitment to action. But seen as spontaneous occurrences of an animal moving, Xurde was congenial with the tracks they left. They were marveled watching the entropy of the vapors that mixed and separated again, the sound of the unexpected deviations of trajectory, and the smell of the different densities of the fluids. They had their eyes closed and was moving infinitesimally a little more to the left of the corner where they had started, and then they began to feel an aquamarine blue trail to their right that always remained at the same distance from their body. It was like a couple of meters away. If Xurde moved a few millimeters forward, the wake did too, simultaneously. Xurde could clearly perceive that they were not imitating them, since the wake did not have any tentacles lunging at their body. They had tuned in the distance, and both masses danced, without knowing it, some summary of everything that was happening in the room. Xurde took a deep breath as if to find through the interior touch of their lungs the carnality of their body, and they became interested again in this manifestation of the human. They spread their arms across the wooden floor and their fingertips sensed someone's closeness. Their own heat began to draw a map of intensities to their tissues and in all directions, creating links with the forms of heat from the other body, which were clearly approaching. The aquamarine stele diversified its color with centers of red roses and light oranges, while Xurde's energy of lilacs, violets and greens tended to subduct between these and the soft life that still rests inside the sectioned wood. The living flesh of the bodies came into contact, keeping their blush in the soft wrapping of the clothes that covered them. They felt the weight of the aquamarine wake on the spine, and the ripple of flowing flesh. At once they snuggled closer to them, before the hair on their arms unraveled again. The dance happened out of time. The traces were not traces, but promises of the next movement, and while all the members of both bodies spread, disarticulating themselves in the magma of possible paths, they created space around them and spread the mixture of their colors. The mist in the entire room cleared up, the energy of all the bodies was ordered, and the same calmness returned as in the first minutes of the session. Xurde noticed all this, but they did not want to open their eyes. They understood that it could be dangerous, but they trusted in their abilities, and even more so in those of the body who accompanied them. The ground softened and the falls seemed to happen on clumps of freshly cut cotton. The contrails turned into rays and the rays into breezes, and the breezes into fine blown ashes, and the ashes in dewdrops. The bodies returned to anonymity and slowed to a stop. Neither Xurde, nor the consciousness of the other body, seemed to have really been there. They had gone out for an indiscernible amount of time. However it would not have been more than half an hour; the rest of the bodies in the room moved the space again, erasing the greyish, lilac and seawater trails, and the two bodies lay together for a couple of minutes, until their consciousness returned to being personal. Then they felt a great embarrassment and desire to show each other respect, and in a series of subtle and light movements, they created space between each other. Xurde stretched out on the ground again, and the other body rose to sit on its knees half a meter away. They remained interacting in this way for as long as they danced. Just being close, breathing close as the colors slowly faded. Everything that happened outside no longer disturbed them. In reality, Xurde was terrified of opening their eyes. How to have their eyes matching everything that had just happened. When they finally dared to open them, because it was evident that it was the moment to do so, they both avoided meeting the other's eyes violently, following the same strategy as before. They were observing the distant space, the ceiling beams, the weightless bodies in the background, the space between their body and that of the other person, the knees and the fabric of their clothing, the line between their legs and the middle of the trunk, the amber arms that fell both sides and the fingers that brushed the wooden floor, the curve of the neck that fell towards the chin and directed the face to the ground, where a sketch of their black and slanted eyes did not dare to look at them either. "Thank you," they told them with their gaze lost on the ground, making a slight bow with the head. And then smiled. Xurde felt as if they had always played together throughout their childhood.

 

–My name is Xurde. I am staying at the house. It is already very late. Would you like to sleep over tonight?

 

–My name is Erendi... How to miss an invitation to sleep in Hazada in its last days. Sure thing.

 

Don’t misunderstand. This was not said by Erendi as a voluptuous hint. In fact, "sleep" meant sleep. Otherwise it would be considered an absolute lack of respect. Directness and clarity were signs of good manners. Erendi did not doubt Xurde's excellent intentions. And Xurde, no matter how marginal they liked to think of themselves, considered themselves an educated person. On the other hand, it really would have been very impolite to decline such an invitation. After all, the closing of a house was one of the most important rites, and besides, a prominent person in the region had just died there. It was an honor. Xurde and Erendi left the ballroom without meeting their eyes and went up a shorter and steeper path full of bushes, which led right to the entrance of Hazada. Without even turning on the light, they entered the house and the room, took off their shoes and got into bed. Xurde hugged Erendi from behind. They breathed in their neck and Erendi placed their hands touching Xurde's on their navel. And they slept.