The waving arms of the partygoers twisted back and forth like a rainbow of kelp, reaching upwards towards the perspex ceiling of the dance floor and the thin light that was barely visible through the liquid. The pale blue water beyond the worryingly thin-looking window ebbed back and forth with the oceanic current, sending the rays of the setting sun twisting in long gossamer arcs over the dark room. Pale shadows wafted over the collected dancers, their movements driven by the unrelenting rhythm of a Bajoran funeral dirge and what could only be described as a particularly angry drawer of cutlery.

Ole had never been a fan of the water, doubly so when it replaced the sky over his head with the vast potential of its crushing weight. In another life, he might’ve admitted to a minor case of claustrophobia. No doubt rooted in a particular close call as a child, with a faulty thermite charge and several hundred gallons of stinking mining runoff. He could still smell the dark mineral tang of the toxic water as it filled his lungs, and he had to push back a gurgling in his stomach as the thought came to the forefront of his mind. Whilst the water that hung damocles-like above their heads was no doubt cleaner, it was equally difficult to breathe.

No, a cave beneath the sea was not Ole’s idea of a relaxing location. But it was Eyma’s and her invitation had been enough to cajole him into the suboceanic rave.

“Are you going to dance at all?” Eyma shouted over the thundering bass as she ascended the small steps to the balcony where Ole surveyed the room and the ominous flood that sat above their heads.

“Perhaps,” Ole replied, eyeing her tiny form as she grabbed a nearby bottle of water and proceeded to empty it down her dry throat. “I’m waiting for something with more rhythm!”

Eyma let out a short cackle as she tipped the dregs of the water bottle over her head and ran the cooling liquid over her brow and through her thick hair. Her emerald skin glimmered in a thin film of diluted sweat as the flashes of refracted light swept through the club, giving her the briefest appearance of some mermaid, lifting herself from the ocean depths.

“And they say you don’t have a sense of humour,” she laughed as she patted one of his gigantic shoulders and joined him at the railing.

Below them, the dance continued relentlessly as several hundred club goers twisted and turned in perfect synchronicity, the perpetual movement of the tidal current above crashing against the bass that emerged omnipresent from the floor and walls into a strange counterpoint.

“This isn’t your sort of party then?” Eyma asked with a smile as she sipped from a fresh bottle of water.

“The music is…” Ole paused as he reached for the right adjective. The fusion of the two disparate rhythms, layered above a grinding trance beat, didn’t seem musically to be particularly masterful. But there was something about it that tugged at the hem of his shirt enough to make his hips want to move. “It is… different.”

“Kolar Blight is a bit of an acquired taste,” Eyma admitted as she tilted her head back and forth with the rhythm. “I think the early stuff is a lot better, more experimental, not so mainstream as this stuff.”

“It gets more experimental?” Ole frowned. If this was considered mainstream, he feared for his ears if the club was ever to break out the band’s back catalogue.

Eyma offered him a wide smile as her shoulders began to join the snaking back and forth of her neck and head.

“The old stuff you can really get lost in.” She was starting to dance again now, a barely controlled shuffling of her feet and hips spreading up from the floor beneath. “They’ll play the easy hits first to get people in the mood, and then they’ll break out the real bangers.”

“As long as you’re enjoying yourself,” Ole offered with a smile.

“I am!” The bright white of her teeth caught a passing ribbon of reflected light, presenting a dazzling smile from the dark corner. “You should come and dance.”

“I am not a huge dancer.” Ole countered, though the slight tapping of his toe to the swelling rhythm of metallic banging was beginning to spread up his thigh with surprising speed.

“Then why are you here?” Eyma poked his gigantic shoulder. “Not that I don’t like hanging out with you, but it’s a bit of a specific place to be.”

“You said you were going to a rave in a pitch-black undersea club where you would listen to an Orion post-modern acid punk rock band.”

“And you were concerned?” Eyma feigned a look of innocence, stretching her eyes as wide as they could go.

“I was… intrigued.”

“And concerned?” She tilted her head as she clutched her chest playfully, pressing against the sweat-sodden vest top over her heart. “Worried I’d get into trouble, and I’d need a big man to rescue me?”

A sharp pang of regret struck at Ole’s chest. She looked so like Hermira in the curling beams of refracted light. Confident, self-assured, unafraid to poke fun at his fraternal instinct. A tiny woman with the strength of a thousand Klingon warriors, contained in a shell like spun glass. Apparently she was as insightful as his old friend too. Was it so obvious that he had come with the intention of keeping an eye on her?

“Maybe a little concerned,” Ole admitted, turning his face away towards the dancers once more and berating himself for his lack of subtlety.

Eyma paused in her swaying as he turned away, and Ole caught her assessing him as a flash of golden light swept over her face. Her bright eyes laid him bare, weighing and measuring him in her way. They had only been friends for a few months, and though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, there was a small part of him that only recently realised he had embarked on the relationship, embarrassingly, as a surrogate to the one he had lost with Hermira.

Ole beat himself around the back of his skull with one of his equally meaty mental hands. It was such a shallow thing, embarrassing now to see, replacing the Orion woman in his life with another, as if they were bottles on the shelf to be shuffled and switched to accommodate his own needs.

It had started that way, admittedly, but as time had gone by, it had become one of its own joys and memories. And perhaps something more, something as yet unspoken.

She made him smile, in a way that Hermira never had. Friendly, jovial, fun, yes. But the smiles came unbidden, even when he was alone, in the quiet moments of his day.

Did she know the truth of it? Did he?

Did she know that the foundation of their friendship had been in his grief and not their shared joy?

“I appreciate the overwatch, big man.” Eyma finally announced as the analytical visage gave way to the joyful dancer. She offered him the bottle in her hand as she began to descend the stairs again before pausing on the curving landing. “You’ll have to dance at some point. You won’t have a choice!”

“I don’t think anyone in here could force me to dance.” Ole’s brow furrowed as he scanned the room again; aside from a large Nausicaan security guard at the doorway, he was easily the biggest person in the cramped room.

“Give it time, big blue!” Eyma descended to the bottom step and offered him a quick wink. “I’ll have you on the floor with me before the night is through.”

A pang in his side leapt back his attention, not a curved spike of grief’s cruel dagger but something lighter, like a thousand dancing fireflies that buffeted against his innards.

Forceful as the feet of the dancers against the stone floor.

Unrelenting as the water that continued to push and ebb through the transparent ceiling.

As warming as her perfect smile.

The clanking metallic cacophony of the dirge fell into silence, the final clattering echoes rebounding off the curving walls as their eyes met over the staircase.

Regardless of whether she knew the truth of how their friendship had started, they both knew there was the possibility of it becoming something completely different.

A brief flash of the waning sun through the transparent roof coincided with the ululating of a raspy voice from the speakers, before it began spluttering with lyrics Ole could not comprehend, if they were even words to begin with. Seconds later, Eyma was gone, disappeared back into the crowd of faceless, waving arms that were already growing in frantic speed as the pace of the music accelerated exponentially.

On the balcony, Ole’s hips began to swing back and forth as he realised Eyma might very well be as prophetic as she was insightful.