Every night at the cemetery.
The limestone and flowers lie in stillness.
The spirits of the dead wander.
The love and memory of the visitors lingers.
The lingering souls dance to the silence in our realm.
Under glowing moonlight.
Even as they kick their heels into the dirt.
No dust is displaced.
Only stillness and silence await.
The leader raised his splintered hand.
"These two…" he rasped,
"…were born of one trunk, split by lightning, raised in silence, fed by rot."
Behind him, the crowd of Ajtz'ité shifted.
They were not dancers.
They were instruments.
One twisted to the side—revealing a drum grown from his back, its skin stretched tight with sinew and bark.
Another cracked open her chest—a wooden flute embedded in her ribs, now blowing ghost-notes from lungs that had never lived.
Another clicked his finger-knuckles like castanets.
Another's jaw vibrated, playing low hums like a jaw harp carved from obsidian.
This was not applause.
It was a score.
The leader turned back to Kamelotl.
"Let them show you what harmony sounds like when it has no soul."
The Twins Step ForwardThey moved in perfect silence.
One stepped right.
The other stepped left.
Same posture. Same timing.
But mirrored—like dancers in a shattered reflection.
Their limbs cracked backward as they moved, not out of failure—
—but out of intention.
They were not clumsy.
They were broken on purpose.
They began with the Dance of the Quetzal—but the bird was dead.
They leapt.
But instead of rising, they jerked downward, as if gravity pulled harder on the soulless.
Their arms flared like wings but dragged behind them like wet cloth.
They spun.
One clockwise, one counter.
Their feet tapped in mirror sync—perfect, hollow, haunting.
Feathers of molded wood and ash rained from their shoulders.
Not plucked.
Shed.
Then the rhythm darkened.
The back-drum Ajtz'ité shifted the tempo.
The twins slowed.
And began the Dance of the Death Lords.
Their backs arched.
Their arms hung like lifeless limbs.
They shuffled, dragging their feet, twitching in sync.
They moved like the souls of those who never made it through Xibalba.
Their heads snapped back in sync—mouths open, but no sound.
Just the percussion of the dead.
One stopped.
The other twitched forward.
Then they switched—one falling as the other rose, like breath being taken and never returned.
At the end of their performance, they crossed paths in front of Kamelotl.
One whispered into his left ear, the other his right.
"Can you dance in two directions at once?"
"Can you fight the silence inside your own echo?"
They bowed as one.
The beat stopped.
And the arc waited for his answer.
Huitzilopochtli stood silent for a long moment.
Even the hummingbirds stilled.
Then he raised his voice—not in anger, but in challenge.
"Kamelotl," he said, "can you carry two truths in one body?"
"Can you answer a riddle asked in rhythm?"
His voice thundered again:
"If you wish to win this round… show me how silence dances."
The twins' dance still echoed on the arc—
Ash feathers. Shuffling limbs. The question they left behind:
"Can you dance in two directions at once?"
Kamelotl didn't answer with words.
He stepped forward—and answered with rhythm.
He opened with the Indian Step—
One foot forward, one pulled back, arms moving with purpose—
Back and forth, side to side, like a spirit navigating past and future at once.
Then came the Crossover—
He snapped one leg across the other, pivoted clean,
dragging a circle with his heel that glowed orange on the arc.
With each movement, his roots throbbed, reacting to the beat like veins beneath skin.
The Ajtz'ité orchestra twisted and bent—
Their back-grown drums pounded a warped heartbeat.
The flute-player cracked his ribs wider to blow harder.
The castanet-clickers shuffled in time, mocking his steps.
But Kamelotl wasn't dancing for them.
He was dancing through them.
He twisted low—
One leg out, the other bent, his palm guiding him down like falling through memory.
His roots surged out to support him—not holding him back, but guiding the drop like a serpent coiled in protection.
Dust curled around his feet.
The arc glimmered beneath him.
The ancestors were watching.
He launched into a 6-step, fast, tight—
Each hand anchoring him while his legs spiraled.
His tail swayed behind like a comet.
His roots mirrored the motion, spiraling outward, tracing floral glyphs onto the glowing arc.
He added CCs—kicking low, twisting his torso to the side.
Sweat poured. The arc hissed.
The Ajtz'ité howled from the sidelines.
Still—he moved.
He spun.
One hand down.
Legs wide.
Circle.
Flare.
Another flare.
Roots burst from his back, trailing light and flower-petals, burning in rhythm.
Third flare—
He let go.
His body hung in the air—
a blooming shape in motion, the Ayōxōchitl on his chest now glowing like a ghost-flame.
He landed—soft.
Crossed his legs.
Lowered his arms.
He sat still—centered.
Not in pain. Not in glory.
In rhythm.
His roots uncoiled.
His arms opened.
And every flower on his body began to glow—
Ayōxōchitl. Cempoalxōchitl. Petals of fire, memory, and grief.
Their glow was not white.
It was not red.
It was all of them at once—a myriad, rippling through the arc like wind caught in prayer flags.
The hummingbirds froze mid-air.
The Ajtz'ité went silent.
And Kamelotl—
breathed.
"You dance for decay," he said softly.
"I dance so no one forgets."
The silence held.
Not out of hesitation—
—but reverence.
The kind that only follows truth laid bare in motion.
Then, Huitzilopochtli stood.
His eyes shimmered like obsidian catching flame.
His voice cracked across the arc:
"The bloom remembers.
The silence sings.
The root dances where even the dead refuse to tread."
He descended one step from his throne.
Just one.
Enough to send a tremor through the arc.
"Kamelotl," he said,
"You are not of my blood.
You are not of my war.
But your rhythm—"
He paused.
Even the Ajtz'ité tilted in stillness, as if awaiting a verdict etched into stone.
"—your rhythm is battle.
And battle is prayer."
The hummingbirds burst back into motion, wings glowing like suns flaring open.
Petals rose from the arc's surface—some red, some obsidian, some glowing with the light of the Ayōxōchitl.
Huitzilopochtli raised his arm.
"You win this round."
Then softer—only loud enough for the goddesses to hear:
"Let the boy keep blooming…
Until the final cut."
The leader's body rose mid-air—
Not by muscle.
But by memory denied.
His splintered limbs spread wide, arching like wings—
But it wasn't the Dance of the Quetzal.
It was something older.
Something stolen.
His body coiled, spiraled, snapped—
A spiral meant to honor Kukulkan—now broken.
The crowd of fallen Ajtz'ité twitched in response.
Their fingers clacked in sync.
Mocking sync.
The flute in the dead woman's ribs hissed a distorted serpent's cry.
The leader twirled violently, dragging his root-clawed feet against the arc—
cutting sacred glyphs apart.
He uncoiled.
Spat sap.
Raised one arm—
And brought it down like lightning striking a sacred mound.
"I remember Kukulkan," he rasped.
"And I defile him."
"Let the sky-serpent weep for what we've become."
"Let the spiral choke."
The arc shimmered—
Not with light, but with nausea.
The air bent. Sound stuttered.
Kamelotl watched—
Breathing through the rot.
The feathers on his shoulders trembled.
Not in fear.
But in rage.
Roots cracked the arc beneath his feet.
And with a soft, rising beat—
he answered.
He didn't answer the Ajtz'ité leader with rage.
He answered with rhythm — sacred, silent, and soulborn.
He crouched low.
His arms folded behind him, bound by threads of red and black light drawn from his own chest. They weren't ropes.
They were grief.
He moved with effort — twisting in sharp pulses like roots choking in dry soil.
Each motion a memory.
Each breath a death not yet mourned.
His roots dragged like limbs of the fallen.
His eyes closed.
And when they opened—
the arc remembered pain.
The bindings melted into mist.
Kamelotl rose — not in power, but in flow.
His hands traced circles in the air, his feet dragged lightly, gliding like tides over moonlit stone.
From his gills, something bloomed:
A small, soft cempoalxōchitl Afro — golden-orange, glowing in the mist.
His face markings shimmered — the marigold sigils dancing like fireflies across his skin.
He spun slowly.
Then faster.
Then stopped — breath held in silence.
His hand met his chest.
And the Ayōxōchitl pulsed.
Tsïtsïki Sachi's whisper curled in the mist:
"You are more than what curse birthed you."
He fell.
Hard.
On purpose.
But not broken.
From his chest downward, roots flared outward — spreading marigold petals across the arc's surface like bones singing.
His knees hit the ground.
Then one palm.
Then stillness.
He rose onto one hand—
spun into a flare.
Front flip.
Bloom scattered.
Cempoalxōchitl petals burst from his roots, from his face, from the crown atop his gills—
falling like snow across the shattered spiral the leader had defiled.
He landed—
Knees bent.
Head lowered.
Breath steady.
And he said, not loud—just enough:
"I dance so your silence remembers me."
The arc glowed.
The Ajtz'ité leader cracked—
Not in fury.
In surrender.