Trans People Dancing in the Woods
An excerpt of the book I'm working on in the Lambda Retreat!
What’s up y’all!!
You may have noticed I’ve been a little quieter on here lately. Part of this is certainly taking a summer minute to recharge and catch my breath after moving and pride month, but I’ve also been spending a lot of time writing, reading, and preparing to be a member of the 2025 Lambda Literary Fellowship!
The program runs all week and is absolutely ACTION. PACKED! Everyone here is intimidatingly and inspiringly brilliant, and I’m in the Young Adult Cohort studying with my favorite author (and really cool human) Aiden Thomas!!
There will be a good news recap coming later this week, but in lieu of a normal article today, I wanted to share an excerpt of the scene I’ve been workshopping with my class. It talks about embodiment, community, and who gets to belong. It’s one of my favorite scenes in this whole dang book.
If, by the way, you happen to be in YA publishing or have a friend in YA publishing who likes this excerpt…give me a call 👀
Synopsis:
We Have Always Been Dreaming is a cozy, high fantasy adventure that follows Kido, a 17-year-old trans boy who has just been stolen away from his village by the dreaded Avar. Kido is shocked to learn the Avar are actually a community of trans folks living peacefully in the woods and rescuing others like them, but his amazement turns to horror when he learns they thought they’d rescued Ronan, his best friend who is far more confident in his own trans identity.
In this scene, which occurs just after the midpoint of the novel, Kido is invited to a dance party in the woods.
The Scene!
They delved further into the embrace of the trees and eventually started to hear the aura of soft conversation. Pinpricks of light between tree trunks slowly grew until they'd arrived at what seemed to be the heart of the forest. If it were quiet enough, he wondered if he could hear it beating.
The group they'd encountered was a few dozen people milling about, and his nerves softened at the budding recognition he had for many of the folks there. He didn’t know everyone by name, not yet, but he knew Orryn and Everett already, and Honey waved a warm hello from across the crowd. Other faces were familiar, and some lifted hands in a friendly greeting. Based on how much Everett had started fussing with their hair, he had to assume Smith was here too.
He swiveled his head and eventually spotted Smith talking to a group of people holding instruments—some familiar, others that Kido had only read about. Their eyes met and Smith waved brightly, then whispered something to one of the musicians with a larger stringed instrument held across their chest. The musician nodded and cleared their throat, quieting the group at once. The people around Kido slowly formed a misshapen circle.
The person with the large instrument stepped into the center, walking a slow lap around the group.
“Good evening, family. I’m so glad you’re here.” As they spoke, they began to pluck out a slow melody on their instrument. Kido had never heard anything like it before. The night sky itself seemed to hold its breath to listen.
“For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting me yet, my name is Noa. ” They grinned widely, extending their arms out to the sides as if they were personally presenting the beauty of nature itself. Without the light of the moon, most of the crowd was hardly more than silhouettes, but Noa seemed to pull the flames of their torches towards them. The glowing firelight made the blue hues of their dark skin look as deep and rich as the sky itself, and their hair was a loose, cloudy afro dyed a stunning purple. They were majestic.
As they continued to strum at their instrument, Kido felt his shoulders slowly melting away from his ears.
"To be seen is a complicated gift, especially after a life of invisibility."
It felt to Kido like they were speaking directly to him, but as he glanced around the circle, it was clear the others seemed to feel the same way. Soft gazes, parted mouths, shining eyes.
"Sometimes invisibility is our safest option. Sometimes, other people just didn't care enough to look very hard. We got used to this. We may have left those villages, those people, but our bodies remember.
"Here, when we have the freedom to ask 'by whom do I want to be seen? How do I want them to see me?' we can forget to ask the most important question: how do I want to see myself?"
Kido felt this question like a punch to the gut. He'd spent so much of his time here hypervigilant of how others saw him; first trying to ensure that he was masculine enough to avoid detection, and then to prove he was strong enough to save Ronan. How those masculinities had felt to him had been largely irrelevant, but maybe it didn’t have to be that way.
"We gather tonight for the dance of the new moon. When there is no moonlight nor fire to see by, we are given a gift. A gift to connect deeply not just with our souls, but with our bodies. To move in any way that feels good, removed from the ability to notice or care how it looks."
At the mention of bodies, Kido's fluttering heart slowly sank into his stomach. Wasn't the whole point of being Avar that they didn't want to think about their bodies? Maybe he'd be able to get through this and just...avoid that part?
As if they were able to read his thoughts, Noa continued on.
"For many of us, our bodies are a complicated subject. Our identities are often born from an awareness that something in our body is not as it should be. The pieces of ourselves we know best, the pieces we cherish, are often outside of our bodies. But we cannot deny that we are made of sinew and bone, that our bodies are real and allow us to embody all the pieces of ourselves we love most.
"Our bodies are the first homes we build, and for that we must have awe, gratitude. Even as we might think our bodies have failed us. When they fail to move in the ways we wish, or to take the shapes we imagine, we must offer ourselves grace. In the moments where our souls failed our bodies—failed to keep ourselves clean or to fetch ourselves food and water, failed to protect ourselves from harm, did not our bodies continue to carry our weary souls without complaint? Do we not owe our bodies the same love in return, despite their failings, in the face of their undeniable humanity?
"You are more than just the sum of your parts. You are a vast network of muscles and tendons, rivers of energy and intention, a vessel bearing your own history, your own ashose. Can you feel the energy around you? Flowing from me to you and back again? It flows from the earth, through the ground, and into you as roots into a tree. The earth gives us what we need, and our bodies receive these gifts, hold them, and help us channel them into loving and dancing and ashose.
"As we prepare for this evening, I ask you again: who are you to yourself?"
It struck Kido that it was a question he'd almost never asked of himself. He'd been defined by his relationships—largely by his failures within them. He wasn't a good daughter to his parents. He hadn't been married off yet, but he'd been bracing himself to fail as a wife. Even the parts of him that felt more authentic were defined by standing next to Ronan, and without him here he hadn't known who was left.
Maybe tonight would give him an opportunity to find out. He began to gently tap his fingers on his sides in time with the beat as the other folks with instruments started to add their music to the air.
"When we extinguish the fires, we return to invisibility. No one is present to ask questions, to be confused, to make assumptions and have them broken. But resist the urge to turn invisible to yourself. See yourself."
“With no further ado, I present to you: the new moon. Tomorrow she returns to the sky to watch over us yet again. For tonight, we dance.” Then they snapped their fingers, and with a whisper and a whoosh, the flames went out.
Kido felt his chest tighten for a moment, but then he felt Orryn’s hand slip into his and give him a comforting squeeze. I’m with you, it said. He squeezed back, Thank you. Then he released xyr hand, and he was alone.
Through the darkness, Noa and the others had picked up the melody in earnest.
“There is no one to watch, no one to judge, here in the dark it is only you and your soul and your body and however you want to move. With this, I command you: Dance!”
They certainly had a flair for the dramatic to easily rival Tek, and Kido found himself laughing. As someone with a fiddle added a jaunty melody to Noa’s stringed instrument, he felt his foot tapping. He tried to remember how he’d seen the boys in his village dance when there’d been music at their celebrations, and he added in a subdued head nodding to the rhythm of the drum someone had started beating. Was he doing it right? What was he supposed to do with his hands? He could only remember the swooping movements the women had made along with the melody. What had his father done? He tried to conjure memories of watching Bron and his cronies dance to impress the prettiest girls.
“Kido” He jumped at the sound of Everett whispering in his ear. “No one can see you. Let your body tell you how it wants to dance.”
Kido’s eyes widened, not that that helped him see anything any better. He closed his eyes, taking a minute to soak in the high-energy song that Noa was playing. He started to sway, keeping his arms relaxed and swinging side to side. He looked around, checking to be certain that he couldn’t see anyone else, then he spun. He spun again, and again, and again. Without thinking about it, he let out a whooping cheer at the crescendo of the song. He froze—that had been much louder than he’d expected. He felt blood rush into his neck and ears. Then, he heard Smith whoop in response. Then someone else further away let out a sound like the caw of a bird and before Kido knew it the darkness was full of songs and sounds and laughter. He spun again, arms above his head making wide looping patterns.
As the first song came to an end, Noa cried out “You are not just a soul moving through space. We are carried through the world by our bodies. Sometimes we try to forget about these bodies, but they did nothing to deserve that. Tonight we dance to remember that even as there are things we hope to change, we have been home all along. We dance to thank our bodies for being full of life and full of light and full of us.”
Their words seemed to surround Kido. He hadn’t realized how much time he’d spent trying to think of himself as not having a body at all. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about his body in any way besides what he wished was different. Without any light to guide the way, all he could do as he danced was feel his body. As he danced, he became aware of his fingers and his hands, curling and flowing to the chords. He felt the muscles in his arms swaying and waving. His feet and legs helped him jump to the beat, bouncing joyfully to the rhythm, and he felt his lungs expanding to call out another whoop. He felt a soft tingling all the way to the tips of his fingers and the pads of his feet. The weight of his awareness across his body felt both foreign and natural at the same time.
“Thank you.” He whispered to himself. He felt a tear leak from his eye, as if his body were saying it’s about time.
How miraculous that he could dance. That he could hold the people he loved in his arms. That he could sing. That he could bake good bread—that he could taste good bread. The tingling in his hands continued to grow until it felt hot. But where earlier today his anger had felt hot like a fire, this heat felt more like the sun. Brighter. More life-giving than destroying. Miraculous.
Ah, that’s it. He thought. That’s Ashose. He laughed again, triumphant this time. Tears flowed from his eyes more freely now, and he didn’t bother stopping them or pretending they were rain or wiping them away. He felt the sharpest edges of his doubt sanded away by the pounding of a drum and the warmth of this new family around him.
Is this what home is supposed to feel like?
Thanks!
Your regularly scheduled Good Queer News programming will return…eventually? But I’m thrilled I can be spending this week basking in the glow of brilliant queer artists.
Thanks so much for reading this piece, and feel free to share with anyone you think might enjoy it!
Thanks for sharing
i love it