Minas eyes flashed with gleeful triumph and she clapped her hands together.<br/><br/>"Wonderful, wonderful!" She cried, and when she gave a final clap the lights in the hall all flickered out at once.<br/><br/>There was a moment of darkness, perhaps three seconds of it, and then the flame returned, blazing an eerie violet as every candle wick and lantern came back to life, bathing the hall and all its occupants in an otherworldly glow. In such a light, the demon's eyes flickered, reflecting disks of yellow, green, and red like animals do in the dead of the night.<br/><br/>Then a white spotlight, coming from nowhere, shined down from the ceiling, illuminating the dancefloor between the royal table and the rest of the guests. In the center Ursalo stood, his long robe discarded and his pale white torso shining like a beacon. He stood there, poised, his arms held out gracefully with his back arched at a dramatic angle, a skirt of golden coins and black strips of cloth wrapped around his trim waist. It was a difficult position to hold but he did it effortlessly, like a statue frozen mid action.<br/><br/>The demons roared with applause, hooting and hollering exuberantly as they bang their fists and appendages upon the tables. They had all seen the snake dance before and they were excited to see it again. The noise quickly died down as Yennet flared out his wings, standing just outside the circle of light but he was bright enough to be seen. Behind him stood the odd grasshopper cat that had not yet been introduced.<br/><br/>The red bird raised his head and let out a shocking cry. It was a disturbing sound, a call of an animal, mournful, angry, and haunting in it's long drawn out notes. It was a sound meant to get the heart racing, like the blaring horns before a hunt.<br/><br/>His cry died off into another deafening silence, this one so filled with tension it was nigh unbearable. Ears flickered and eyes strained, but Ursalo remained motionless center stage, not a single snake twitched. Then the cricket rubbed his arms together, making a strange, bastardized sound of a rattling percussion and vibrating violin strings. It became a melancholy  melody and his feet stomped a beat, slow and pondering, and that was when Ursalo began to move.<br/><br/>It started in bits and pieces, as if he were stone coming back alive. A twitch of a hand, a jerk of the arm, a thrust of the hip, each movement in time with the beat, as if it were the pulse of his own heart. It seemed like a painful, aching thing, relearning movement after such stiffness. This was the dance of Reawakening, when the snakes emerged from their dens after their long winter sleep, renewed by the spring sun.<br/><br/>It continued until every limb had its turn to twitch, until everything seemed loosened, then Yennet began to sing and the dance truly began.