"Ruki, where are you taking me?" Juri laughed a little as her girlfriend tugged her through the house. She'd thought she'd seen every part of the Makino home over the years, but they appeared to be going somewhere entirely different.

The redhead looked back at her with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. "You'll see. This is very special, Juri." She paused for a moment. "Do you trust me?" Her voice suddenly seemed very serious, and Juri looked at her.

"Of course I trust you, Ruki. I love you, how could I not trust you?"

Ruki smiled just a bit, then pulled a strip of cloth out of one pocket. "I'm going to blindfold you. It'll be taken off when we get where we're going. I want to show you something, and I think it'll work best if you don't see how I set it up."

Juri was a little confused, but she did trust her lover. They'd been together too long for her not to trust her. "All right." She closed her eyes and felt the cloth being gently wrapped around her eyes and tied in the back.

"That's not too tight, is it?" Ruki asked, and Juri shook her head.

"No, not at all. So what's next?"

A warm hand folded around her own, and she was tugged forward again. "What's next is you follow me. Come on."

Juri gladly followed, feeling only a touch of trepidation as Ruki led her forward. She could hear the usual soft tread of their slippered feet on the floor, and then the sound of a door being opened. She wanted to ask where they were going, but she knew Ruki wouldn't answer her. She spent her time instead trying to figure out where they were going for herself. She was fairly certain that there was no door in the way they'd been walking, but she had heard one. A hidden door? Why?

"Careful, there's steps here." Ruki warned her, helping her carefully down each one. There weren't many, only half a dozen or so, and Juri stepped carefully, her hand gripped tightly around Ruki's. She would never have done this if she didn't have total faith and trust in her girlfriend. After everything they'd been through, it was hard to imagine anyone more trustworthy than Makino Ruki, at least as far as Juri was concerned. Takato might be her best friend, but it was Ruki she loved with all her soul.

"How far is this place, whatever it is?" Juri wondered. She couldn't be too certain just what was going on, but she was fairly sure they were under the Makino house. She had the mental impression of something underground, stirred by the soft scents of the earth and the fact her feet were on packed dirt instead of the floor.

"Not far." Ruki patted her hand lightly. "We're almost there."

The two of them continued on in silence for some time, until Ruki stopped. "All right, you stay here."

"But...the blindfold?" Juri lifted one hand to touch the cloth, and Ruki touched her wrist.

"Leave it there for now. It'll come off when it's time." Juri heard Ruki walking away briskly, and wondered what was going on next. Ruki had never been quite this mysterious with her, but in a way, she liked it. There was something very enjoyable about being so completely at Ruki's mercy like that. Various other things they could do with blindfolds began to occur to her just then.

She listened carefully, and with how little she could hear, and the way there were only the faintest of echoes, she began to form the image that they were in some kind of wide open space. Wherever she was, it was big. The few echoes didn't sound as if they were from outdoors, and she couldn't feel any wind at all, unusual for this time of year.

Then there was another presence, one she had learned to recognize over the years. "Renamon."

"Juri." The voice was reassuring just by it's existence, and Juri smiled. She trusted Ruki and Renamon both, and to have the vulpine Digimon there made her feel as if things were even more all right than they had been before.

"Do you know what's going on here? What's Ruki doing? Where are we?" She trusted Ruki, but that didn't mean her curiosity wasn't eating her alive. Maybe Renamon would tell her what Ruki wouldn't.

There was a smile in the Digimon's voice. "I know what's going on, and Ruki is preparing a surprise for you. We are in...a place that is very special to her. I'm the only other being that she's ever brought here before. This is her way of letting you know how much she loves you. What you're going to see, no other human has ever seen before."

Juri felt a shiver inside and wished that Ruki would get on with it. She wanted to see whatever it was now, more than ever before. She listened for several long moments, that felt even longer since she had no way to see what was going on, and all she could hear was the occasional footfall.

Then, she heard something else. Strains of music, soft and beautiful, began to filter in. What in the world is going on? Though she played the recorder, she wasn't all that experienced in most professional music, so she didn't recognize whatever it was she was hearing. All she could do was listen, and realize that whatever it was, was beautiful.

"Renamon. Take the blindfold off Juri. It's time." Ruki seemed a bit breathless, as if she were excited, and Juri shivered a tad as Renamon's careful claws undid the strip around her eyes.

She blinked as it fell away, instinctively wincing before realizing the lights in this place were low, not blinding, and she could see. Now she had a better idea of where they were: an underground cave of some kind, and a circular opening at the top where a single shaft of brilliant sunlight entered. For a moment, her eyes avoided that area, until she saw movement in it.

Ruki was in that shaft of light, and she was wearing a tight-fitting spandex leotard in a very fetching shade of green. Her hair was pulled back into the same pony tail it had been since they had first met, and there was a faint edge to her expression. It was obvious that this was something she was not used to doing.

The music began to rise in volume, and Ruki lifted her arms carefully. Juri watched, not quite certain what was going on, then caught her breath in amazement as Ruki began to dance. It was like nothing she'd ever seen or imagined before. It was graceful...beautiful...exotic...wonderful!!

Ruki moved like a dream, with the evident ease of long practice. What she danced had no name and was obviously not a formal or officially named dance, it came straight from her heart, spawned by the music she was listening to, and that she became beautiful moving to.

Juri stared in shock, and was not altogether certain that she wasn't drooling. She had always known Ruki was a very strong and graceful person, and in recent years she had begun the study of tai'chi, to keep her rapidly growing body from becoming too clumsy. But this...this...this went beyond anything she could remember and entered the realm of purest art.

The young woman moved, fluttered, twirled, and bent in ways that Juri would have sworn the human body wasn't capable of, and did it without so much as a twitch or breaking of a sweat. She moved out of the light and moved all around the cavern, using it as a theater for the movements. She moved this way and that, effortless and easy as a bird, showing delicacy and control of her movements down to the last twitch of skin.

The music she danced to had no words to it. Words would have distracted one's attention from what they were really supposed to be enjoying: the flawless beauty of the dance. There was no chance that Juri was going to be distracted however. Her eyes followed Ruki everywhere the other woman went, not leaving her for a moment.

Renamon watched with a faint smile on her lips. She had known this would happen from the moment that Ruki had told her she was going to show Juri the dancing room. Here was the only place Ruki ever danced. It was something so very special to her that not even her own mother and grandmother knew about it. Once she had understood that, Renamon had felt very honored to be shown it herself. Juri understands, I think. And appreciates it.

The music played on, with Ruki matching each movement with one of her own, twirling and moving in a rhythm that had no match in nature. Juri was fairly certain that she hadn't bothered breathing in several minutes, and she was just as certain that she really didn't care all that much. What was breath, compared to this vision before her?

Then with a suddenness so unexpected it was almost painful, the music ended, and Ruki was standing right where she had started from, in that same position, only now quivering in every muscle and sweat glistening all over her. Juri stared for a moment, then started to clap as hard as she could, and wished she had some kind of an award to give a performance like that.

"Ruki, I had no idea you could do something that was so...perfect!" She gushed. "That was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life!"

Ruki smiled weakly as she came back over, wiping the sweat off her forehead. "I'm glad you liked it, Juri. I haven't really danced for that long in a while. I wasn't sure if I was still up to it."

"You were amazing." Juri's eyes sparkled with joy and love at the mere sight of her girlfriend. "How long have you been doing that? And just where are we?"

"Since I was a little kid. About six or seven." Ruki shrugged faintly, her eyes sparkling in memory of the dance. "It's like...when I dance, there's just me and the music. Nothing else. I've worked out a lot of anger and stuff like that. It's just what I do."

Juri nodded, her fingers twitching a bit. She did the same thing with her recorder. "But what about this place?"

"I found this place when I was eight, just when I was starting to get into the card game. It's really in my backyard. It's not easy to get to, though. This house is way older than my family. I found the door that leads down here from inside after I found this." Ruki thought for a moment. "Well, let me tell it in order. When I was eight, I was out playing in the backyard. Grandma had to go inside to get lunch, and I started to wander around a little more. I found the hole when one of my toys fell into it. I couldn't figure out how to get to it, and I didn't like crying even then, so I just didn't tell Mom and Grandma about it.

"A few days later, I was feeling kind of upset because I'd just lost a card game." Ruki made a slight face at that thought. She so seldom lost games that even remembering back when she hadn't been good enough to be the Digimon Queen was a bit painful. "Mom was out at a photo shoot, and Grandma was on her computer, and I was in one of my moods. I hit the wall in my room fairly hard, and it just ...kind of fell away. There was a stairway behind it, and since I didn't have anything better to do, I hid the pieces of the wall, and went down it."

Juri blinked in surprise. "You were eight years old and hit it hard enough to fall?"

The other shrugged. "It surprised me too. But I was angry, and I think I was hitting harder than usual when I did that. Well, I went down, and I wound up finding that toy I'd lost. So I knew where I was then, and I started to explore it.

"It didn't take too long, it's really just one big room. I never have known why someone built stairs down to it. I guess someone just wanted privacy. And since I was just starting to really want to keep my dancing to myself right then, I decided this would be the perfect place for my privacy."

Juri smiled gently. "It was incredible. I know I've been saying that, but...it is."

Ruki leaned against the wall, taking very deep breaths to get herself relaxed. "Thanks, Juri. It means a lot to me." Her eyes flicked over lightly to her girlfriend. "Renamon did tell you what it means, right? About how I don't show this to just anyone? Just the two of you..."

"She told me." Juri glanced around, and realized that at some point during her appreciation of the dance, Renamon had vanished. She had probably wanted to leave the two of them alone. Renamon had an exquisitely developed sense of what was appropriate and what wasn't. "I'm...to say I'm honored is too formal...but..." Juri was at a loss for words, but Ruki seemed to understand.

"I hope you're not mad that I waited so long to tell you. It wasn't that I didn't trust you before...but the time just never seemed to be right." Ruki shrugged lightly.

"I understand." Juri reached down to take Ruki's hand in her own. "You don't have anything to be upset over or worried about, Ruki. I'm just glad that you did show me. I've always known you were beautiful, but I had no idea how spectacular you could be." She was almost certain that Ruki was trying hard not to blush, but she couldn't quite tell. And there was no way to ask; Ruki never admitted to blushing if she could help it.

The two of them stood there side by side for a few moments, not speaking, simply enjoying each other's company. Juri's hand crept down and wrapped itself around Ruki's, noticing that she was still quivering slightly. "That took a lot out of you, didn't it?" She murmured quietly, and Ruki nodded, not afraid to admit she'd danced more in that afternoon than she had in weeks. Juri smiled quietly. "Come on. You need a nice hot bath and a nap."

Ruki wanted to protest being mother-henned, but she was exhausted and feeling very icky and sweaty. "All right, but you're going to be napping with me, Juri." Her eyes twinkled softly. "Just because I'm tired doesn't mean I'm too tired to stay with you."

Juri did blush, and she wasn't ashamed to admit it. "I'd like that, Ruki. A lot."

The redhead leaned over to brush her lips across Juri's and smiled softly. "Let's go to bed."

Hand in hand, they headed up the stairs together, leaving behind the empty cavern, and a single shaft of light, now made much more precious to them both by being the place where magic had happened for them.