The curtain had just arisen and her mother stepped forward on the stage to begin tonights aria. Rose walked the corridors of the opera house far from the stage and anyone in tonights performance. She was not playing tonight, she had told the directors in a well written letter for a ten year old that her cello was tired, and didn't want to be played tonight. So to the disapointment of her mother and the dismay of the audience, her cello solo had been cancled from the program. Instead of performing Rose had snuck away from the ballyhoo and walked the lone corridors. ' Ladies and gentle men, the wonderous seprano of the century..Miss Christine Daae De Changey.' Rose listend to the soft echo of the anouncer and the swelling roar of the crowd. She was ten years old today, and had been swarmed with loving wishes and happy tidings from almost everyone in the opera house, and took them all in stride nodding her head ever so slightly at each and everyone a small smile politely plastered to her face. When they had finished there praise they had all at once burst into cries of panic, they had all momentarily forgotten that a performance was to happen that night. They all rushed and turned away to set up and get ready, including her mother and father who held each others hands and rushed away toward Christine's dressing room. In the middle of all of the chaos Rose had manged to slip back into her small ten year old sized dressing room and slipped out of the obnoxiously pink birthday dress her mother had put her in and found one of her favorite performance gowns, green as the stem of a freshly clipped rose. She put on her dress and untied her long curly hair from the neat bun her mother had fashioned, letting her hair fall in brown waves around her shoulders. She glanced into her full length mirror and adjusted her clothing to set just right and caught her green eyes looking back at her. A smile spread across her reflections face and then faded. She was always being told how magnificant her eyes were, and how unusual it was that they were such a brilliant green, when her mother had brown eyes and her father had blue. She looked away from the mirror and returned to the hallways glancing around to make sure no one was around and walked away in the opposite direction of the stage. And her she was now walking along humming the song her mother was now performing, singing bits and pieces that she liked the most. After awhile Rose had walked so far that she could no longer hear her mothers voice, but the song still echoed through the halls as Rose had continued singing louder and louder when she was sure that no one would hear her. She finished the song and knew that right about that time her mother would be taking her bow, and would be exiting the stage to ready herself for the next song. It was a moment or two later when Rose had the unnerving feeling of being followed. She stopped immediatley, and heard the faint click of shoe against stone from some ways behind her. She walked again sure that she was being followed, but she was also sure that she knew these halls more than anyone who could be following her. Her walking quickly sped into a run, her bare feet silent as the clip-clattering of her persuer followed. With a quick turn down a hallway and ducking behind storage box, her stalker ran right passed her looking around in confusion but continueing on, desperate to find her, giggling like it was a game. Rose let out a small sigh of relief and left her hiding place behind, heading up a spiral staircase she had traveled up many times before and exited through a door that took her to the opera house roof. It was snowing lightly and the moon was barely out, but she found her way to the edge of the roof and climbed up, sitting beside her favorite horse gargoyle, drapping her legs over the edge and looked out at the night lights of Paris. She would have been devistated if Nikolis had found her, he was always trying to play with her and always begged her to talk to him. But rose didn't talk to mostly anyone, including him, for reasons of her own, and she most certainly did not want to share her secrete place with him. Nikolis had lived at the opera house for three years now, comming to live with her parents after his had died. She didn't like him, he was stingy and loud, not company she wanted to spend her time with, she much prefered the stone statues that surrouned her now, at least they didn't try and cling to her every breath and movement. Rose shook her head slightly and raised it to the falling snow and rising moon enjoying the winter night.