The curtains went up, the stage lights dimmed and the crowd's applause fluttered to silence. She had never felt such adoration before. It was beyond exhilarating. She took a graceful step forward, then another then another. It was like walking, one foot in front of the other, but before she knew it, she was dancing. Dancing in a way that she had never pictured before.
Her smile reached her ears as she went into an arabesque and the patter of applause sent joy and adrenaline through her veins. She never pictured herself in this situation. She always thought it would've been Rue. She was much more graceful than she would have ever been, but her desire to be with Mytho and protect him was far stronger than her desire to dance.
And so Ahiru took the stage, and the lights, and the adoration. It felt wonderful.
She could feel the eyes of the people watching her as she glided across the stage, floated to her toes. Spun around as though she were hanging on a string. The song had finally reached its climax and Ahiru positioned herself for her most difficult move: the grand jeté. She could do splits, she could do jumps and leaps but she found it difficult to do all at once. Sweat brimmed on her brow as she braced herself for the climax in the music. The piano rang and the trumpets blared and she leapt into the air, like a bird taking flight. Her legs were parallel with the ground for merely a second before she fell to the floor.
Her slipper hit the wooden stage and she suddenly heard a crack. She collapsed just as the song was concluding. She crumbled to the floor, curling up and embracing her foot. A jolt of pain went through her and a wave of agony washed over her.
The tears fell down her face silently. The crowd was silent, she was silent. And it was deafening. All her hard work, her training, her practice had led up to a tragedy.
The girl who wanted nothing more than to be a dancer was now no more. Ahiru didn't realize that her first time taking the stage would also be her last.
I've wanted to do that for a while now. I had a friend a while back who was a ballerina but she broke her toe and couldn't do the thing she loved the most. It kind of seemed like this sort of thing would happen to Duck. She wasn't good at dancing but she loved to do it.
