AN: A quick little non-descript one shot completely inspired by Katzenjammer's `Lady Marlene` and thus the title. I highly suggest listening to the song while reading this ficlet, though it isn't necessary. It's a story that while completed in written word, in my imagination has a detailed backstory, but here it is left deliberately vague so you can fill it in as you find fitting – enjoy!


She glided along the ice with a carless grace and simplistic immunity, as if guided by the very breeze that carries the snowflakes itself, weaving into the rays of moonlight that shown down from above, unbothered by the complicated matters that adorn humanity.

Her translucent skin shimmers as her permafrosted skirts spin around after her movements like the last brittle leaf of autumn that finally falls, succumbed to its fate and twisting along with the winters winds forgotten from the very limb once it thrived.

A lady of a time long forgotten suspended in a gloriously solemn moment, in which a woman of her stature was addressed as 'my lady' by many a gentle suitor. It has been ages since anyone at all had called her a lady, much less could see her to know of such. With her flowing curls trailing behind her many a year free of the fanciful up do that once caged its wild nature, her face turned upwards into the falling pristinely white flakes of fresh snow wishing to feel it's cold touch, her eyes closed to the realities that continue to move on around her, without her, leaving her forever behind in her capsule of time.

Perpetually lost in the season and blissfully alone.

Oblivious is she to continued passage of the days and nights, forever suspended atop the crystallized topped lake twirling and spinning with her petticoat dresses billowing behind her, in a beautifully peaceful masquerade of an era long abandoned to a hauntingly sweet ballad in which no one else can hear.

Every now and then there is a glimpse of a memory that breaks through, slender fingers suspended in a permanent up reach with a numbingly cold hope to grasp a future never to be hers. There is the prickling sensation of a lost love as chilled water fills lungs searching in vain for the last breaths being unapologetically stolen. After so long it can be hard to recall if it was a tragic accident or an intentional choice as the distant sound of ice beings to crackle beneath - her pirouettes becoming increasingly frantic as if to will the memories begot.

The picture is serene and still, disturbed only by the silent winds brushing the flurry along, twisting with her atop the frozen lake as the luminescence of the moon breaks through the gnarled branches of a surrounding winters mountain forest – awaiting their moment to be alive and green once again. A scene worthy of capture within a globe – if such a thing were possible.

Claim her a vision, a demon, phantom, or shadow - for it matters not to the one that waltz's alone along the frozen waters. A lonely figuress who knows not of her own loneliness except for brief glimpses of a prior life when the music was loud enough for all to hear and when her balletic maneuvers were not eternal.

Her essence is forever tied to this moment, arms in perfect pose for a partner never to come, a spirit content with a business left unfinished as a sinking memory drifts away leaving in its wake a poised and weightless performer – destined to dance endlessly upon cold winter nights, forevermore.