Fire.
She's dancing, an ethereal figure, an angel-like silhouette moving gracefully on-stage. She's so caught up in her routine that she doesn't pick up immediately the penetrating smell, but suddenly her lungs are burning and she's inhaling smoke. Fire. She doesn't understand what's happening, and the sudden wave of heat that hits her, makes her head spin. Her eyes are full of tears, and she can't breathe, she can't breathe, she can't breathe.
Fire.
She hears cries of fear and pain, but she can't understand if it's her, who's screaming, or the other danseuses. And while she screams more smoke enter her lungs and she's interrupted by a fit of coughs. Fire. She's scared- no, she's terrified. The smoke makes it impossible to see where the exit is, and flames surround her every way she turns, a wall of heat, and death, and horror.
Fire.
Her heart is beating so fast she thinks it will dig a hole in her chest and leave, her lungs burn and her muscles ache, but numbness is slowly making its way in her limbs and she's so very tired... She'd like to close her eyes, and sleep, and- Suddenly the ceiling cracks and comes tumbling down. She's not fast enough.
Fire.
She feels it on her skin and it's so soft and thin, and it could almost do not exist. But then it's hot, and angry, and it hurts. It hurts. She can't move and it hurts. And it's not only the fire, it's also one of the beams that has her legs trapped. She can't run away. She's trapped. She can't run away. It hurts.
Fire.
She stops fighting. The sudden revelation she's been abandoned there to die hits her like a train. She's going to die in there. In the burning hell her favourite place in the world has become. But she doesn't dwell much on those thoughts, because the pain makes it impossible for her to concentrate even on the smallest of things.
Fire.
It's subsiding, she notices. The pain is replaced by numbness every passing second, and she's grateful, because this way she can finally rest. Her head feels like it's stuffed with wool, and her eyelids are so, so heavy. She's gonna die here, she thinks, she deserves a little sleep.
Fire.
It's silly, but she can't not notice the stark contrast between the bright (too bright) flames and the blackness she knows awaits behind her closed eyelids. It's silly. But then someone makes its way in that roaring inferno and frees her from beneath the beam. She's barely aware she's being picked up and that she's being taken out of there. Her eyes finally close and she blacks out. Even then, she dreams of fire.
NOTES HERE:
I saw the movie early on last year, and I thought it was nice. I saw it again recently, three days ago, for the sake of precision, and again thought it was nice. Full of anachronisms and- not right things, but nice. And so a sudden wave of passion for this movie and its characters came to be within me. That's how this fic was born :)
Definitely, what caught me in this movie were the characters, three in particular. One, as y'all have probably already guessed, is Odette. Who's she? What's the deal with her? We just have Merante's words "the best of her generation", "there was a fire". If she was the best, how comes no one knows her? Not even people who should know her? A fire. What happened? What happened? If you search deep enough, you'll probably find she's a "happy ending" version of a real person, Emma Livry. And I could go on hours about Odette, but I'll stop here.
Hope you liked this little thingy :)