(And the devil said; come)
It's a wednesday and she's young and seventeen. Ready to take on the world, her future's lying at her feet.
It's a wednesday and she's lying alone on the scene floor at the city's biggest opera. The world is silent around her and if not for the single spotlight being pointed straight at her she might as well thought herself to be in another world.
It's a wednesday night and her lips are still swollen from kissing and her shirt's been unbuttoned and her neither regions are still tingling in a way that's not innocent at all.
The clock strikes twelve and it's a thursday morning, it's still thirty five days left for Christmas.
(And the girl whispered back; soon)
...
It's a monday afternoon in late November, outside it's raining. Inside the studio it's warm and Lily's socks are drenched in sweat, mrs Madge's been screaming at the top of her lungs for what feels like two eternities and Lily just feels like dying.
"we've been training for hours," she groans loudly to no one particular, "ain't time to get a pause?"
The group of anorectic bitches(read; fellow ballerinas) all stop doing whatever they're doing and just stares at her like she's some kind of gorilla or something. All the staring is quite unnerving and Lily suddenly feels like a giant elephant in the crowd of thin swans. Damn ballerinas and their discipline.
It's Nico who rips the tense silence in a thousand pieces with his deep voice, "sure darling," he says with the usual glint in his eye, "time for lunch"
As the other girls all drop of to the refreshment room, idly chatting dumb shit to each other, Lily feels the usual irritation washing over her.
"How come they always look at me like I'm crazy," she exclaims to Nico "and then you say something and they all fucking swoon!"
Nico just looks at her, his big brown eyes burrowing down into her soul, she thinks of a golden retriever. A very good looking one. "They don't like you" he slowly says, his russian accent so thick it's almost ridiculous, "because you lack my good looks" he ends his speech with a fiery grin that Lily thinks should be reserved for porn videos and not friendly teasing.
"whatever" she mutters, changing her focus to something easier to grasp her mind around, like filling her stomach with food. Not that it really should count as food, a bowl of quinoa and maybe some halloumi if she's lucky, that ain't really her thing. But, as every other ballerina, she's good at remembering those times when she had it worse. So much worse.
Like for example, when she didn't have Nico as dance partner.
...
It's monday night and Lily Luna wonders about the possibility of going mad.
According to statistics there's a higher possibility of going mad when you are far from home or when you don't really know what happened in order for your life to go the way it went.
(Lily likes statistics, it's like a truth printed in black and white on a piece of paper. No grey in sight, Lily hates thinking of the grey. The grey shades hiding between the black and white is no truth. It's a coincidence.)
When Lily Luna looks at her apartment there's no home that she looks at. There are no paintings giving life to the walls or any other sort of decorations. The apartment is actually a kitchen with a mattress next to the sink and a small bathroom without a bathtub. She once had a TV, but when she realized she never used it she sold it. Instead she bought a bookcase. There's no books standing on the shelves. Only a pair of ballet shoes she forgot to throw away when they got worn out.
Suddenly, Lily feels so lost in a way too big world.
...
When Lily Luna dances, she's not at home, but there's something that makes her feel so at peace.
Nico once asked how she got into dance, the day she turned up at the studio one morning, drenched in rain, declaring that she wanted to audition for the part of the swan in the swan lake.
Lily didn't know how to answer the question without lying too much while at the same time not giving away too many truths. She ended up at a compromise;
"Did you know that ballet is a cure for madness?"
...
It's a monday night, with Lily Luna Potter slowly dancing back to back with her madness in a home which isn't really a home.
It's thirty eight days left for Christmas