The Marionette
Chapter Six: Fickle
Here in Canada, it's Easter. Also, I'm pretty sure it's Easter everywhere else. Not sure why that's significant, but blah. I can update! Also, Acquaintances is on hiatus. I don't have an ideas and I figure it's better to focus on a story I can do well (Read: This) than to churn out terrible chapters for you guys.
Reviews I have, and reviews I must reply to!
Pokegirl185: That was really sweet thanks ^.^ But I still think it was OOC…
Malory79080: YES HUNGER GAMES YES. As for Ursula, I think she's more like superglue. I'm trying not to make her cliché like the 'traditional irritating girlfriend' angle. So far I don't think it's working very well -.-
Guest (Number One. Should I call you Amy? I think I'll call you Amy. ^^) : Wow thank you so much! I might actually be blushing. And I never blush.
Guest (Number Two. You can be Sydney. I don't know, I'm weird.): Thank you for the kind words, and I HAVE UPDATED AS PER YOUR REQUEST MUAHAHAHA. Gah seriously though it pains me to leave you guys hanging. /shot/ I apologize! /shot anyway/
Important: This chapter switches to present tense halfway through. This is intended. The story from there on will be in present tense. The idea is that the real story begins now and everything before was a memory. Okay? Okay.
Disclaimer: If you were reading the AN, then you should know I live in Canada and I don't speak Japanese so I can't possibly own Pokemon or its characters. Pay attention!
Dawn hurried along Route 210. She had been walking the entire day, save for a lunch break. The sun was rapidly setting. It cast beautiful colours onto the sky, but Dawn didn't glance up to see them. The Maid Café was a speck in the distance, and she wanted to get there before twilight at least. Dawn's luggage, which had been so easy to tow in the beginning on the cliffs, now felt as heavy as a bundle of rocks.
Speaking of cliffs, Dawn was glad she was at least on flat land again. She couldn't imagine how those trainers on the cliffs lived, stuck out on those narrow ledges every night.
If it was me, I'd definitely fall right off. Ballet training and balance and all that are next to useless in the dark.
And that creepy elder with that pretty, but equally creepy stone. Escape? What? Did the elder of Celestic Town happen to have priceless blue stones lying around in satin-cushioned cases that she handed out to every bluenette that passed through the town? Dawn shook her head. If she got distracted, her pace would slow. She glanced up and almost tripped over her luggage. The sky was dyed vermilion in startling and stunning contrast to the dark green trees…
Gah. Focus, Berlitz! If the sky is that colour it means it's going to be dark soon! Jesus, hurry up already!
Hurrying along the little dirt-and-gravel path, Dawn took small, fast steps, feeling clumsy like she always did when she rushed. It was like this when she danced too—she would move quickly when she was behind, but every step she took would feel unbalanced, like she was wobbling on the tiny platform of her pointe shoes.
Her luggage rattled behind her, her legs almost straight as she walked. Reaching the café just as the sun dipped below the horizon, Dawn let out a sigh of relief. The wheels on her luggage were worn and scuffed from the little rocks on the road. Hopefully they would hold out at least until she reached Solaceon.
Walking up to the counter, Dawn was further relieved to find that they offered rooms. She booked a small one with a window and walked up to it. Unpacking the things she would need for the night, Dawn headed down the stairs again. Lunch had been quick for her, and she was looking forward to a nice hot dinner, and pointe work afterward.
Paul was on the blimp to Sunyshore. Thanks to Ursula, he had had to majorly rush in order to be packed on time, barely sleeping. He wasn't like Dawn, living inside a suitcase with a couple tiny apartments scattered over the world, sold heart and soul to the brilliant slow poisoning of music and movement and broken satin pointe shoes. He wasn't like Ash, excitable and defiant and a rainbow that you could touch with your hands.
Goddamn it, what was he? What was inside him that caused the desperate infatuation he saw in Ursula? He wasn't kind. He was cruelty and steel and a thunderstorm in the middle of summer, the kind that blazed and then whimpered, lost in hypocrisy.
Jesus, he needed to sleep.
Solaceon Town. Just a couple days left before the performance, and Dawn has fallen. The floor at the theatre was so polished, so slick, that the dancers went down like bowling pins. Her right ankle aches, and it will be so, so hard to fouetté. But she has to. Fifty of them. So she lies in the hospital bed and she prays to whatever capital-S Someone up there that when the performance day comes, she can do it.
Grimsley had fallen too, but he is not as hurt. He was released, but he comes in now.
"Everyone is asking about you, Dawn. Do you want me to tell them what happened?"
Her right ankle throbs again. She makes a split-second decision.
"Tell them I injured my left ankle."
He raises a black eyebrow. "Your left?"
"Yeah. So they'll watch the left ankle at the performance and then they won't see anything wrong."
Grimsley stops cold. "You're performing? In this condition?"
"In what condition?" Dawn fires back. She may look like a little porcelain doll, but she learned a long time ago, one afternoon in the dance studio in middle school in front of three girls with expensive clothes and pastel makeup, that she can be cold too. "I have to dance, Grimsley."
"Your fouettés, though—"
"What about them?"
He gives up, she can see it in the way his eyebrow falls and his dancer's posture falters. "Have it your way, Dawn. If that's what you want."
"Thank you."
Grimsley tosses his head back and leaves the room, clearly frustrated.
Three hours later, she's out of the hospital and rehearsing again. Stagehands had sandpapered the stage completely. Dawn fouettés. She barely makes it to twenty, her turnouts a monstrosity, feet shifting this way and that in her pointe shoes, trying to relieve her screaming ankle. She sees a stagehand look at her and shake his head in pity. That bolsters her resolve. Dawn doesn't need nor want for pity.
I can do this. I have a few days left, I can do this.
She makes it to thirty-one. Gritting her teeth, she tells herself thirty-five. With perfect turnouts and feet that don't move around. Surely, she can do that much.
Dawn gets up, tests her weight, and steps back into her fouettés. Blazing pain digs trails of fire into her nerves, but she dances through it, reminding herself what it had been like when she first went on pointe.
Tough it out. Pointe was worse than this, and you made it through that. Dance.
Her eyes close. Arms in position, shoulders down. Point your feet, perfect turnouts, strong back. Dance through the flames.
In an exultant, agonizing, gasping-for-breath last display of bravado, Dawn turns fifty perfect fouettés.
Sunyshore City. Ursula is out shopping (seems like she's eternally shopping, parading around the pearls he gave her like a peacock). To be fair, she'd been caring and helpful, or at least tried to be, so the naïve, gratuitously attention-seeking part of her had to be pardoned for today.
Paul flips the daily papers around aimlessly, black coffee in front of him, for a while before something catches his eye.
Dawn Berlitz Injures Left Ankle While Rehearsing
The young ballerina, recently risen to fame after the premiere of Swan Lake in Snowpoint City, has been reported to have hurt her left ankle during rehearsal. Her company says the performance will not be delayed…cont. on page nineteen.
Reaching for his phone, Paul texts Dawn, slightly worried. There was a chance the media was blowing this up, but just to be sure…
—Dawn
Are you okay? I read the paper and it said you hurt your left ankle. It said Swan Lake would proceed as planned; if you're hurt too much no one would blame you to delay the performance, don't worry about that. I'm sure your company would understand. Please reply soon.
—Paul
Paul had already sent the text before realising his mistake.
Damn it, I should know Dawn better than that. It wasn't the company who wanted to keep the performance on schedule, it was Dawn…! I don't understand her, what's wrong with resting a few days?
And if Paul is honest with himself (which he always tries to be, but for others it is a different matter entirely) then he knows that the strange feeling inside him isn't confusion, but concern.
Lying in her room at the Eclipse Theatre (they offered rooms, free of charge, for traveling performers), Dawn felt sick, sick, sick.
The good news was that she could do fifty fouettés, even though the pain was blinding. The bad news was that she couldn't do anything else after them—it taxed her too much. Her phone had blipped a while ago. She knew who the text was from: Paul, probably having read one of the many articles that now covered the media, from tabloids to daily papers to television. Dawn read the text anyway. She is too tired to craft a proper reply, instead sending him an I'm okay, pretty tired though, talk to you later. Not bothering to clear up his misunderstanding that it was her who had decided they would continue without delay, she flops back into bed unbelievably worn out.
The few days left trawl by, until with a massive breakthrough the day of the dress rehearsal, Dawn can dance the entire ballet without a hitch. The only problem is that her ankle felt like it was on fire throughout, but that she can fix later. The day of, the ballet commences and ends with no drastic interruptions or mistakes on Dawn's part—the fifty fouettés went smoothly, or as smoothly as she could tell through the haze of pain that blanketed the entire performance.
Following the deafening applause at the end, Dawn manages a barely-there curtsy at every curtain call, until she collapses, relieved, in her dressing room backstage.
The process of removing her stage makeup and putting regular makeup back on is slow and frustratingly time-consuming, but Dawn eventually cleans off the colours and false lashes, replacing them instead with liquid eyeliner, mascara, and a slick of red lipstick. Slipping into a comfortable white lace dress, crystal teardrop earrings, and a pendant necklace, Dawn suffers herself to put on black heeled ankle boots (the heel is terror on her ankle but Dawn wore heels so often that to wear anything else would be suspicious). Wearing her black wool blazer over the dress—it was evening and rather chilly outside—and with her bag over her arm, she walks out of the room and straight into Riley, the dancer for Siegfried.
Which is how Dawn finds herself leaving the Eclipse Theatre to dinner with Riley. He had made it clear to the media from the very beginning that a) he was engaged to a lovely young lady, therefore b) he had absolutely no designs on Dawn, or any of the dancers in Swan Lake. It is the only reason why Dawn felt comfortable going to dinner with him on his arm, knowing that Riley's fiancée wouldn't overreact and that Paul's ever-present onyx eyes wouldn't see them and misunderstand.
Riley was a good friend of hers, and dinner (at a very nice, quaint little butter-yellow country restaurant) is pleasant and delicious. They chat about the ballet, how Dawn had stumbled and dragged her way through the curtain calls—you don't think it was too obvious, do you Riley? I hope not—how Riley's fiancée adored Dawn—oh, please do come to the wedding, Dawn, she would be absolutely delighted—about the publicity of every little thing they did—I can't go grocery shopping without them knowing what I bought and how much I bought it for and what I wore/said/looked like—and when the dinner was over and they were just chatting, two friends eating dinner on a evening that was all the shades of Dawn's blue eyes, the feelings of discontent that had been brewing in Dawn ever since Snowpoint dissipate into the fizzing of her champagne.
Riley, ever the perfect gentleman, insists on paying the bill himself, and after some reluctance, Dawn lets him. She is in too good of a mood to let the evening be spoiled by a petty disagreement over a few bills that both of them can more than afford to spare. Outside, the sky is slipping from blue to blue, settling on one slightly darker than Dawn's own hair. Absolutely content, Dawn catches a cab back to the theatre. The seats are soft, cushiony blue velvet, and how everything is blue that night makes Dawn want to giggle like a little girl and feel like she can still touch the pale moon, hanging as if from a necklace, in the sky.
She thanks and pays the driver, going back into her room in the theatre. Her room at the theatre is modestly elegant, with an old-fashioned dressing table, curtained bed, and table with chairs where she can eat. The walls are whitewashed with crown moulding, lamp on her bedside table, chandelier on the ceiling. Dawn lies down on her bed, placing ice on her ankle, after taking off her coat and heels and setting her pointe shoes out. She'll have to wait until she recovers to break new ones in. Soon enough, though, the minimal amount of ice she has prepared turns lukewarm against her skin, and Dawn slides out of her bed to replace it. On her way to the connected kitchenette, though, she is sidetracked by the view. Her room boasts a small balcony, and Dawn sets the ice down on her table. Outside, she looks over Solaceon Town from behind the balcony's metal railings. She's abruptly reminded of a night not so long ago now, looking over cold, blustery Snowpoint, with a warm presence at her side, one pale finger extended to point to the temple in the distance.
Dawn isn't reminded of the blue stone, lighter than any blue outside right now, lying in its white, padded box deep within her suitcase, that can grant her entry into the Snowpoint Temple. No, Dawn doesn't think of any of that. Instead, she counts the blue in the scenery—the blue roofs in the view, navy sky, the violets someone has set out on the fire escape of their apartment. All that blue, punctuated by sidewalks that from the balcony looked white and the golden lights of the streetlamps and glowing windows.
Dawn decides, then and there, that Solaceon Town is a beautiful, beautiful place.
Children walk in Snowpoint City holding blue lollipops.
Paul reads Dawn's text for the umpteenth time, coffee long since cooled and untouched on the table.
The elder in Celestic Town sets down the newspaper. Putting on a coat and house slippers, she stands on her front porch and looks at the empty stage in front of the Celestic ruins. The wind blows again, words of encouragement turned sour into mocking laughter. Silver moonlight shines like a spotlight without an owner. There is no willowy girl to dance until she dies beneath its light tonight, to fight the eternal battle between black and white, and the ever-fickle wind changes from laughter to wailing. Cutting through the still air, it howls its loneliness.
"So, it's begun, has it? Better use that stone quickly now girl. Don't you forget about it; that's your ticket to escaping. Hurry, hurry, child, while the blue night isn't too dark yet."
I feel like my chapters are getting shorter and shorter /this one wasn't even three thousand words sigh/. As always, hope you liked it, please review! The present tense switch felt awkward. I don't know, I switch from tense to tense really easily. Forgive any mistakes, please.
Star xx
