Cyrin's End
Disclaimer: Emelan, Summersea, Lark etc. are all the property Tamora Pierce. The plot and wording of this fic are owned by me, as is the name Cyrin. This story was written for the fourth challenge of the Seanfhocal Circle at the Dancing Dove Ezboard forum.
Cyrin was alone, more alone than she'd been in years. She'd had a family, she thought, a place to stay, work she loved and the fraternity of the trade. Most of all she had the love of her body. Ever since her childhood Cyrin had loved her body, nurtured it, and always did everything in its best interest. When she trained it, it returned her affections and did everything she asked: jumps, flips, cartwheels and a myriad other acrobatic wonders.
They told her when she learned her craft that audiences were fickle. Don't believe for a moment that they really love you. An audience will come to you willingly enough for an hour's good fun, but then it will leave. It's your body that you should nurture, because it is the key to your art. Like a fool, I bought into it, though Cyrin bitterly. I loved, and I was hurt.
Betrayed by her body, bereaved of the art that was her life and her livelihood, Cyrin was lost. One day she broke an act in the middle, feeling dizzy, losing her breath like she had not done since she was a little apprentice who cringed from stretches. The company masters had given her a break: one lousy performance in a spotless record was forgivable. When she started wheezing and coughing during practice, things turned sour.
The healer diagnosed a chronic condition. Cyrin asked what that meant and was rewarded with two words that ruined her, "permanent", and "incurable". She had not had time to recover from her shock before she was kicked out of the company gracelessly and with not a kind word. No dignity, no money, no decent job, and stranded in a city she'd known only through the market centers and homes of the wealthy, and only as an acrobat. It left her in the realm of the hopeless. Here in Summersea, they called it the Mire.
Cyrin stepped into the closet-like room and heard scurrying. There was one window, with broken shutters. The furniture was a low makeshift cot with a nothing-thin mattress, two wobbly stools, and a crate of poorly planed wood. This was her future, rats and darkness and paying the rent by mending poor folks' rags.
"Welcome home, love," Cyrin said to herself with disgust and slammed the door.
