A LONG TIME AGO, SOMEWHERE ELSE

Scene: The rented studio of a group of idols. The architecture of the building is maze-like, mirrors crossing mirrors, glass and light, endless reflections upon each other, ensnare the girls' eyes at each movement, their hearts and actions and selves misaligned. Swan Lake suite plays endlessly, haunting and rising and dour and oh-so sweet and then suddenly clamorous.

Why Swan Lake? A young, brave, impish woman asks. Why couldn't have we done literally anything else? What happened to the BiBi fragrance? The lily white disco tour? The Printemps collaboration with the newest mecha movie?

Nico, please. Another woman says. Read your lines. It's not just Swan Lake. Stand for the fitting. The BiBi fragrance is being handled, we promise, if you'd just smell the damn samples on time. Lily white will still go on tour. Kotori, Hanayo, and Honoka just have to do a few promo events. The song is already in the movie.

But what about the -

The sound of the swan lake suite becomes the angry buzzing of road work being performed at midnight.

Stage: a woman wearing the skin of a donkey.

The swan devours itself. Her neck entangles, a white knotted ribbon, becoming no longer distinct. Odette and Odile are not separate. The tragic princess seduces another tragic princess. The siren malcontents fall in love with their own songs. They sing into each other's roses, into their gates of glass and pearls echoing, aligned in their deepest cores.

"Where did Umi get this story?" Nico asked, startled.

"Dreams. Fairy tales." Maki brushed back her hair, exhaled her cigarette. "The well of ideas."

"Well of ideas?"

"All of the poets drink from the same fountain." Maki was smoldering, that day, rimmed eyeliner, hair curled into two dangerous spirals.

"I've… had dreams like that. The ribbon. The swan. The glass and pearls." Nico did not mention the other dreams, of neon-lit night clubs, of shoegaze remixes, of trips to Florence with the producer.

Maki looked over at her for the first time. "Write it down for me?"

"Is this going in the play?"

"Of course."

Maki had been so strange, since they'd arrived at the rented studio, and begun work on the play/idol opera. Something had been released from her, and she'd become garish and occasionally cruel but just as easily become a scared little girl, with a multitude of paperwork and contracts closing in on her -

Maki was watching her, suddenly, just then.

"We've all had the dreams, you know. Drinking from the same fountain Every single one of us."

"Even…" Nico reached for someone. "Even Kotori?"

"Especially Kotori." Maki laughed, not very nicely. "Her dresses are wearing her, now. They'll be wearing us. Those dresses will beworks of art, they will belong in a museum someday, after we're done wearing them. But -" She paused, stopped, appeared almost in tears. "No, I can't - I'm sorry Nico, I can't, I've got to go, Honoka is calling about the test results - "

"Test results?"

"Pregnancy tests, of course!" Maki had a manic bark of a laugh. "The baby is all mine! Write that shit down, Nico!"

Stage: A cruel magician wearing a mantle of owl wings

The main difference between the Nico that currently existed, and the Nico across the void, (as her magical mentor Yohane, had liked to put it) was that the current, present Nico was a chaos magician of dubious means: who had done great, elaborate rituals, had summoned tulpas, had charged her own energies with those of the fans, and had gotten lots and lots of money, and lots and lots of girls - although now that Mari was in her life, the two of them only prowled together. Nico personally attributed the success of muse, and the appearance of Mari in her life to her chaos magic.

Mari was also a bullshit agnostic Satanist, like Nico, and they absolutely loved this about each other. Their power, especially combined was, after all, not the vague Adept mysticism of Nozomi, but chaos magic and devil worship. Nozomi considered their rituals and practices to be distasteful and embarrassing. ("Please don't lump me in with you raving cavewomen.")

The other Nico, as far as Nico knew, was somewhere, but not here, and rarely watching, with only little glimpses. Nico was happy, when she'd felt her presence at the back of her mind, to know the other Nico saw into her bountiful kingdom, with her queen at her side.

Marihad ordered real swans, a perfume called The Stone Flower, and a donkey.

"Why a donkey?" Nico asked, in bed that evening.

Mari purred. "Has my little DEVIL not read her lines for part one?

"It's so abstract. I don't even know what's going on."

"It's a METAPHOR." Mari pulled up the wikipedia page to The Donkeyskin Princess. "LOOK."

Nico scanned down the page, curl in her lips. "Oh god, gross" Something inside her turned. "Who the hell put this in? Why is playing… the princess?" She didn't even want to know who played the father.

"Maki is playing the Donkeyskin Princess."

Nico shuddered. She remembered Maki's unwinding laughter. For fuck's sake, why? "I feel like we could have gotten anyone else to do this. Nozomi would have loved it, that pervert. Who's the prince?"

"Honoka, of course."

Nico sighed. At least there was that. Maki and Honoka. She'd never known how to feel about those two. Mari had long eclipsed Maki as the woman in her heart, and it wasn't… about that. But sometimes she got the feeling Honoka and Maki were up to something. They felt… wrong, somehow, magically. Not bad, not evil - well, maybe Maki was getting there - but something about their vibe seemed ill-fated.

"Mari." Nico turned to face her beautiful lady friend slash producer. "How's my magical vibe feeling?"

Mari rested her head in Nico's bosom. "You seem… TENSE. Like you're waiting for something to happen."

Her dresses are wearing her, now. They'll be wearing us. "That sounds right."

"You feel fated. Like the kindest kind of gravity. Like a leopard." Nico kissed Mari.

Nico was about to drift off to sleep, when she noticed the strange green orb encased a perfume. "Wait… what's that… thing for, anyways?" She pointed at the table across from the bed.

Mari, just as sleepy, could only smile. "That's part two."

When Nico slept, she dreamed of owls and pregnancy tests and the endless looping Swan Lake Suite, becoming apart of her, becoming Rothbart, the girl across the void.

Stage: A woman in bloodied feathers with an obsidian crown.

"I would have made a better Odile." Nico said, all bravado gone, as she passed Eli in the studio.

Eli laughed. "Yes, but not a better Odette. You'll make a fine Rothbart."

There were bags under Eli's eyes. Everyone had bags, but Eli's were something else, as if she were being eaten alive, her sleep plucked from her. Eli's choreography was sharp, feverish, closer to a mad ballerina's farewell dance than a narrative idol musical. They all danced like that, like sick children pulling themselves up on the failing wings of a bird, like dolls held on wire.

"I would have thought Maki would play Rothbart." Nico said. "Not… a Donkey Princess."

Eli looked at her over her shoulder. "It is strange, isn't it? But she insisted. And who am I," Eli said, smiling. "To argue with the woman who's drank from the fountain of ideas?"

Nico stuck her tongue out at Eli. It was a relief to see her laugh, even mean spiritedly. "You guys better do my noise opera next time. I mean it."

author's note: will write faster for more comments (at least until I hit the end of the backlog lol)