(no subject)
Apr. 23rd, 2007 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
river_meimeiRiver is dancing.
(Simon tucked her in, smoothed the covers under her chin and brushed back her hair. Half an hour earlier were her night's injections. Sleep well, mèimei, he said, though they both knew the odds of that, and she smiled for him.)
River is dancing, en pointe. Solo, adagio. The room is small; they installed walls onstage when she wasn't paying attention. They crowd her.
She can't show it. The audience is behind those walls. She can't see them, but they're watching. She can't mess up: it's important. This is her mission; this is her purpose. She is a dancer.
Allegro, now: faster, turning, the fluttering steps of battement, brise, pique and cabriole. It's hard work -- it takes strength and precision and
(physical conditioning -- she's an exemplary subject)
grace -- but she can do it.
Her shoes thud against the floor. This is utterly familiar: the solid smack of toe shoes on hardwood, the squeak of floor, the rustle of tulle and smell of sweat and the burn of tired muscles.
Even when the walls close tighter, when she has barely room to move, she can do it, she can do it, because she learned this dance when she was fourteen and she is a dancer and everyone is watching. Everyone. The walls are sharp and the floor is slick with blood no one else can see, but (change to pas de bouree, small steps inside the prison bars) she is a dancer.
(Simon tucked her in, smoothed the covers under her chin and brushed back her hair. Half an hour earlier were her night's injections. Sleep well, mèimei, he said, though they both knew the odds of that, and she smiled for him.)
River is dancing, en pointe. Solo, adagio. The room is small; they installed walls onstage when she wasn't paying attention. They crowd her.
She can't show it. The audience is behind those walls. She can't see them, but they're watching. She can't mess up: it's important. This is her mission; this is her purpose. She is a dancer.
Allegro, now: faster, turning, the fluttering steps of battement, brise, pique and cabriole. It's hard work -- it takes strength and precision and
(physical conditioning -- she's an exemplary subject)
grace -- but she can do it.
Her shoes thud against the floor. This is utterly familiar: the solid smack of toe shoes on hardwood, the squeak of floor, the rustle of tulle and smell of sweat and the burn of tired muscles.
Even when the walls close tighter, when she has barely room to move, she can do it, she can do it, because she learned this dance when she was fourteen and she is a dancer and everyone is watching. Everyone. The walls are sharp and the floor is slick with blood no one else can see, but (change to pas de bouree, small steps inside the prison bars) she is a dancer.
