((Slight liberty taken with the theatre; hope that's ok..!))
Maja had given herself a few days to get her bearings (and to wait for the world to stop gently rolling from side to side, after several weeks on a boat). Within her travel sack of now rather creased clothing, she'd also packed a navy-blue leotard, her trusty long skirt, and a pair of flat, scuffed practise shoes, once peach-coloured but now grubby and brownish. A pair of off-white knitted leg warmers, so well loved as to have become felted, were balled up together like socks in the bottom of the sack. All these she shook out onto the floor of her little room in the inn and contemplated for a moment.
The strange coin she had changed on the ship to use in this land would last her for a month or so, but it would be better to find a place sooner rather than later. She also needed some other work as well as a company to join - realistically, there was not much chance of her being able to earn her living by herself. She was a good dancer all right, but there was always someone better. Someone who had a lower centre of gravity and didn't wobble so much en pointe; someone whose legs actually were perfectly horizontal in a grande jet?; someone whose arms drifted effortlessly into position rather than flowed like treacle.
Still. Her arms had been complemented once by an old choreographer back in the old country ("Such emotion! As if she carried the weight of the world!"), and grande jet?s happened so quickly that only her instructors knew about her difficulty with it. And her otherwise irritating tendency to improvisation had won her some admirers... But there lay a fresh scar, and Maja forced herself to stop picking at it. She stuffed her things back into the sack and pulled on her boots.
~
Outside the snow had pushed off, leaving thick grey clouds settling down over the city. A brisk wind stirred up the litter and banged the shutters as the dancer set off, through streets that were becoming more familiar by the day. A few wrong turns and doubles-back later, and she was standing before the looming front of the theatre and opera house.
The doors were shut, with a piece of paper pasted on one of them, but in the middle of the morning she had expected as much. There must be someone inside, surely. She mounted the steps and pushed at the right-hand door.
Nothing.
She pulled. Still nothing.
She tried the same thing with the other door, and stood staring for a moment before the entrance in stupified silence. "Hggh... I don't get it..." Why would it be locked?
Only now did the strange alphabet on the poster dissolve itself into strange words, made intelligible by hours of sulky lessons. "CLOSED until further notice."
Transforming for a petulant second into a six-year-old girl, Maja stamped her foot and swore in Russian.
Maja had given herself a few days to get her bearings (and to wait for the world to stop gently rolling from side to side, after several weeks on a boat). Within her travel sack of now rather creased clothing, she'd also packed a navy-blue leotard, her trusty long skirt, and a pair of flat, scuffed practise shoes, once peach-coloured but now grubby and brownish. A pair of off-white knitted leg warmers, so well loved as to have become felted, were balled up together like socks in the bottom of the sack. All these she shook out onto the floor of her little room in the inn and contemplated for a moment.
The strange coin she had changed on the ship to use in this land would last her for a month or so, but it would be better to find a place sooner rather than later. She also needed some other work as well as a company to join - realistically, there was not much chance of her being able to earn her living by herself. She was a good dancer all right, but there was always someone better. Someone who had a lower centre of gravity and didn't wobble so much en pointe; someone whose legs actually were perfectly horizontal in a grande jet?; someone whose arms drifted effortlessly into position rather than flowed like treacle.
Still. Her arms had been complemented once by an old choreographer back in the old country ("Such emotion! As if she carried the weight of the world!"), and grande jet?s happened so quickly that only her instructors knew about her difficulty with it. And her otherwise irritating tendency to improvisation had won her some admirers... But there lay a fresh scar, and Maja forced herself to stop picking at it. She stuffed her things back into the sack and pulled on her boots.
~
Outside the snow had pushed off, leaving thick grey clouds settling down over the city. A brisk wind stirred up the litter and banged the shutters as the dancer set off, through streets that were becoming more familiar by the day. A few wrong turns and doubles-back later, and she was standing before the looming front of the theatre and opera house.
The doors were shut, with a piece of paper pasted on one of them, but in the middle of the morning she had expected as much. There must be someone inside, surely. She mounted the steps and pushed at the right-hand door.
Nothing.
She pulled. Still nothing.
She tried the same thing with the other door, and stood staring for a moment before the entrance in stupified silence. "Hggh... I don't get it..." Why would it be locked?
Only now did the strange alphabet on the poster dissolve itself into strange words, made intelligible by hours of sulky lessons. "CLOSED until further notice."
Transforming for a petulant second into a six-year-old girl, Maja stamped her foot and swore in Russian.