Dancing on Strings

Defying Reality

This was not like being on stage in the spotlight and she did not feel like he was actually thanking her. It felt like he was mocking her for being worried.

She pursed her lips together, hating how hot her face felt before she looked up at him.

"I feared we were watching lawless stage practice and wondered if I should shut this whole affair down after just the first act for shoddy safety measures," she called up to him, "I wondered if we were watching professional daredevils or idiots."

There were some sniggers around her and The Black Rabbit put a hand to his heart.

"You wound me, My Lady," he replied, "We take the safety of our cast most seriously and they know their limits and what they can and cannot do. But we must go to the edge each and every time for this is a show! Our next act does not fear gravity for example and we have complete and utter faith in her, you'll notice the lack of safety nets below us."

Everyone looked and, as he said, there were no nets.

"Does this worry our next act? Certainly not, for she is built from angels."

And with that, his spotlight went out and another snapped on, revealing the level below him and a lady who stood on a steel tightrope in a beautiful dress that fell to her calves, made of dozens of white frills to compliment the blue bodice with short puffy sleeves.

She sported a shimmering white mask and a parasol, also trimmed with blue and white frills. Her face was as white as her mask but she had puckered red lipstick. Her huge blonde ringlets were tied up in two pigtails and she sported of a cute little top hat, slanted to one angle with a white rabbit on it.

And she wore blue pointe shoes.

Mai leant forwards, staring up at her.

Pointe shoes?

They... they couldn't surely be like her dancing shoes? This girl would slip.

She was surely going to fall.

Yet, of course, The Black Rabbit said she wouldn't.

The girl lifted up onto pointe, practically bounced upwards, the dress fluffing around her before she lightly walked across the tightrope, casually as if she were walking on flat feet across solid ground.

She reached the safety of the platform on the other side and everyone clapped.

The girl curtsied, then stepped onto the tightrope again and started to spin in tight chaines turns, spinning faster and faster across the tightrope with accuracy Mai and her ballet troupe would kill for.

Mai's jaw dropped.

She didn't believe what she was seeing. She didn't even hear the applause around her as the girl reached the other end and curtsied.

She just gaped, barely able to comprehend the first stunt before the girl went back again spinning in pique turns, her dress flaring out around her, her parasol held in both hands in front of her as she travelled across.

What...

How...

Who the hell was this person?

Fire trailing, floating women had been one thing but this girl didn't make sense!

Once she was done with travelling, she walked to the middle of the rope, carefully hooked her parasol down on it a few feet from her, then straightened, positions her arms... and started spinning in fouette turns.

There had to be strings holding her up.

She surely couldn't land on a surface an inch or so thick then bounce up again to spin on pointe and stay in the exact same place each time.