Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Standing Up Again ❯ One-Shot

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Standing Up Again
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She threw her arms out and leaned back, allowing her eyes to drift shut as the melodious notes rocked her to her very core. Not a soul in the world—not even her—could guess as to what was going to come next. Her dance changed every time. The music spoke to her. It sang out the happiness of life. It told stories of misery, deceit, love, death. The stories were so intricate, so tangled, that they near about drove her mad with their vigor. Not a single living human on earth could birth a story that could compare even slightly to the ones she heard every time a note was sung. She was gifted with the most important part. Her job was to translate the life, the death, the love, the misery, the eternal happiness, into dance.

 

And it was as natural as breathing.

 

Her pause in motion was only a few seconds—if that even—but she didn't even notice. Every time a note played, it was a different story even if it was the same note. The mood with which it was played could change the meaning of it from the misery of a widow to the bliss of a newly wed couple. She waited for her instructions and listened to the story. Suddenly—something sparked.

 

And she was in motion once more.

 

She weaved her arms slowly and her back arched backwards even more until she was almost lying flat out. And then she sprung, flying high—soaring for dreams that seemed so close and yet so far; reaching out in desperation for some sort of grasp on understanding; trying to snatch back the love owed to her. She was doing it all.

 

And the music told her to.

 

She was perfect at her story-telling. But she would never even try to capture their essence in the human language. It would be almost a sin to do such a thing. There were no words known to man in any tongue that could perfectly describe the tender touch of a lover or the anguishing pain, confusion, and anger that comes with the death of someone adored. Only the beautiful music could do that so perfectly. She was like a silent sufferer, only instead of suffering, she was learning about the best and the worst of the human nature.

 

And she relished in every minute of it.

 

Her feet touched ground and she didn't waver or hesitate as she continued telling the tale. She not once in her life rehearsed dance moves. She was told on several occasions by her instructors that she was born into the life of dance. Praise was something she had always received.

 

And she loved it.

 

Her breath sped up as emotions poured from her song. Shivers ran down her spine at the raw power she felt. The ending was always her favorite part. There was a never an ending that she didn't like. They were all beautiful even though they weren't all stereotypically “happy.” To her, even suicide could be happy when music made it so.

 

And she wasn't sure if that was necessarily a good thing.

 

She always tried to draw out the feelings the rushed through her veins in the last few seconds of her routine. Her feet stopped moving and she raised her arms as the final notes of the song hummed to silence—she was like a swan that had finally realized that the ground couldn't sustain full happiness and was taking off for the first time. Even as the story ended, however, she tried to cling to the last remnants of pure ecstasy. She hated when those feelings left her.

 

And she hated when the melancholic feelings of reality drifted back.

 

Loud clapping filled the night and without even having to look she knew who it was. A sudden urge to throw up filled her and she leaned her head back to stop it. Her arms fell to her side with a dull noise. All her woes and all her troubles were slowly coming over her once again now that the glory of her music was gone.

 

And she missed the beauty of her stories.

 

It was the one thing that she didn't screw up doing. Every day of her life her family had made sure to point out all of her faults and all of her stumblings in life. It was infuriating and frustrating, to say the least. She had dropped out of school—no one had missed her; her grades had been nothing to brag about—and she wasn't sure if it had been a mistake or not. But she knew it had been a mistake to leave home.

 

And it had been a mistake to involve herself with “bad” people, as her mother had called them.

 

“It gets me every time you do that as to how you can be so goddamn graceful leaping and all that shit. You'd trip over your own head if it weren't attached to ya,” her watcher said. “But ya know you're not going to be able to do any a' that anymore, right? You might fall and squish the baby.”

 

And her mistake had cost her dearly.

 

“I know that,” she responded dully, rubbing at her flat belly that would soon swell out with the sign of a new life. “You don't need to be so concerned, though. I thought you had to go to work tonight. What are you doing out here?”

 

And she regretted it on some days.

 

“Well, it's a little hard to not notice ya when you're prancing around like you're some hot shit. And at least I have a job, unlike some little girl I can think of. I thought you said that that one diner hired ya. I can't make enough on my own to pay for everything. That little party we had the other night is going to cost a pretty dollar, too. I hope you realized that.”

 

And she hated being pulled back by those mistakes.

 

“They said they'd get back to me,” she told him irritably. “And I know about that already. You'd better get going or you're going to be late.”

 

Sometimes she really wished that she could just run away from everything.

 

He made an exasperated sound and stepped forward to kiss her. She didn't bothering moving away. Being close to him used to always cheer her spirits. She loved him, and she didn't know why. They weren't married but she was going to have his child in roughly eight and a half months. Thoughts of abortion flooded her mind when she had first found out but something told her not to do it.

 

And on some days she wasn't sure why she didn't.

 

“I'll see you tonight,” he murmured before leaving her. And as he left, all her feelings of foolish, giddy happiness left with him. She had decided long ago that she wasn't going to cry about her sorrows. Crying wasn't going to fix anything. But dancing did. She cherished every story music ever told her.

 

And she wished she could simply vanish into the wonder of her stories, away from the troubles of her life.

 

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Felt… off, this was born. Not sure what to think of it, so please drop off thoughts and comments? I'd appreciate it! Criticism of any sort appreciated.