"Hello," said the woman behind the long table as the girls entered the hall. She had huge glasses, and hair tied loosely behind her head, so that it stayed out of the way. She smiled at them. The men sitting on both sides of her didn't.
"Hello," said Alex, the other girls crowding around her, "I'm Alex, and these are Roxie, Annalise, Olivia and Skye. We're here to try out for a spot in the international championships."
"Everyone is," the woman told them. "Let's see what you've got, then."
The music started, and Skye and Roxie were already up in the air. Having two winged members in the team gave them a shot to be good enough to get through the incredibly tight qualification criteria to make it to actual competitions. Or so they hoped. They had been practising a lot, but they knew this was just their first time trying, and many groups tried at least half a dozen times before passing.
The other girls were off the floor too, climbing the fabric half way up to the high ceiling in seconds. Their wild dance began with the ninth beat, and they swirled, and flipped and climbed, up and down and round, with perfect timing and synchrony.
The girls had been nervous before, understandably. It was a huge opportunity for them, and would mean huge changes in their lives if they could get that opportunity. It was one of the scariest things any of them had ever had to do. But it had been good nervous, with butterflies on the stomach and excitement in their eyes when they ha talked about doing this. And it's not like it was their only opportunity. If they didn't pass now, they could always practise more, they could train harder, make a better choreography, and come back for the try outs next year. Even so, they all wanted it very much, and they were nervous, because in a situation like that, who wouldn't be? Even if it wasn't the end of the world if they didn't pass. But all the nervousness, and the anxiety about preforming vanished as the girls got up there, swinging and dancing and swirling high up off the floor of the hall. Everything else in the world was forgotten when they got up there and began, because in that moment, there was nothing else.
They were all breathing hard soon, but it felt good. Their wait in line before their turn had been a good length, enough to catch your breath properly, fill your body with new oxygen, but not so much as to get your muscles cold again, if you kept moving a little all the time. So they had been nice and warm and ready once they got started.
Not that air dancing was all about sports and muscle strength and stamina and being able to do all the movements. It was also about cleverness, making the audience think you're about to do something and then do something completely different. It was about surprising whoever was watching you, and it was about making a beautiful show, even if the technique wasn't so difficult the movements were light to do. Though often it helped to be both clever and smart. And often it would be you pushed harder than you thought you could, did things you wouldn't actually have the strength for, but the dance would swoop you in and you'd let it, so you would only realise how exhausted you and all your muscles were after you were finished.
The choreography the girls had made for this show was a little different than what they usually did. It told about all things beautiful, or at least it told them about all things beautiful. They could only hope their meanings would understood also by the audience. It told about the colors of fall, and the first frozen puddle on a cold morning, and fireplaces and woollen socks and thick blankets you could crawl under to drink hot tea, preferably with a friend. It told about hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies and candle light. It told about how beautiful a city looks in the dark.
Their show was near its end when it happened. The entire hall went dark, all at once, all without warning. The music stopped, and complete silence filled the hall along with the darkness. In the dim light that came in through the windows on one wall near the ceiling from the already dark world outside three of the girls saw the shapes of their winged friends simply fall out of the air.
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I have absolutely no idea. Which is why this is so short. Did I ever tell you I tried to read The Little Women, but never made it further than the first chapter, because my god that kind of girl books like that are so... Blah. So I'm a little nervous writing a book about a bunch of girls, because a story like that can just be so boring I wouldn't want to read it myself, and that would be bad for having to write it. So... Wings.
Oooooh that sucks, I know, but there is absolutely nothing coming out of my head for a story like this. Maybe if we always just take the most idiotic idea that we come up with and write that idea as he next bit and then see where that takes us? And by idiotic I don't mean the most cliche thing, though that's kind of idiotic too, but the kind of thing that when the lights come back they realise they are in a cave filled with gnomes that want to take them as queens.
I'm not saying it would make a good story, but it would definitely make a very, very weird story, which might be interesting on its own, but also it would be interesting to see where a story like that that would end up.
Yeah, I have no idea what I'm talking about any more, because that is just a train of thought I ended up following and writing down, and I have no idea.
Either way, gnomes is... well, not a good idea by any means, but one we haven't yet used in any of our stories, so why don't you take that to be your next topic.
So Gnomes it is.
I can already feel how this story will be an enormous disaster for my part.
~matu
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