Porcelain

14

"Fleur!" Meg exclaimed ecstatically while running and leaping off of the stage and enveloping Fleurette in a tight embrace. "I have missed you so! Now when there's a break happening and I am taking longer to return back to practise it is just I who gets a telling off. As before it was both of us!"

"Nice to know you have missed me just for our telling offs, Meg." Fleurette laughed and held the blonde back.

"Meg let Fleurette go and sit down." Madame Giry said from the stage. Meg pouted and helped her to walk and sit down. Eleanor smiled and sat next to her sister. Madame Giry would allow Eleanor to sit with Fleurette for the afternoon. Eleanor knew the routine and did not need much improving unlike some in the group.

"I'm jealous." Fleurette murmured and crossed her arms.

Eleanor wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. "I know. I can't even think how you feel knowing all your hard work can't be put to good use."

"Don't rub it in!" Fleurette exclaimed quietly and wriggled out of her sister's grip. "Would you like to accompany me to the dancer's quarters before the music stops and father forces himself to talk to us?"

"Yes, yes I would." Eleanor smiled and reached down to hold onto her arm. Gently pulling her to a stand, she reached down for Fleurette's overnight hospital bag and gripped onto it tightly while helping her to walk. Most things were a hard task to complete at the moment for Fleurette, although the two had been told that she should be back to normal in a week or even a month. The two hoped the first and not the latter.

Fleurette pulled a face at the stairs, "Why can't I just levitate up them?"

"Now, now, life doesn't want to be too easy does it?" Eleanor smiled and walked up the stairs first and turned and held a hand out to her. "Take it slow. There isn't a rush."

"Well there sort of is, I do really need to sleep."

"Well alright! You can be speedy, just not overly speedy." Eleanor smiled, Fleurette thought over her words and nodded. Taking one step at a time, Fleurette slowly but surely made her way up the stairs. Eleanor was right beside her all the way, whistling happily to pass the time or to motivate Fleurette.

——

"Gazing eyes stared out of a window. The grey town beyond the pane of glass never looked more uninteresting. Pattering rain drops hit against the window and the gazing eyes followed them in the tracks that they made." Fleurette sat on her bed with her legs outstretched in front of her. In her hands was one of the many books which her mother had loved, and she loved equally as much.

Eleanor had long since gone to join in with getting ready for tonight's show, which left her on her own. Being in the dancer's quarters on her own was a little scary. It wasn't until she looked around that she realised how spacious of a room it was and how many shadows lurked around. Fleurette was a little on edge when she was first on her own in here. But the tension went when she started reading one of the many books she had bought with her.

Any tension or fear of being on her own that she felt had now disappeared thanks to the words of the fictional world in her hands. Hearing a creak she sighed, the opera house creaked and made the most strangest noises. She only realised this when sitting in peace and being on her own. The noises were so similar to those which she heard on her first night here. Turning the page, Fleurette was to enthralled in the book to realise that one of the many shadows which had earlier unnerved her had peeled away from the wall.

She only became aware of it when the shadow crouched beside her bed. Fleurette didn't move but her eyes had stopped following the lines of the words. Snapping the book shut she used her dancers agility to jump off of the bed and stand on the other side of it. The plan of evasion didn't go completely to plan because she hadn't had to use this speed for three days she ended up almost falling over.