"Da."
"Well, one of my maker friends online, he's in Australia but it doesn't really matter right now, saw your pics and had an epiphany. He sent me the 3D schematics for this and I printed them for you. Ta-da!" he said, and opened a case with an amazing pair of new prosthetics.
Natalia reached out and touched then with her fingertips. They were different. Straight, like bullets, made of a weird, foamy white stuff. They curved as they went down into rubbery tips, they looked like a ballerina's leg on pointe, completely straight. "But Lenny, I can't walk with these."
Lenny brought them out and down to her height with a grunt. "They're not meant for walking, Natalia. They're meant for dancing," he said.
"Oh, you mean she can just swap them?" daddy asked.
Lenny shrugged. "Sure, why not. Ballerinas put on their shoes, right, whatchacallit?"
"Silk pointes," Natalia said, popping her blades off on the stool.
Lenny helped her put the new prosthetics on. "Right. So, you'll just put on your pointe prosthetics when it's time to dance. Big deal."
Natalia stood up. She wobbled, and her daddy held her up. "Nyet, let me," she pushed him away. She wobbled again, walking on tippy toes for the first time in her life. It was weird, and to think that a ballerina moves in and out of pointe position fifty times per performance on average...
Natalia had it, she smiled wide. "Bring on the camera!"
And then she fell flat on her face.
The men came to help her up, she pushed them away. "Nyet! Let me do it alone."
It took her two endless hours of non-stop trying to get it right. She was tired, she was sweaty, she was bleeding, the new prosthetics chafed because they needed some wearing down and perhaps some olive oil on the contact point, but she wasn't gonna give up.
When she managed to keep the pointe position and perform just like a proper ballarina, her daddy started crying uncontrollably.
Natalia went back to miss Olga's classes. Her mother pleaded with her to just go elsewhere, but they were both adamant about their own opinions. Her daddy grumbled something about them being both bullheaded and just drove her up there.
The ballerinas whispered to each other, the news got around. Some girls were new and some old girls weren't still with the ballet class, but gossip was gossip.
Natalia didn't care. She put on her shiny pantyhose, then her spandex leotard, it was bigger now, she was getting quite tall and strong, and then put on her tutu skirt. Finally, as the other ballerinas put on their pointe shoes and rubbed chalk on them, she put on her pointe prosthetics.
Every single girl stared.
Natalia tiptoed into the dance hall, not a care in the world. This was what she always dreamed of.
Miss Olga didn't object this time when Natalia changed up a few of the standard moves to fit her particular limb difference. Natalia had practised everything on her own a million times, she knew her body perfectly, she adapted everything that she couldn't actually do into something that she could do and that looked as wonderful as standard ballet.
Miss Olga had an urgent phone call and left them alone to practise. She came back with a sorrow-looking Marina. Natalia couldn't believe this was the same girl as before, her eyes were sunken, she was thinner, her ribs protruded out of her torso and even her beauty had been tarnished.
"She's doing cocaine, they say," a ballerina gossiped to Natalia.
"What? No, can't be. Marina is a prima, she's the best," Natalia argued.
"That's exactly why, it's too stressful. They say she can't take it. Miss Olga helps her out, but what can she really do?"
A few weeks passed and both Natalia and Marina kept going to the ballet classes. Marina only glared at Natalia, not even acknowledging her presence in the room. Natalia didn't really want to confront her. She knew she had ruined a pretty good thing for the prima. She wasn't naive, it would probably have been ruined some other way, Natalia knew first-hand how life threw curveballs at you, but that didn't mean she wanted to be the one to actually be at fault.
Feeling the guilt, one day she just walked up and told her. "I'm sorry for Evan," she blurted out before she could change her mind.
"What? Oh..." Marina said, seeming out-there. Perhaps she really was doing drugs? "Da, whatever." She started to walk away.
Natalia didn't know what came over her. She grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. "No, I really am sorry. Things could have gone different between you and Evan."
Marina stared daggers at her now. "Never. Touch me. Again. You freak."
Natalia pulled away. "Alright. I just wanted to say I was sorry."
"You did, three times already," Marina snapped at her. "I'm not deaf. Now get out of my sight and stay there."
Natalia raised her hands in surrender and left the prima alone.
Natalia was practising on her own in her usual corner of the dancing school. Nobody really bothered her, and daddy wasn't waiting around anymore because mom found some messages sent on his Agora profile and said the other mothers were 'skanks' and added a couple more profanities after that.
Natalia didn't mind, she was old enough to stay at the lesson on her own. She took the bus home too. As she stretched her limbs far beyond what someone thought was comfortable and into the realm of painful, she smelled a familiar stench. At first she didn't quite place it, but then it hit her. Auditions, Evan, Mr. Kumarov, cigarette smoke, blood.
She felt woozy and ran to the bathroom.
When she got back out, Mr. Kumarov was at miss Olga's office arguing with her. Marina was sitting on the chair, arms crossed and pouting like a proper teenager should.
The helpful gossip girl showed up next to Natalia again. "She's not doing well, and the rehearsals are about to start next month. You know, for the Nutcracker."
Now she had Natalia's full attention. This was her dream. "Really? Where are they playing?"
Mr. Kumarov kept sucking one cigarette after another.
"Oh, all over Europe. It's a tour, such a big deal. That's why they're shouting, I guess," the gossipy ballerina said.
"Wow..." Natalia said. She let her mouth hang for a while, but at some point she stopped staring at miss Olga's office and just went to finish her exercises and stretches at her usual spot.
Natalia simply focused on Tchaikovsky's music, her eyes shut. She was on pointe position, and she casually went through the entire first act on her own. She knew it all by heart.
She simply danced.
Natalia smelled cigarettes at some point.
She opened her eyes to see Mr. Kumarov right in front of her, mouth open, the cigarette burning down to the filter between his fingers. He looked stunned.
Natalia blinked from the smoke. And the shock, really. She never expected to have his full attention. "Yes, Mr. Kumarov?" she asked politely.
"Do that again," he said with a small voice. His cigarette burned all the way and reached his skin. "Ouch!" he cursed and threw it on the dance floor, ruining the parquet. He didn't seem to care. His eyes were fixed on Natalia. "Do that again," he said, falling on one knee. "Please."
Natalia stared at her prosthetic feet. "You-You mean dance for you?" she stuttered.
"Yes..." he said, eyes wide as if he was seeing a miracle.
Natalia danced. No biggie, it's just what you've practised all this time, dummy. Don't mess it up now. What was this? An audition? Every ballerina knew that a since word from Mr. Kumarov could get you straight into the biggest ballets of the world. And even if it didn't work out, the mere fact he showed any interest in you was enough to get you on their radar.
Natalia simply did her thing. She imagined she was at home, her daddy in the next room watching some streaming show, her mom making dinner. She listened to the music in her room and simply danced for nobody but herself.
This time she kept her eyes open. She saw Mr. Kumarov fall on the floor, looking up in awe. His eyes darted from her pointe prosthetics to her hand movements, assessing a million things per second,
she knew that.
"How long can you stay on pointe?" he asked, still excited.
"Well... Forever, I guess," Natalie shrugged and carried on her performance.
"Forever..." Mr. Kumarov breathed out the word. He suddenly pushed himself up and Natalie jerked back, spooked. "This changes everything. Everything!" he said, and ran back to miss Olga's office. He grabbed some paper and a pen and ran back to Natalia, scribbling furiously all the way. He looked manic, a choreographer in heat. "Again."
"Again?" Natalia asked, not actually arguing about his command. She glanced at miss Olga, who looked happy, holding her hands in front of her body. And Marina, who stared daggers at her, again. “She cheats! Can’t you see? That’s cheating!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. Nobody agreed with her, they simply stared at her. Marina walked out of the dance school like a proper drama queen and slammed the door behind her.
Mr. Kumarov turned to look and then carried on with his scribbles. "Da, again. From the top, I need to think. A prima that can stay on pointe all day long! I need to think, I need to absorb this. Come on, dance, ballerina!"
Natalia couldn't stop crying from her elation. She just performed, crying all the way.
Natalia was thirteen. She was the first prima ballerina ever to perform the Nutcracker on pointe for the entire show. She performed all over Europe, with plans for an even larger tour. She was a revolution, and her moves were studied all over the world. Her parents couldn't be more proud.
Her dream had come true.
The End.
Loveless Ada: Swipe Left
As she looked up at the sky, Ada decided that pine trees are the assholes of the plant kingdom.
The rain was a slight drizzle, yet the pine needles gathered all those tiny beadlets of water and condensed them into thick, heavy drops that fell on Ada’s head and made her flinch each time. She didn’t have an umbrella of course, she had forgotten it home. Ada just stood there, trying to find cover under a tree that seemed to hate her.
She waited for the bus, which was late. As usual. The plastic canopy over the bus stop was missing for some reason, never replaced. The only rain cover around was a tent from a shop, but it was too far behind and she couldn’t see the bus coming, if it ever decided to. There were other trees of course, but they were all pine trees. The fact that she lived in Pefki area of Athens didn’t help her case, as it translated to ‘Pine Tree City.’
Ada enjoyed the rain. When she was feeling sad, it complemented her feelings. And she was sad quite often. But rain is romantic only when you’re inside and warm, with a hot cup of tea. Not outside, under a pine tree, with heavy icy-cold raindrops falling periodically on your head.
As if to taunt her further, the city had installed those electronic displays that showed the expected arrival of buses in minutes. Of course, it didn’t work properly. Oh sure, it seemed like it did, it had a European Union stamp and everything, but it was accurate only once or twice per week. Like the saying with the broken clock, it just happened to get it right every now and then.
She was alone out there, no one else was waiting for the bus. It wasn’t that cold, just a rainy Spring day, but the raindrops were freezing for some reason and each one was a sudden stab of high altitude temperature. Ada crossed her arms and tightened her inadequate Spring coat. It was too thin. Ada didn’t have anything else to wear, her heavy one was an old granny-style one, because it was precisely that. An old coat from her yiayia, her grandmother.
The kids made fun of her for that coat, so she preferred not to wear it and endure the cold.
Her big round glasses were holding on to raindrops. She was aware that it made her look silly, but it was bothersome to wipe them every now and then. They should invent wipers for glasses, like cars have.
Ada checked the time on her phone for the millionth time. The bus was over forty minutes late. She sighed, expecting to see her frozen breath but there was just a hint. She merely felt that cold, it was subjective. She thought for the tenth time about going back home. It wouldn’t be that warm, but at least it was dry there. Nah, she didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to spend more time than she absolutely needed to around her yiayia and her cousin.
She turned around, walked under the tent and waited for the bus, taking her eyes off the road for a mere second.
Then she cursed.
At that precise moment, the bus came.
Silent. Electric. No warning whatsoever.
Ada muttered to herself, “What am I supposed to do, walk backwards or something?” She ran to the bus stop but of course, it didn’t detect anyone there. The self-driving bus didn’t even slow down, it just wallowed on at it’s slow but steady pace. Ada yelled and waved wildly at it but it didn’t stop.
A person would have stopped. A human driver. The on-board computer hadn’t detected her at the bus stop, so that was it, moving on.
There were people inside the silly small bus, and they turned around to her but they just stared. They could have hit that damn button, made the vehicle stop, but they did nothing.
Ada cursed, spitting raindrops as the bus waddled on the rainy road. Then she sagged and slouched, eyeing the bus with menace.
She took out her phone and loaded one of her custom-made apps.
She pointed the phone to the bus as if wielding a magic wand, and gave it a flourish with her wrist.
Then she tapped a button, and the bus stopped.
Ada walked angrily towards the self-driving bus, hopped on and looked at the startled passengers. She sniffed audibly and sat down, dripping all over the place.
She tapped her phone again and the bus moved on.
Ada is gonna wreak havoc in Athens. This is an upcoming novel in the God Complex Universe. Join the Mythographers to get an email when it’s published:
https://mythographystudios.com/join
Shadow Dimension
Evander, it seemed, was looking for love in all the wrong places. The last place he ever expected to find his soulmate was hidden away in a shadow dimension.
At first, it wasn't much to look at. Just a neon-looking, wireframe-like version of the city he'd spent his entire life in, Athens.
The shadow dimension was... empty, at first glance. But the more he visited the more he found interesting things to do. For example, after comparing a few city blocks with their real-life counterpart, he came to the conclusion that things were different around here. It took him a while to see the way they were different, but he kept exploring and it happened eventually.
He was on a building that simply wasn't there in the real world. That alone gave him lots to think about. He took the stairs. What was he stepping on? There really was nothing there, he had checked and double-checked. Just an empty plot of land, definitely not the three-story building he was climbing on. So, if this was a shadow dimension, what was this building a shadow of?
He checked the floors one by one, they were simple flats, though they seemed a couple of decades old. It wasn't easy to distinguish things in the Shadow, things were very distorted. But a few clues here and there made him certain that the building was from the 80s. Condemned, perhaps? Evander didn't know where to look for such information, city records perhaps. Though he didn't know where to start looking. He just took the stairs to the next floor. He explored that one as well, it was nondescript in general, the same, empty feeling as the rest.
And then he got to the third floor, where he found his prize.
To this day, he had no idea why, but he knocked on the door. He hadn't knocked on the ones before, choosing to just walk inside pushing through the unlocked doors, but something made him think this was the right thing to do. He knocked, and he heard shuffling coming from inside the topmost apartment. He waited, then knocked again.
"Who is it?" a girl asked through the door.
Evander could tell she was peeking through the eye-hole. "I-I'm Evander. Just looking around, really."
"What's the helmet for?" she asked.
"
It's uh... I need it to travel around in the shadow dimension."
"The what now?" she asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
"Um... This," he waved his hand around. "The Shadow, that's what I call it."
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
"Doesn't this world seem weird to you?"
"You look weird to me."
"No," he chuckled, "I'm talking about the walls, being like, intangible. And the lighting, it seems it's inverted or something. The sun shouldn't be red, you know that, right?"
No reply.
He waited.
The door opened and there was a girl there, close to his age. She looked at him with a frown, he found her attractive. Though he could tell there was definitely something off about her. But who was he to judge people from the Shadow? She was the first one he'd ever met in the Shadow, and for all he knew, he was the weird one and they were the normal ones around here. She had a very cute frown on her eyebrows. "You know, you're right. I hadn't noticed that before. But now that you've pointed it out, it is weird."
"Wait, you're not a native from the Shadow?"
She sighed. "What the fuck is this Shadow you're talking about?"
"This. All of this. This building we're standing on, it's not even here in the real world. It was condemned or something."
"Or something," she mocked his tone of voice. "Sure, whatever. What do you want?"
"I'm just exploring," he said, trying to look non-threatening. He realised it was a very hard thing to do when he was wearing an opaque bike helmet, his way into the Shadow. "It's interesting."
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "I'm Christina. But call me Chris.""
"Sure, Chris. How long have you been here?"
She looked confused. "I'm not sure. I've definitely been here quite a few years now..."
"You can't remember? How's that possible?"
Now she looked genuinely confused.
MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets Page 138