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Alive.
There was no better word for it, just ... alive. The spotlight had been so hot, but her skin barely felt it. There wasn't any telltale shaking beneath the black satin of the choral dress, no roving eyes, no waiting for the accompanist. Isabelle had been the one to signal to her, ask if she were ready. It had spurred a chuckle from the judges, which was a good sign.
From shortly after she'd begun, the judges had abandoned their pens in favor of staring slackjawed at her from their three strategic places scattered across the auditorium. One, she was certain, wasn't seeing her at all. His glasses had been removed from his face to rub at his bleary eyes and still half-hung uselessly from his loose fingers, graying beard and vaguely wrinkled features completely neutral, as if you could reach out and ply them into some other arrangement like a claymation doll.
The song was so ... simple. And yet for some reason, there the auditorium sat, completely enrapt in Isabella Mathis and she hadn't a clue why. All she had been trained to do, regardless of reaction was sing. So she sang.
One day I'll fly away,
Leave all this to yesterday.
Why live life from dream to dream,
And dread the day when dreaming ends?
The last echoes of her voice died out, swallowed by silence and gradually the awakening of those sitting in the auditorium. Naturally, the judges had rated her superior across the board. So why was it her parents had collected her before she could go to sightreading, dragging her out the back entrance by the arm with much loud protest?
"I don't understand," she was half-shouting at her father, "they loved me! They stood for me, I was good! Why are you so angry?!" Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as her mother, in a whirl of long brown hair, turned her around so that her back was to the wall. Isabelle's own streaked hair was a mess by now, and the tears eeked slowly out of the corneres of her lined eyes.
"Isabelle Marie Mathis," her mother intoned, "you are not singing in that chorus anymore." The woman watched her daughter's mouth gape open-shut-open-shut before speaking again, stopping the wave of oncoming sobs and protest before it could begin. "It isn't...you can't. I'm sorry, Bells, you can't."
Her father laid a hand on his wife's shoulder, pulling her aside. As they spoke in murmurs, the blood rushed in Isabelle's ears. There were two things in this world that put her truly at ease -- the water, and music. Take one or the other, and she was as miserable as you'd taken both. Her mind quieted enough to hear the carshing of waves on a shore --
-- wait, I beg your pardon?
She thought she might be going crazy. She smelled salt. Felt cool, heard the waves crashing. Could practically feel them tumbling and sliding along one another to plunge into the line of sand. Her breath came faster, she felt her back sliding along the wall until she was sitting on the cold tile. There was some bitter taste at the back of her mouth -- the fluttering feeling of panic, but it wasn't hers. Distantly she heard the repetition of her name, felt her shoulders being shaken.
"Mommy," she said, but in no language she understood. Someone took hold of her and pulled her close to them, hard enough it hurt, and all at once the hallway was deafeningly silent. "...mom." Isabelle tried again, got the right language this time. "Mom, what just happenned. Did you just hear that?"
"Geoffrey," her mother started, and he held up a hand, kneeling next to the both of them.
"Belle," he began, "I think we should go home. There's...something we need to...discuss...with you."
 rane.ben · Fri Mar 16, 2007 @ 03:15am · 0 Comments |
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