Harmonic had been born in a cleansing fire. The tan shade of her eyes echoed the scent of those long ago ashes. She spent the first ten years of her life trying to hold back the dance in her soul. Slowly, the dance leeched out into her life until every step she took was a pirouette in a ballet only she could feel.
Then one day, on the eve of her 16th birthday, a traveling carnival arrived in the center of town. For her it was as if they had leapt from the stars into the humdrum beige that was the town green. Calling it the town green had always been a fanciful thing, by the middle of July it was a sweltering place of mostly dead grasses and bricks that could burn bare feet. Harmonic’s mother forbade her to visit the carnival. After they had celebrated Harmonic’s birthday with a simple loaf of bread and a single piece of chocolate, everyone in her family went to sleep.
Harmonic climbed up to her loft but sleep eluded her. At midnight she slipped back into her day dress and quietly left via the kitchen door.
The prompts for this short story:
Dance
Harmonic Tan
A cleansing
Copyright 2024 Klaudia Grady
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