Mercury Vanadium {D6} WIP

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( All Alone Late At Night When My Nightmares Come Alive )

An hour before the show, everybody is in the dressing room, preparing themselves for the opera ahead of them.

Mercury, playing the role of a dark angel, lifted her frail, tired, vexed body from the stool that sat in front of her personal lightbulb mirror. Slowly, feeling dizzy from sleep, she walked to the rack that had the name of the opera slopply written and taped to it, looking for the costume that was black as night. Bony, pale hands looked at each costume, and when her green eyes didn't find the dress, she pushed the hanger aside to examine the new piece of clothing. Eventually, she found the small dress (with a corset, oh no) that fit like a glove on her equally skinny body. Running shaky hands over the beaded front, she bit her usually cracked light pink lips and sighed, knowing she was in for a long, long opera. Just like the rest of them were. Each of them was almost like a battle - but a battle that she enjoyed doing.

Putting the dress to the side, Mercury dived into her personal drawer that everybody had (everybody also shared the complaint of the knob digging into their stomachs when they sat at their stools in front of the mirrors, but oh well) and rummaged around for any dark makeup she could find. Slamming the maquillage onto the surface of the table, Mercury instantly dived into it. With shaky hands, she applied mascara to the thick but fine lashes that framed her green sea-glass colored eyes, applied eyeliner to the edges of the eyes that burned with no sleep, and applied black eyeshadow to the slightly discolored eyelids that sometimes threatened to close down and take her back to her nightmares. Smearing coverup underneath her eyes, she covered the fact she never slept, covering the light purple skin. Her bony hands laced around her hair for a few minutes, intwining certain pieces, until she dropped her hands to her sides, a red french braid lying along her spine, glistening in the dim light of the lightbulbs that twinkled around the edges of the mirror.

Deeming her skin and hair as good as it will ever be, Mercury went behind the red curtain in the corner of the room and came out, a dark angel of the sort. Checking herself in the mirror, Mercury felt happy with the results of 45 minutes worth of makeup and effort put into her appearance. "Hey, Theseus! Can you come and tie the corset for me? Just don't suffocate me, I need to breathe." Theseus happily came over, taking the strings and pulling and twisting the laces like he was born knowing how to do it (but after a few years of having to help the ladies with their costumes, he became somewhat of a pro). The dress shrunk around the torso of her skinny frame, a very slight hourglass shaped body appearing. After Theseus dropped his hands and told her to look in the mirror, she smiled. "How do I look?" "Beautiful."

( I Start To Lose All Control, Tearing At The Sheets To Save My Soul )

Mercury is almost like a stereotypical mother. She's one of those really super overly nice kind of people that takes care of everyone. She's the person that tries to calm down Gwynn when she's having one of her book hallucinations. She's the person that makes sure everyone is there for rehearsals. She is very protective of the cast, and loves each and every one of them for their personalities and quirks. She thinks of them beautiful pearls of great price, and she treats them like such.

Even though she is nice, due to her lack of sleep, she gets very irritable and with be quick to lash out at anybody. Once, when Keagan simply asked her about where Hestia was, as he needed to talk to her about Naveen's costume, she lashed out at him. She yelled at him, telling him that he didn't belong at the Opera House and that he should just leave, but he just yelled at her to calm down and went on with his business. Eventually she came around, started bawling, apologizing a hundred times and begging his forgiveness. She didn't intend to, but when she hasn't slept for a very, very long time, her patience wears thin, and she ends up releasing rage she didn't even know was there.

Mercury is a free spirit, and is one of the most creative people at the opera house. When she and Codrus and writing the scripts, she lets loose with ALL the ideas. She thinks outside the box, and when she does, she comes up with beautiful Operas that bring tears and smiles to the audience's faces. She can spin tales of woe around her fingers and put them on paper for the cast to act out. Codrus always wonders how she gets the ideas for some of the operas, but sometimes, she gets them from her nightmares that she suffers when her eyes close and her mind wanders. He doesn't know this, but of course, she never wants him to find out.

( I'm Falling Down To The Ground, Don't Understand What's Around )

At a young age, Mercury had been into music, to the annoyance of her little brother (by 9 months exactly). Her mother, who had been a piano player, taught Mercury basic piano songs that Mercury could master within two days. She later got into her mom's advanced books and instantly clicked with them (although the books took a little bit more time). Her family loved to have their daughter play for birthdays and parties, and would always favor her over their son Keagan. Keagan would always feel jealous of her, stealing her music books and hiding them in his room, which only worked until Mercury would tattle to their mother, who forced him to give them back.

When Mercury was 10, now very into violin and singing, she was at the market, picking up some food for her parents. She heard two elderly ladies talking about an amazing Opera they went to see, and Mercury instantly stopped to eavesdrop on them. Apparently, the lead woman in the Opera had the strongest voice they had ever heard, and Mercury instantly dreamed of being that woman on stage, even though she had never heard or seen the woman in her life. When she got home, she told her parents that one day she was going to be an Opera singer, to which they just laughed and smiled, not believing that their daughter would ever have the voice to do that.

After that day, Mercury stalked around the Opera house, getting a flier and a showdate for her parents. When she presented it to her parents, they weren't sure a child of her age would exactly enjoy something intended for adult and teenaged people. Sometimes, Operas can go very slowly, Relentless days of begging ensued, and eventually her parents gave in.

At the Opera house, everything was so larger than life. The tiles had this magnificent shine to them. The chandeliers in the main lobby sparkled like diamonds. The walls were painted intricately and the decorations were so antique. But when they got into the huge room where the stage and seats were, it was more fantastic than Mercury ever imagined. The seats were so soft one could almost sink into them, and no matter where you sat, you could always get an excellent view of the stage. When the actors and actresses pranced onto the stage, singing the high-pitched songs and acting out a tear jerking story of a boy who falls in love with a dead girl and an alive girl and has to choose between them. Right when the Opera ended, Mercury was the first person to start clapping. She swore to herself that one day, it would be her on that stage.

At the age of fourteen, she was hired as a actress at the Opera house. Not for any huge roles, of course, but she only appeared as a background dancer or a background singer. The main woman in the show eventually instructed her on how to sing opera, but she was a very weak singer. She continued to practice throughout her time on the stage until the main woman in the Opera house left to go to persue bigger and better things at the age of sixteen. For about four months, the Opera house shut down, and Mercury, being one of the very few people left at the Opera house after a bunch of people quit after the lead woman, wanted to keep the opera house alive.

Codrus, a boy who had been with her since she started at the Opera house helped her find some people to hire at the Opera house. For about a month, they held auditions for some opera singers and actors and pit crews, and only a few made it. Codrus and Mercury decided on who to hire based on likability and their acting and singing abilities, and for the pit orchestra, based on how well they can play their instruments. After everybody was hired, there was another month of getting to know each other and doing improv. Mercury and Codrus began writing a script and put it together, and after that performance, they knew that they had made good picks by hiring them.

Now, two years later, she had developed hypnophobia due to nightmares she sometimes can't remember. Codrus and her write the scripts the cast performs. She is an accomplished opera singer and actress. Mercury knows that the people in the opera house have changed when they were first hired those two years ago, even Codrus, who was there for her beginning years.

And she's afraid that she has already become like them.

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Odair