Past The Point Of No Return {Opera Plot}

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Sleep was a word that Mercury hadn’t exactly ever got around to defining. As far as she knew, it was just something that people just do. Kind of like some people just read; it’s something people just do for fun, kind of like in the way Gwynn stays in Box 23 and runs her eyes around the pages of the scary books that she always enjoys. Mercury herself never truly did sleep like everybody else – where they wake up, live their lives a little, and then retire at the end of the day. No, she would close her eyes for two hours, stay up three to five days, and then go to sleep for another two hours before the whole process repeated itself.

After downing two cups of coffee and tons of water at five in the morning, Mercury felt as ready she could ever be for their show in three hours. She didn’t exactly feel like actually doing it, but then again she did; she loved opera in the sense that it was something she enjoyed, but hated it with the fact that everything was so forced when it came to her, only because of her sleep habits that tried to slow her down. It was a curse in her eyes, but she didn’t complain. They got enough complaints from Xana anyway. (Why did I not get that part? I was perfect!)

With the loss of sleep hanging heavily on her shoulders, she rubbed her eyes and fought it down. After the coffee and excessive amounts of icy-cold water, she decided to go do something productive with her time. She ended up going to the dressing room and organizing costumes, hangers clinging to her left arm as she gave them away one by one to the dressers that had been assigned to each actor and actress at the opera house. Each of their dressers, with the light bulbs framing the mirrors that had pictures and other things sticking to the reflective surfaces, were unique in their own way and corresponded with everyone’s personalities. With a glance out of the corner of her eye she could instantly know what article of clothing belonged on the counters for them to put on later. For instance, Mercury could see Theo’s dresser totally clear of any messes or anything out of place and then be totally sure of whose it was. After thirty or so minutes, everything was sorted, and with two hours and thirty minutes left to go until the curtains pulled apart and the music started, she busied herself with the sheet music to be given out to the members of the pit orchestra, and about a million other little details that she would have expected Hestia to worry about more than herself.

After everybody had gotten up and came to the Opera house from their homes (or the beds they had made out of blankets when they didn’t have anywhere else to go) everybody headed to the dressing rooms, glancing at the costumes that lay on their dressers, and everybody went to work on dressing themselves, examining their costumes first before they set out to work on their appearances for an hour.

She grabbed the white, beaded dress that sat at her dresser and head to one of the curtains in the corner to change, the dress fitting around her like it was made just for Mercury. In the back it was huge and had a bustle, with white cloth falling in drapes to her feet. The dress was heavy, and she had no idea how women in the ‘Victorian’ era as she had heard about had the strength to wear the seemingly twenty pounds of cloth. She also had no idea how to dealt with corsets either – after getting her brother to tie it at its loosest, she felt like a boa constrictor had wrapped its way around her stomach. Breathing wasn’t all that difficult, but it still felt odd to have something compressing all around her. She left the curtains and sat herself at her dressing area.

Mercury dug into the drawer and found foundation, spreading it around her face until her skin hid her already pale pigment and replaced it with an almost bone white color. She knew with the huge white dress she would wear, she would look like an absolute ghost, but then again, her character would have tuberculosis so she would have to look a little bit paler than the other characters. She couldn’t have a sick character go out on stage looking totally fine. When she glanced at Codrus out of the corner of her grass green eyes, she saw that the way he moved would have been better suited for her part; slightly off balanced and dazed. Then again, she knew that he was always slightly sick so he had excuse.

After that she went through the horrendous process of eye makeup – putting on eye liner, mascara, eyeshadow, and the whole ordeal. She hated doing makeup so much, and if it was up to her, she would have made Gwynn do it, but Gwynn would have probably done it half way and then calmly and collectedly told her to shove it. But even worse than the eye makeup was the wig she had styled earlier in the week. Mercury had to bind her hair away and then fit the thing onto her head correctly, which took maybe ten minutes, but seemed like thirty. After she had finally gotten the thing to stay in place correctly, she had to fix it, putting away stray hairs back into the bun that was covered by hairpieces and clips of all kinds.

After examining her appearance in the mirror, turning herself at all angles to check her costume out – the wig, the dress, the makeup, everything – she deemed herself ready to go, and soon after she was done, everybody else was done too. Mercury practiced her lines by herself and did vocal warm-ups, going up the scale from the lowest note she could do to a fairly high note that was a few notes away from hitting the whistle register. She liked doing warm-ups with a piano, but since her piano was in the wings, and there were people in their seats already (30 minutes early, might I add) as evidenced by a slight flurry of voices not coming from the dressing room.

When the voice warm ups and last touches on costumes were over, everybody went to do their own thing for about twenty minutes. Mercury merely sat at her dresser, observing everything else everybody did, thinking about how much she would love some coffee at that point in time. Sure, she had a few cups earlier, but the liquid had lost its energy and wasn’t working anymore for her. She didn’t want to go on stage; she wanted to feign sickness and sit in the dressing room sleeping on one of the couches near the clothing racks. Sadly, she knew it was too late for that.

So they went into the wings, the violins piercing the air with a soft screech, and the piano keys letting loose a melody that went with the rest of the music. Mercury could slightly see the audience, staring up the stage, waiting for the actors to fill the set of the dinner party that happened at the beginning of the opera. Finally, the violins struck a cord that indicated for them to go out to the stage.

She breathed in deep, the air hitting her lungs shakily. In that moment, she was no longer Mercury Vanadium; she was Violetta Valéry. She crossed the stage, and looked into the audience, feeling the eyes from above and below her. All she did for a moment was smile.

Then the music struck up again, and everybody’s voice spread into the air.