Odell Averill hadn’t always been beautiful. Odell had always been pretty, though, and really that is much more impressive. Even in the far-off days when she was young, lanky, and annoying, she was pretty. So when Lenore glances up four hours into their studying session and doesn’t see her behind the stacks of newspapers and books, she worries. But only for a moment. That worry is quickly snuffed when she finds Odell sprawled on the cushions of the couch dreaming and dozing like their entire world didn't rest on their shoulders that evening.

Lenore studies her figure. Her dress is wrinkling from the tossing and turning of slumber. The documents they were studying cover her like a blanket. She looks so innocent like this. When the peace of sleep sweeps away the need to protect yourself with phony smirks and a big attitude. It aches in Lenore’s chest the longer she lays her eyes on at her.

The little lady turns away from her companion. She checks the clock. It’s 6:05 am, and the Theatre had closed less than an hour ago. Now it's rooms and staircases would be as empty as the streets of a forlorn ghost town.

Lenore stands from her chair, rolling her shoulders and stretching her back until she hears the faint pop of her tired joints. She fetches a blanket from the closet; the only one to be found is thin and ripped. Even so, she takes it and gently tucks it around Odell’s prone form. Down in the depths of the Theatre when the guests are gone and the heating system is turned down, it gets very cold and dark. The only way to find comfort is to lounge by the fireplace and bury yourself in blankets. Looking around though, Lenore sees they were out of firewood. The library is steadily growing more and more sombre; the air turning chilly.

“I may never hear the end of this.” Lenore unbuttons her tailcoat and takes off her neckerchief draping both overtop of Odell; it barely covers her torso.

“I shall collect more blankets after I wash and change.” She thinks as she smooths out the fabric of her grey undershirt, keeping her eyes carefully on herself and nowhere else. Odell sighs softly in her sleep. She shifts and with her slack movements, she nearly topples head first over the side of the couch. With a slight smile that she doesn’t remember permitting to appear, Lenore catches her before she falls. Cradling the singer to her chest, the little lady guides her back onto the couch.

How poetic. The princely lady on one knee with the beautiful siren on her fainting couch.

Odell is limp and messy-haired, she breathes evenly with a faint blush to her cheeks. When Lenore looks down at her, like a sleeping sprite under the soft candlelight, she just can’t help but feel--

Odell smiles in her sleep and snuggles into Lenore’s arms. Just like that, Lenore wakes up from the spell she’d been under. Like a light switch abruptly turned off. Her smile drops so fast it may as well never have been there at all. She blinks. The world had tilted in Odell's presence but it jars back to reality as Lenore jerks her hands away, all hard eyes once more.

She doesn’t dare spare the sleeping vixen another glance. She retrieves her disguise from the desk and left. The Goldmine is dark and empty. The smouldering scent of smoke still reeks strong. Lenore sags against the library door and heaves a sigh.

“Discipline, Lenore. Stay focused.”

~*~

When Lenore was little, even more so than she is now if you could believe it, she loved the night. It was the time when the shy moon finally replaced the glorious sun. Not only that, but the moon is gracious, far more so than the sun, because the moon leaves room in the sky for the light of others. For a person who grew up too small to shine in a world of greater suns, it was a nice bit of comfort. But that was many years ago.

Lenore Laymon had just finished cleaning herself up. Now freshly suited up in a new tailcoat and matching slacks, she is again riding on the shaky platform of the multi elevator. She’s alone. Her cloak is stuffed in a doctor’s bag. Her mask is hanging from a chain on her waist, empty and translucent. She needed a break from the confines of the maks’s glass face. The Theatre is empty but for Mr. Tanner and Odell, both resting for the night.

She stands unmoving, looking more dead than alive, under the tacky yellow lights suspended from the ceiling of the elevator. Her already deathly pale features take on a sickly yellow tint and her eyes flash with cold amber tones. The elevator rumbled on steadily, interjected time and time again by the jerky boom of a passing floor.

She rides the elevator to the central hall on the top floor.

She steps onto the balcony floor, walks behind the black curtains, and stops on in a theatre box. She waves her hands at back curtains. As the red lines in the plated walls flashed, the curtains pulled back to reveal another set of spiralling metal stairs leading straight up.

As the little lady ascends the stairs, she soon comes to an unfinished wreck of a room. The rotting townhouse overtop the Theatre. Lenore comes to the end of the staircase where it cuts off in the open air just underneath the ruined remains of the townhouse’s basement ceiling. It was only when Lenore raises her hand to the rotting wood that a hatch is revealed just above her head.

She climbs through the hatch. The townhouse had been abandoned for over a decade. Most of it had collapsed in on itself. What was once its parlour is the only area still standing, although only by the skin of its teeth. Half of the room is caved in. Bits of drywall and brick pile like an avalanche. The window on the west-facing wall is cracked and yellow with mold and dust.

The little lady drops her bag on the dirty floor. She takes a seat on the cushioned windowsill, ignoring the wet crunch of the decomposing fabric. With softening eyes, she rests her temple against the glass. This is her preferred place for brooding.

The city is a bittersweet scene of the rise of the sun behind the black horizon of the border wall. It’s a mural of golden orange with slight undertones of red and yellow. This is the time Lenore likes the most, nowadays. When the sky is an array of warm colours, the tinted crimson of the cage is hidden. You could pretend it wasn’t even there. You could almost taste the winds of freedom. Lenore looks up at that freedom with lidded tired eyes Seeping through the window, the sunlight creates a strip of searing warmth that cuts through the stagnant blue shadows of the rest of the parlour. The room glistens navy, resembling the bottom of the ocean where the light turns ethereal and suffocating.

Her gaze falls. She reaches into her tailcoat and pulls out her knife. She slices another tiny cut into her forearm. The blood gushes slowly from her arm, dripping down into her palm. She snaps her fingers and the blood dries around the cut far too quickly for it to be natural. The blood that had escaped gathers in her palm like a swirling tidepool. Just a teaspoon of sticky red liquid.

She stares dully at the puddle, unimpressed by the feat she has performed a hundred times. She dips the tip of her pointer finger into the blood. Letting it soaks for a second, she then lifts her finger out. The pool of blood follows her finger in a long wet strand, flowing into the air like a snake coming out of its basket. It swims, chasing her every move like a ribbon in a ribbon dance.

Lenore plays with it as she thinks.

This is a natural talent, a skill some people attempted learned. It came from within and it came from all. It wasn’t useful because only a chosen few could use it. It was powerful because it had to be mastered and all could be masterly. Like riding a bike or learning to play the flute, all it takes is time and effort. This little show was base-level, it was one of the first things she was taught. This was just a little distraction, like twirling your pencil or taping your shoe, but it did not divert her attention as much as she tried to let it.

“The House of Romilly,” She muses in her head, “Gracious… Pristine...” The trail of blood begins to boil. Her brows crease with a fierce frown. “Benevolent sacrifices...” The slow graceful flow of her blood began to jerk and bubble. She bared her teeth in a scowly grin.

“None of you have changed. Even after all these years. You are still too much.” She growls lowly, voice rough as a jagged rock. She speaks to the distant wall like you would a bitter old foe.

Her grin darkens. She laughed lightheartedly, “Too paranoid, too proud, and too selfish....”

She snatches her bag from the floor and rips the letter out. She holds it up to the light of the dawn and the shadow of the border wall.

“Why!?” The blood begins to fall in droplets. The angrier she got the more the blood dripped down. “What is this!? What are you trying to prove!? I am not--!” She throws the letter to the ground. All her blood has fallen, she’s lost control of it. It soaks into the windowsill cushions.“--Your toy to be played with!”

There’s no reply. Not that she expected one. She closes her eyes, her anger having gone cold.

“...I had better get that blanket.” Lenore whispers. The lack of sleep and stress made her sickly, but she fought against the hold of her loneliness. “She will be terrible in the morning without her beauty sleep. Well, she is already terrible in the mornings.”

With a weak swipe of her hand, she pulls her blood from the furniture, sucking up every last drop. It floats like frozen raindrops. Then she plucks an empty vial from her bag. With a flippant hand, she guides her blood into the vial and seals it tight. She picks up her bag and smooths out her attire. Her movements cause the dust to shake out of her clothing like dandruff.

Looking at the blood-filled vial though, a thought occurs to her, “I have not powered the Theatre in a while...” She hesitates, “Perhaps I should do that before I return.”

Pocketing the vial, she takes a deep breath and looks out the window one last time. The sky is warm with morning colours and the moon had disappeared in the sun’s wake.

“Good. Not even the gracious moon would share the sky with me, anyway.”

~*~

Every room in the Theatre is significant and Lenore had crafted each one with a purpose. But the room that came first and the room that surpassed all the others is the little room underneath floor ten. Lenore’s room is where the magic happens, for a turn of phrase, and it is important to check on it every once in a while

That is exactly what Lenore tells herself. She is not doing this to avoid going back to the library with Odell. She still has to clean up that mess. This is not a way for her to run away from her problems. Lenore didn’t do that, cowards did.

That is what she tells herself as she unlocks the door to her room. It swings open.

“What...?”

The room is clean. The papers are gone, the furniture is upright, and the pot was spotless and standing.

She doesn’t panic. She doesn’t.

Lenore creeps into the room. Her hands shake as she reaches for the pot. Nothing. It is empty. Her vision, blurring near the edges, meets the ground. Nothing, it is clean. Cleaner than it had been in years. No papers, no dust, and no concoction. It is gone. She stumbles back.

When had the room started shaking? There is a deep thud to her left. She swivels around. Why is the pot lying on the ground?

She didn’t—When had—What the hell was going on?

The air is getting thick. It chokes her as she takes in a series of rapid gasps. The papers are gone, the furniture is upright; the pot is spotless and standing, and her project was missing. It’s missing. Her back hits the wall and her legs give out. Her chest hurt, it was burning with painful thuds that wracked her shivering body.

She has to stop. She has to calm down. Her collar wrinkles in her hands. Her scalp hurts. She’s tugging at the messy strands of her hair. She’s all dirty. Dust from the books at the library and dust from the abandoned windowsill. The room is cleaner than she is. Hadn’t she just taken a shower? Where had all the dust gone? Where had her project gone?

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

Her heartbeat pounds loud in her ears. She’s panicking.

“Get up!” Lenore is curled in the corner, knees under her chin and face buried in her hands. Why was her face all clammy? “Get up, you fool!”

Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!

When had her chest started to hurt?

“What are you, a child hiding under her bed!? Get up! What kind of adult sits in the corner having fits of ridiculous fancy!? Get up!”

Lenore lets out a snively gasp. The air tastes sweet as she gulps it in furiously. She stumbles onto her feet. Her body is drained, and she moves like a newborn deer walking on freshly formed ice. Her stomach hurts, her head hurts, but she is okay. It is okay. Her eyes flutter open. A clean room and a missing experiment greet her.

“All right, All right. I’m fine. I’m calm. It’s fine.” Her words are slurred ad she’s dizzy. There’s a faint ache in her bones.

Nevertheless, her eyes sharpen as she scans the room.

“It... It is my own fault for leaving the room as I did...” She sits down in her chair, “I just have to find it.”

With closed eyes, she looks.

She feels throughout the Theatre, through the stairways and the stages. She need not move to be anywhere in the building. In essence, Lenore Laymon is the Theatre. Yes, it is made mostly of steel and polished stone but the lifeblood of the building, how it moved and breathed, that was her. Her blood pumps in the Theatre’s artificial veins. Lenore is its heart. Still, a heart does not beat because it wants to. It beats because it needs to. It is an impulse that takes not thought nor conscious decision making. She can feel the Theatre in her like a fantasy and fantasies can only exist in half dreams and the subconsciousness.

Her blood lives in her experiment just as it did in her Theatre. It has only a little of her blood, barely a few tablespoons, but it would be enough to find it. It has to be.

********

It feels like riding on a tidal wave. As weightless as a wisp of smoke but strong like a raging waterfall. Present but fleeting, she beats through the metal beams of floor ten. Every inch of steel and glass is pulsing and lively. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Reaching to the room above and the room above that, all was clear. Ordinary. Rattling through the staircase; peeking through the locks. Pulsing in the floorboards; Odell is dreaming in the library. Bookshelves. An empty chair. A vacant desk. A feeling that can’t be realized. Scorching fire over fickle water. Away to other floors; Mr. Tanner sleeping on floor six. A little room within the walls. He felt familiar and cold.

All around are scents; stone, metal, blood. Stuffy sounds like water boiling and wind whipping. No voices but songs; deep lullabies and faint melodies. Miles pass in minutes. Shaking everything she passed. Disrupting. Freakish. Strange.

Loose threads and toy wheels. Pounding through stone to bright lights and moving hallways. But nothing. Nobody.

No other life. Empty floor through empty floor. Nothing. Usual and predictable. Haunting sensations guide away; above there. Floor four. Rounded and dark. Coloured faces and hanging clothes. Nothing...

But then. A phantom feeling in the shadows. A mist of power. A tense wind; it flicks like a cat's tail. It is new and finicky. Herself but so far away; you but someone else all in one. Another conscious. Another life. Similar. Foreign.

It looks back at her. Feeling but no form. They blink.

********

Lenore’s eyes snap open. The fantasy fades into background noise, except for that phantom feeling. She feels it like the hallucination of a man half lost of mind.

But what strikes her hardest, puts a quickness to her breath, was that it was alive. What other feelings could burn so bright with hunger? It was alive but how?

“I have to get to it.” She thinks. She jumps to her feet, sprinting from the room and up the stairs. She’s too caught up in her thoughts to even watch where she was going. Her stomach is queasy, she must look like a drunken wreck. She sprints and sprints until she gets to the multi elevator, tumbling into its platform. She has to lean heavily against the elevator sidebars to catch her breath. She is panting hard enough to drive a hacking cough from her overworked body.

But her mind doesn’t let her rest.

“It is alive.” She whispered in her head “Holy shit… It’s alive...” With that sudden thought, she pulls out her knife.

~*~

The Aurora Array is a glorious show of colour and puppetry and it was the only room in the Theatre that was round. Like a coliseum, high rising seats on all sides enclosing a circled stage in the centre. The Harlequin is the messiest room, The Play Cave is the fanciest, the Absinthe is the smelliest, and the Goldmine is the smokiest. The Aurora is the darkest.

Lenore exits the elevator. As she makes her way to the Aurora’s front foyer she holds her knife tensely by her side. She stands confident and tall, metaphorically at least, but privately she is jittery and unsure.

The foyer is as dark as the stage. Thin lace curtains hang off the walls, drape over tables, and litter the floor. Pale and patterned like muddy snowflakes. They dangle from the ceiling like lavish spiderwebs. Lenore doesn’t have to duck as she walks under them.

She breathes in, steeling herself. She breathes out, and she is ready.

Fishing out her skeleton key, she unlocks the black velvet doors, stepping into the gloomy arena. White lighted lanterns dangled up high like the fireflies of a grim twilight evening.

The Aurora is childlike in nature. Designed after the dreams of those untouched by indifference. Made for the liveliest of guests but not necessarily the living.

It’s so pretty here.

Lenore came to this room very little. But as she focuses, she can feel every crevice and cleft. Smooth stone and worn leather. She can feel its presence hovering in the centre of the stage. Cautiously, the little lady holds her knife in front of her chest, offensively. The ground below them shakes slightly as she closes in.

What are those things up there? They look like stars.

She creeps across the floor, silent as a ghost, towards the… thing. The fingers of her free hand reach out and mime a grasping action. The floorboards copy her movements and curl them upwards, quiet as a mouse. They loosely caged around the Being like a clawed hand.

I like it!

It looks so… delicate. Flimsy papers rustle faintly from its internal wind created by the flux of blue substance channelled at the orb barely visible at its center. Its body is a frail thing, holding very little shape or structure. It is an ethereal sight.

I… think...

There is red though too. She can feel it. Red erupts like sparks, fleetingly rippling alongside the blue. She can smell it, faint iron enticing her nose. It is her red, that’s why she can feel it so strongly. But… there is also another red there. She… she can feel it too?

I’m forgetting something...?

It feels… confused. But happy. It feels safe and gentle. It makes her hesitate. The spears of metal and wood freeze. They point sharp and ominously like sabres. Like fangs. So close to pouncing on the Being. So close to piercing it paper flesh.

I want… I want to go home.

Lenore is right behind it. It floats above the ground. It is taller than her and yet it feels so small. It’s ignorant of the little lady’s presence. Lenore relaxes her fingers and lets her free hand fall to her side. The fangs of the floorboards sink away into the darkness

Where am I? Where am I from?

Now that she is behind the Being she feels its presence all the stronger. It is so close she swears she can almost hear it. It is weird. This quiet, chipper voice. She slips the knife into her tailcoat.

I… I’d like to go outside. How do I get out of this place?

It turns around. Two big holes in its papery skin; they widened and the swirls of blue and red are aware and conscious. There is a slit underneath them. It opens just a little, the corners flex down like it’s frowning.

... Who are you...?

They stare at each other. Surprise, confusion, wonder.

“...Hello, I am Lenore Laymon. And you are?”