Lamp oil

Prologue

Tobirama

I had never been afraid of it.

The fire.

Some people made the moon or the ocean their friend. I thought that was stupid, normal people believing they had a connection with something as universal as the only heavenly body orbiting Earth or the huge amounts of water covering it.

Me, I felt a connection to fire.

I wouldn't say we were friends, fire and I. There was nothing friendly between us. I would rather say we had more of a symbiotic relationship. The fire enabled me to take my mind off things. I enabled the fire to come alive.

I turned on my feet, covered in light and bendable leather shoes that scraped on the sanded floor of my practice tent, but I couldn't hear the scraping due to the soft roaring of the fire taking up most of the space in my ears.

I was holding a staff, each end covered in Kevlar and lit, and I twisted and turned the staff around me in loops and eights, changing hands from time to time, the metal of the staff gliding between my fingers pleasantly as I created patterns of dangerous, glowing orange. 

After a while, I stopped my slow fire-dance, one foot in front of the other, turned the staff behind my back for a while, changing hands with each turn. I allowed myself to enjoy the heat from the fire for a few seconds, transplanted through my plastic-free black beanie that was protecting my hair and to my scalp, colouring the bare skin on my upper body as I always trained and performed bare-chested. I focussed on the sensation of my trousers, also plastic-free, hanging loosely off my hips, to not let my mind wander too much as I started twirling the staff in front of me instead of behind.

Then, I took a deep breath in, breathed out, and threw the staff in the air.

It spun there for a while, suspended in time, then came back to me as if longing for my hand. I captured the staff leisurely, having done this so many times it felt almost as natural as breathing, and immediately began twisting it in eights from the left side of my body to my right.

Feeling done, I walked with the staff to one end of the practice tent, twisting it in my hand still, and extinguished first the one side, then the other in a bucket of water. The smoke rose around me alongside the hissing sound, and I closed my eyes. I just stood for a while, enjoying the scent of burning and the fatigue in my strong arms caused by hours of practicing.

Then, I took my beanie off my head, pulled my hand through my colourless hair, leaned the staff against the tent wall, and walked out.

I was done with my fire dance for the evening.

I was done with a lot of things in life. 

Izuna

Tears were streaming down my face, and I closed my eyes against them.

As if that would make it better.

Dancing with my eyes closed prevented me from doing the more physically challenging balance elements, but I didn't care. For now, I just needed to dance against my tears. Not with them, but against them.

Harshly.

Making the tears go away.

Slowly.

I took a deep breath in, and as I released it from the prison that was my lungs, I activated the muscles in my calves, came up on the toes of my pointe shoes again. I let my arms come out on the sides of my body, tensed my slender fingers up.

Then, I started stepping in soft twists and turns.

My hair, ragged and short and black, flew around my forehead and ears in a pleasant way, droplets of sweat creating a rainpour of glitter around me created by hours of dancing. My leg muscles strained beneath my skin and I allowed them, allowed them to swallow some of the pain I felt in my soul.

I'm going to miss this.

I danced for a long time, allowing the tapping of my pointe shoes against the wood click my soul into place, or as much into place as it was possible, which honestly wasn't very. In soft circles, back and forth, until my body was straining which always took a long time after many, many years of ballet.

Finally, I allowed myself to open my eyes, looked at my body in the tall mirror. My muscles played beneath my skinny black training tights as I held my balance on my toes, my big, grey T-shirt covered in sweat, clinging to my tiny body shaped by years of endorsement in ballet culture. I took another deep breath, and with what was left within me, I did pirouette after pirouette, my eyes capturing themselves in the mirror for every turn, my short hair flying around me in a frenzy. 

Perfection... It was all about perfection, and in that moment, my strive for it made me forget everything else because I had to, in order to maintain my balance. Straighter legs, tenser muscles, more protruding chest... That never-ending striving for perfection was like balm to my soul on days like this, while other days, it was torture. Or maybe, it was always torture, but some days that torture was like balm to my soul.

I finished my pirouettes and landed back on my feet.

Then, I collapsed on the ground.

I was alone, completely alone in the studio as it was midnight. I felt my body starting to tremble, the tears like shockwaves through my body. I lay down with my palms to the cool wooden floor, let my forehead touch it, let my tears salt the shiny lacquer. I allowed myself to cry, to be sad, to feel all of the feelings that I needed to feel, none of which were useful.

Finally, after a long time, I decided I'd had enough, and stood up to leave. I picked up my backpack, took my phone out of it, clicked on the app I used to measure my blood glucose via the sensor in my arm. I would miss the convenience; tomorrow I would sell my phone and then I would have to start measuring manually. I reached into my bag, took a fruit sugar cube, popped it into my mouth, not needing insulin as I had just worked out, and put my phone back into my backpack.

Then, not allowing myself to think too much, I took of my pointe shoes, put them in my backpack, and closed it.

I left the studio where I had lived my childhood dreams.

I left it forever.