3 // 365

 So, before you think I cheated and skipped a day, I didn't. I really did write this yesterday. I just had a really rough time and didn't get a chance to post. I'll have another one up later this evening. Thank you, ladies and gents! <3 Enjoy.

From the garden window of Nora's ballet studio she could see autumn beginning to take over the deciduous forest. The eloquent green leaves had begun to transform into vivid reds and golds. Nora aimed for perfection as she spun pirouettes, but the colors had become such a distraction. The colors blurred as she turned in tight circles until they became a watercolored mix in her mind. She came to a stumbling halt and tried to catch her breath; her eyes never leaving the revolutionizing leaves.

"Nora!" The voice of her instructor broke into her thoughts. "What are doing? Rehearsal isn't over. I guess we're going to have to begin from the top, ladies." The entire class groaned behind Nora. The music began to play again, and Nora took first position. Just as the queue for the first motion sounded, Nora broke from the group and darted outside.

"Nora! Nora! Where are you going?!" Her instructor called after her, but her question fell on the deaf ears. As she ran, Nora began to question herself. When had dance become so mundane? She could vividly remember a time when the gracefulness of the art had spoken directly to her soul and caused her to body to respond in fluid movements. Her pink ballet slippers pounded against the ground as she sprinted towards the glittering forest.

Nora burst through the tree line and instantly felt the magic of the forest consume her. She slowed to a walk and continued her journey deeper into the woodland grazing her fingers across the bark of the tree trunks as she went. After a while, Nora felt at home in the woods. She settled down on the grass and began listening to the sounds of the world around her. Somewhere in the stance was a stream of rushing water and closer to her was a woodpecker creating a tempo against the outer husk of a tree. Gradually the rhythm began to move her body and she began to dance.

                                                                

Nora started slowly, keeping pace with the sounds around her, but eventually the sound of her own heart beat became her music and she began to spin.  Her circles got tighter and faster until she was creating a swirling vortex in the dirt that was swallowing her from the ground up. She spun so quickly that it felt to her as if the earth had stopped moving. Finally, Nora fell to the ground and drifted to sleep.

When she awoke, the air was brisk and the leaves had all fallen from the trees. Nora sat up, startled and confused as she took in her surroundings. There was no color, no life and briefly Nora found herself pondering whether or not this was death. Nora stretched her legs and then arched her stiff back before standing. She tried to retrace her steps through the forest to find her way back home, but the more she walked the more lost she became.

After what seemed liked hours of trekking through the thick, dead trees Nora fell to the ground and began to cry. She hugged her knees to her chest and it was then that she realized that her once pale, rose colored slippers had been replaced with golden ones. Her fingers gingerly traced over the fabric. Instantaneously, memories of the glistening harvest forest flooded her. She watched in her mind as the gold, red, and orange left tumbled from the trees and rained down her as she leaped and twisted beneath the trees.

Suddenly, the urge to dance again overwhelmed her. She started slowly, but when she gave into the quick sound of cracking winter limbs and the brisk wind her body began to contort into sharp angles; all around her tufts of green cracked through the gray ground. Emerald green buds appeared on the trees and then blossomed into flowers. Nora danced until her body collapsed from exhaustion. She lay on the warming ground and realized that she had found love in her movements again. She reached down and touched the golden slippers one more time and they comforted her as she drifted to sleep. Nora never noticed the way the trees seemed to smile down at her performance or how the forest creatures gathered to watch as Nora welcomed a new season into life.