LYRA KANE in my rendition of black swan. @ᵍʰᵃʷᵗʰᵒʳⁿᵉˢˡᵒᵛᵉ ᵉᵛᵉⁿᵗ ᵃⁿᵈ ⁱᵈᵉᵃ!
-- the year is 1878, 15 year old Lyra Aquila has grasped at the opportunity of a lifetime. Paris. leaving her family behind in Spain, Lyra is dropped in a country where she knows nobody, she can't speak the language, and struggles to adjust to the cruel truth of the outside world after being sheltered for the majority of her life. Feeling overlooked and excluded from her ballet classmates, she begins to experience disturbing and odd dreams leading up to her debut in Swan Lake, in which she plays the lead part.
outfits for lyra kanes swan lake.
a/n : i am sorry about the pacing and writing of this i haven't written in a long time!! @ghawthorneslove suggested for me to write lyra into a black swan story for her event so i drew lots of inspiration from the 2010 film and the film ballerina! except this is set in the late victorian era and i made Lyra Spanish just because i thought it would be nicer than making her american! LOTS OF GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IM SORRY!! Again i am so sorry for how bad this is but it was so fun to write lyra in some dark fantasy thing where her mind is taken over, you guys can decide what happens to her at the end i thought the original black swans open ending was so compelling i wanted to do the same thing!!
𝒮un streamed through the thin curtains of Lyra's dorm and illuminated her face, for a moment, in her deep sleep, she could pretend she was back in Spain, resting on the warm sand while her mother gently braided her hair back, like the mermaids her father described from his travels on the sea. Lyra slowly blinked herself awake, her heart heavy with the memory of home, she looked around the room only to see the three other girls she shared this dorm with all sat on one bed scraping each others pin straight hair back into a bun, she made eye contact with the oldest and tallest of the bunch, Camille. Camille was 17 and fond of running up to Lyra and saying something in french, knowing full well Lyra had not yet learned the language. Camille snickered with the two other girls as Lyra padded to the shared bathroom, the director would come knocking any minute, he would make the girls line up and inspect their appearance head to toe and he would surely make a comment about the wild curls around Lyra's hairline she just couldn't get to co-operate with her bun no matter how hard she pulled with the brush.
''1st position, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Now repeat...'' Lyra automatically followed the orders bellowed by her ballet teacher she had nicknamed 'bruja fea' due to the odd greenish tint to her skin and evil heart, her first day in the academy the teacher had stretched lyra to the point of tears only to mock her in front of the entire class, and she had picked on Lyra ever since. Mademoiselle Dubois stalked over to Lyra and spat some angry sounding french in her direction, of which Lyra's broken understanding could translate two words, very bad. Lyra knew, she was not bad, after all the director had casted her as the Swan Queen in the show in two weeks! The Swan Queen was a part usually reserved for the older girls, however the director told her he believed she could handle it, and handle it she would, every evening she stayed behind in the studio to practice her variations over and over until she sluggishly dragged herself to bed.
Lyra was snapped out of her trance when Dubois called her name and pointed to her side, a sign Lyra knew meant she would have to demonstrate a highly technical skill she did not know how to do to make her look a fool in front of the class, but as Lyra stepped away from the barre, her face smacked against the polished wooden floors and blood began to drip from her nose and down her face, her vision was going fuzzy around the edges and through the soft ringing in her w ears she could hear the laughs, the laughs of the girls surrounding her on all sides, circling her like a pack of wild cats, of course they weren't really, just standing to the side snickering at her bloody face and stained leotard, but Lyra's world was spinning. She wanted home, she wanted her mother, she wanted to be away from this place and back in the church where her parents forced her to go every Sunday. Suddenly the sobs were coming hard and fast, and Lyra wasn't sure when she had ran out the studio but she was now pacing down a hallway as quick as she could. Unbeknownst to what she would find.
It had been hours, Lyra had wandered for hours , reminiscing of home and thoughts of how she should've never left churning around in her mind. Lyra slowly blinked the tears from her eyes and observed her surroundings, she was unfamiliar with this part of the academy, there was no gilded walls and painted ceilings but in their place was cave like structures where water dripped from somewhere Lyra couldn't quite place, the crypt was dark except for a few torches placed around the room illuminating shadows that almost looked like ballerinas prancing around the walls. She took a step forward, faintly aware of the cool breeze that rustled her hair and danced down her back. Her foot touched something wet, the cold liquid soaking her silk flats and clinging to her feet. Looking down she discovered that a dark river flowed through this curious room, so dark she could not see her own feet through the murky water, as she watched the water flow down the river and out through a shadowed archway, she did not know that there was something lurking behind her, not a person or an animal, but a smoke that could blend into walls and people, and Lyra was it's next host. Suddenly, a white feather bobbed across her feet, alone and out of place in the river of darkness, naturally she reached out to touch it, to pick it up and keep it for herself as a memory of this odd place, but as she bent down and stretched out her fingers, a sudden darkness came about her eyes and she launched herself into the river.
Water spilled endlessly down her throat as she choked and grabbed at the river, desperately trying to keep her head above water, her memory blurred and moved whenever she tried to pinpoint the exact moment that she had fallen in. Lyra endlessly flapped her arms around gasping desperately for air, the torches that had illuminated the room just five minutes ago had all gone out, leaving her swallowed up by the darkness. Soon enough Lyra began to fade out of consciousness and as she did there was one image floating in the back of her brain, a pearlescent feather slowly drifting across the blackness of her mind.
Lyras head lolled against the cool cobbled paths of the streets of Paris. She felt as though something was missing from her, something deep within her heart, although with this newfound emptiness came a staggering feeling of relief, as though all the troubles of the world had been lifted off her shoulders. She was unsure of how she survived the river, and how she was now curled into a dark alleyway as icy rain pelted her, but she was too tired to form a thought, to wrack her brain of all the possible ways she had made it. She decided to lay for an hour after she came to herself, in some ways the darkness was comforting to her now as it hadn’t been before, if she couldn’t see Paris, it was easier to pretend she wasn’t there in the first place. She wondered if anyone at the company had come looking for her, if the girls that whispered horrible things were now whispering in concern. Would anyone believe her about the strange encounter in the crypt? It didn’t matter, she had nobody to tell.
Sluggishly she made her way through the winding streets, passing couples kissing in a café window, the buskers on the street playing gentle piano, men lurking in dark corners discussing something hushed with eachother. It reminded her why she had come to Paris in the first place, in Spain her family lived in a small coastal village so her fathers boat was easily accessible, she knew almost everyone, and none of them were particularly interesting. But here, in Paris, it seemed every person was followed by their own story, their own passions and hates. The grand green roof of the opera house came into view and Lyra was grateful to be back, she wanted nothing more than to flop into bed and forget about this awful night.
She curled into her bed and prayed for sleep to take her, for the loss of consciousness which meant she could stop replaying the events that had unfolded that night. Eventually, her prayers were answered. However sleep took Lyra to a much worse place than she could have imagined.
Lyra awoke with her head cushioned by deep green moss, and cool water gentley lapping (?) against her fingers, clearing her head she pushed herself up and came to notice she was in a shadowed wood, surrounded by trees twisting into eachother, creating the illusion of an endless ceiling of warped branches. Turning her attention to the pond she discovered there was a lone swan gracefully floating on the water, its wings so white and pearly it was like a drug to Lyra, something calling her towards it. She found herself unable to stand so crawled towards the bank of the pond, the swan almost seemed to be mirroring her actions swimming towards her as she crawled towards it, until eventually lyra was up to her knees in the water and came eye to eye with the swan, and she could have sworn that in the reflection of its beady eyes she saw her mother, her face so similar to Lyras as it always had been, until it changed, and the reflection was again Lyras face. She wanted so badly to touch this swan, this beautiful creature of grace and beauty, of everything a ballerina strived to be. she reached out again, and this time she didnt fall in, but as she stretched her fingers to it, the swan split in two, and blood spurted all over her face. She stumbled back gasping for air as it seemed the world closed in on her, everything twisted and whirled around her and she was hit with a sense of deja vu. As the world went black once again she caught a sight of the swan’s mangled body, and she was sure, in the middle of the guts and blood, she saw the same necklace she wore around her neck now.
Lyra woke up with the air taken out of her lungs, she gulped in big breaths as she clutched onto her blankets. Just a dream the dorm was empty, which meant she was late and would no doubt be called into the director to discuss why she had not been at dinner the previous night and was now late to her class. Lyra moved to the bathroom but pain struck through her shoulder. She fell to her knees on the cold wood floor and dragged herself to the bathroom to inspect her shoulder, she must have pulled a muscle in training yesterday, but when she turned around in the mirror, she found a huge gaping gash in her shoulder, and something black sticking out of it. She pulled on the black object with multiple gags and gasps of pain, and when she wrangled it out, she was horrified to see it was a long black feather. A swan feather.
The weeks leading up to Lyra’s debut as the swan queen moved in a blur. Each night she dreamed another disturbing dream, every once involving some kind of swan and ending with her drenched in blood. Each morning she would wake with burning pain in her shoulder and the gash would open wider, more feathers would sprout from it, pushing through her skin. Lyra became more violent towards her classmates, every mean comment, every snicker, would strike through her heart with such intensity and anger she would switch into a fit of violence, shoving and screeching like an animal at the other girls. There had been incidents at dinner, she had been sure the chef had told her he was serving swan meat, and she fell to her knees in the hall and screamed until she came out of her frenzy confused and unsure of what had happened. One night after a frenzy in which she had run out of her class and jumped into the seine, Lyra sat hopelessly in her room. Scared to sleep for fear of meeting the swan again, and disturbed and confused about these changes she was going through, she heard the director and Mademoiselle Dubois discussing about an asylum, Lyra’s french was improving faster and faster everyday, she was able to understand their conversation. “We have already put her in a dorm alone, what else can we do?” The director hissed, “Sir, she may need an asylum! I see in the newspapers, teenage girls just like herself going mad, locking them up is the answer they say.” The director shut this down immediately, “If she wants to go mad she may do so after the show.”
Now, it was the night of said show, and sobs wracked Lyra's body as she sat in her dressing room. She was so lost in her life, so alone, and now she was insane too. She wanted nothing more than to return to spain and she promised herself, after tonight, she could.
Lyra bravely wiped her tears from her face and stared at herself in the mirror, she was no longer a little girl.
She was the swan queen. She had been given the most prestigious role in all of ballet, the goal that so many girls like her reached for, and she had it in her hands. It didn't matter if she was insane, it didn't matter if she had something evil corrupting her brain, splitting her into two, she would dance until her feet bled, she would be the best swan queen paris had ever seen. Then nobody, nobody, would laugh at her again.
She examined her shoulder that had multiple plasters just barely hiding the huge wound, and when she made sure they were secure, she turned to leave her changing room. But by the door, there lay a dead swan, killed by what looked like a shotgun. Lyra stumbled backwards into the mirror, and the shards rained down like diamonds falling in the sky, and for a moment, she saw herself in them as they fell. Not as she was now, but her as a child, she saw herself, she saw a pure and happy girl, a girl whose father brought her treasures of the sea, a girl who's mother braided her hair on the beach. It wasn't who she was now, Now she was the swan queen. Lyra sprinted out of the dressing room, faintly aware of the voices of the other girls, faintly aware of one of the stage hands calling her name, she closed her eyes and breathed, tonight she would dance the best she ever had, she would transform and be celebrated throughout all of Paris, then finally she would be free of this disease of her mind.
That night, the swan queen danced and danced her little feet off. She spun and pirouetted perfectly to the music. People whispered in the crowd about how a girl so young could dance with a grace far beyond her years. But that night, it wasn't Lyra Aquila who was dancing on the stage. She was right, she had transformed, she was no longer a girl but a swan, a beautiful, graceful, swan. At some point in the show, she felt her back split open and two grand swan wings, she ignored the searing pain and continued to dance, she ignored the stage crew yelling at her the show was over, she only wanted to dance, because she was the swan queen, she danced and danced and danced and danced and danced all night, and she was free, free of the evil force that had stolen her mind from her for so many weeks, she just felt so, so, free as she turned and turned on stage, so free.
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