Zlata Karnaeva
The production’s lead whose tether to reality begins to fray as the theatrical set transforms into a vivid, sensory memory.
Maksim "Maks"
The premier danseur portraying Zlata’s fiancé in Silence of the Crystal Star ballet, whose stately, choreographed grace is shattered alongside a bottle of Mirovskaya vodka.
Alina & Ksenia
Two of Aleksandr’s "Seven Stars" ensemble who enters the scene with the vacant, doll-like elegance of seasoned performers.
The Ethereal Boy
A grieving observer stationed within an abandoned fortune teller’s tent, watching the unfolding drama through a shifting orb.
--
The premiere of the Silence of the Crystal Star ballet at the Zinovi Theatre continued under the pale, glowing stage light. The dacha set—a neatly painted imitation of rural comfort—sat beneath the suspended birches of the backdrop. Everything appeared as it should: perfect, artificial, contained.
Maksim, playing Zlata’s fiancé in the show, was hosting a party in this scene. His movements were deliberate, stately, every gesture cued to the orchestra’s soft pulse.
A soft knock rattled the dacha’s painted door—once, twice, perfectly in sync with the orchestra’s rhythm. Zlata opened the door. Alina and Ksenia—two of Aleksandr’s ‘Seven Stars’ ensemble—posed in fourth position at the doorway, smiling with the vacant grace of dolls.
For a moment Zlata forgot the choreography; a wave of déjà vu pressed against her in the women's presence.
Zlata knew them. Or had known them.
“Do you remember who I am?” she asked them without realizing she’d spoken.
The two women only smiled, a flicker of confusion—or pity—in their eyes. Then they glided inside, executing a silent pas de bourrée couru across the floor.
As Zlata turned to close the door behind them, the texture beneath her fingers changed. The painted grain of the prop door had deepened into something real—old varnish, worn smooth by time. A faint smell of pine sap and smoke suddenly hung in the air.
In the kitchen area nearby, Maksim had reached for a bottle of Mirovskaya vodka, but it slipped from his grasp, shattering. The crash echoed too long, too sharply. Shards glittered across the floor like scattered frost.
Zlata stared at the wreckage on the floor in stunned silence, as if a harrowing memory was forcing its way into her psyche...
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Abandoned Fortune Teller's Tent. Somewhere in Russia.
Back in the fortune teller’s tent, the orb shifted. The Ethereal Boy watched as the bottle of vodka tumbled in slow motion, spinning through the air before shattering. He closed his eyes, grief spilling unbidden.
He remembered that autumn day on the train, sometime after his beloved Maksim had left for his mission to space. In the hushed intimacy of the train carriage, the Ethereal Boy had whispered the prayer he carried in his heart: “Hear my voice from the deep, I call. Oh hear my voice. Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into morning...”
The scene within the orb morphed, continuing in the Moscow region. A grey winter day, in an old apartment. Dominika, the first soloist who had recently lost the prima ballerina promotion to her rival, Ksenia Zelyaeva, stood at her window watching the snow fall outside.
Dominika did not yet know that the knock coming would change everything.
She did not yet know that some truths, once uncovered, cannot be buried again.
The Ethereal Boy looked on, his grief intensifying, wishing he could stop what he already knew was coming.
Zlata Karnaeva
A ballerina dissolving into her own performance, she occupies a "theatre within a theatre" where the boundaries between the Zinovi stage and a haunting dacha interior have completely eroded. Whether she is a performer in a silk skirt or a cosmonaut adrift in the void near TASYA 282, she moves with a terrifying, scripted precision toward a mirror that ripples like water, searching for a face she no longer recognizes as her own.
The Seven Stars
A spectral ensemble lingering in the "artist recreation room" just beyond the dacha’s wooden walls, their presence felt through muffled laughter and the slow, nostalgic rhythm of a static-filled radio. They represent the "backstage" of Zlata’s reality—a violet-tinted limbo where they dance under a spinning disco ball, tethering the surreal dreamscape to the physical architecture of the theatre.
The Cosmic Ballerinas
Celestial entities existing in a distant region of space, clad in glimmering fur and rough-hewn masks as they perform a solemn, atmospheric ritual. They act as the silent observers on the other side of the glass, their movements mirrored by a cosmic orb that captures Zlata’s reflection.
Aleksandr "Aleks" Lebedev (UNSEEN)
The ghost of a former love and a symbol of the vanished "real" world, he exists only as a whispered name and a hope for direction. He is the missing anchor in Zlata’s fractured consciousness, the one she expects to see standing behind her in the mirror for a ballet that has long since abandoned its choreography.
--
The curtains opened again for another scene of Silence of the Crystal Star. The stage had become a theatre within a theatre—a vast dacha interior framed by painted birch trees, a single brass bed beneath a frosted window, and, beyond that, a suggestion of a “backstage” within the set itself: a corridor lined with dressing rooms and the faint shimmer of a rehearsal hall beyond. The illusion was complete; from her position on the bed, Zlata could no longer tell where the Zinovi Theatre ended and where the ballet began.
Somewhere in that inner corridor, the Seven Stars were gathered in the “artist recreation room,” slow-dancing to the faint strains of a radio. The light was low and tinted with violet from a small, spinning disco ball they had hung from the rafters. Tables and chairs were pushed aside; their laughter was muffled by the wooden walls of the dacha Zlata was in. It was all part of the choreography, or at least it was supposed to be—but to her, it didn’t feel like a ballet anymore.
She could feel the warmth of the Seven Stars moving beyond the door. The music was real. The night was real. Then came the drift.
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Zlata wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep—perhaps it was written into the performance, perhaps not—but the dream took her without warning. She saw Ivanov’s Planet, floating in the abyss, an isolated blue-grey sphere trembling beneath the shadow of a dark mass. TASYA 282 loomed above it, cold and immense.
It was night on the planet’s surface. She saw a dacha standing alone in a vast field specked with birch tress, its windows faintly glowing. Somewhere within, a flashlight flickered, flashing against the panes like a distress signal. She crouched behind a row of black, leafless bushes, breath fogging the glass of her helmet—except, wait—she was wearing one now. She was a cosmonaut, suspended in the endless void of space.
Then the whispers came. “Zlata… Zlata…”
The voice emerged from the spiral of the black hole. TASYA 282’s edge began to blur, its light bending and folding upon itself.
Her name echoed again, a chorus of frayed whispers rising from the event horizon: “ZLATA!”
She drifted closer, powerless, her hands outstretched, her reflection curving back at her in the glare of the accretion light. Inside her visor, her own face smiled—a wide, terrible grin she didn’t recognize as her own.
The black hole opened like an eye.
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Zlata awoke with a start—sweat damp on her collarbone, her breath uneven. The dacha set surrounded her in silence.
She looked down. Her tank top clung to her skin, her white crêpe skirt hung slightly askew, and her fishnet stockings were torn along one thigh. None of it felt like costume anymore—it felt lived in, worn through.
For a long moment, she sat motionless in the brass bed, listening to the faint hum of the radio beyond the walls—the Seven Stars were still dancing somewhere in the “recreation room.” The melody was slow, nostalgic, threaded with static.
Then, without thinking, she rose and slipped on her tapochki. Her body moved like it was following stage direction she couldn’t recall learning. She crossed the dacha’s wooden floor, walked “offstage,” opened the “backstage” door, and stepped into the dim hallway beyond.
The world did not change. The hallway was still a set, yet her steps sounded too real—too hollow, too weighted.
She reached her “dressing room” door. The same one from before. She hesitated before turning the handle.
Inside, the air was still. The candle she’d lit earlier—during the fortune ritual—had long since melted down, leaving only a small black crater of wax. The two small mirrors still stood on either side of the large vanity mirror, their edges tilted just so, creating a faint corridor of endless reflections that shimmered faintly in the dark.
Zlata approached the vanity and sat down in the seat in front of it. Her reflection in the mirror blinked back. She reached out and tapped the center of the mirror. The surface of the glass rippled, inexplicably, like water.
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From within the shimmer, something vast stirred—the cosmic sphere that hovered behind the Three Cosmic Ballerinas in another region of space. The orb’s surface wavered, and within it, the faint outline of Zlata appeared, seated in the dark, her finger against the mirror’s glass in her plane of existence.
On the other side, the Cosmic Ballerinas paused in their slow, celestial dance. Their furred costumes glimmered with starlight, their rough-hewn space-rock masks tilted toward the image of her as if in recognition.
Zlata frowned, whispering, “Aleks?”—half expecting to see the man she once loved appear behind her reflection, to tell her what she was supposed to do next. But only her own face stared back, flickering with light from somewhere far away. Then, from somewhere far beyond the “dressing room”—past the painted birches, past the dacha on the “main set”—came a ripple of laughter. It was faint at first, distant and distorted, like the echo of a forgotten recording. Yet as it carried through the theatre’s stage, it struck her as unbearably real.
She froze, her reflection flickering with the sound. The laughter rose again, fuller this time—an audience amused by something she could not see. She glanced around the "dressing room". The mirror, the walls, even the air seemed to hold its breath, as though the theatre itself were listening too.
The Cosmic Ballerinas began to move in their region of space. They sidestepped in perfect unison, performing a sweeping, solemn rotation, their arms extended toward the orb in a gesture that felt like both greeting and recognition. They spun again, faster this time, limbs cutting through the void like desperate birds before collapsing forward, reaching one last time toward the image of the girl trapped behind glass. And then—she was gone.
Zlata’s presence vanished from their astral realm. The orb darkened. The Cosmic Ballerinas froze mid-pose, hands pressed over the hollow place where their hearts would have been.
The signal had been received. It was time for the Premier Cosmic Ballerina to shed their celestial guise and take on the shape of the astrophysicist, Mr. Pereversev; the guide Zlata would need for the journey to her final destination.
Zlata Karnaeva
A woman suspended between the artifice of a stage performance and the visceral sting of a forgotten reality. As the dacha set begins to ripple and breathe around her, she is forced to confront a crushing wave of shame and the physical evidence of her betrayal, finding herself trapped in a domestic nightmare that is rapidly dissolving into something cosmic and cold.
Maksim "Maks"
The stage fiancé whose performance has fractured into raw, human fury. Transformed by the discovery of a silver watch, he sheds his scripted persona to become a vessel for a deeper, more ancient recognition. He stands as a shifting figure of both pity and menace, his identity flickering between a scorned lover and a ghost from a past life.
Aleksandr "Aleks" Lebedev (UNSEEN)
The spectral antagonist whose presence is felt only through the "stain" of his forgotten watch. He represents the catalyst for Zlata’s shame and Maksim’s transition into violence, serving as the third point in a tragic triangle within the ballet story.
--
The curtains rose to a low hum of static applause, marking the continuance of the Silence of the Crystal Star ballet. The dacha appeared once more, but it was changing—slowly, almost imperceptibly. The wallpaper rippled like water. The painted birches outside the window seemed to breathe.
Zlata stood in the entryway of the dacha, closing the door gently behind her.
She turned and saw Maksim sitting on the couch. The lights on the set caught half his face, casting the other half into shadow. His expression was unreadable—somewhere between exhaustion and fury.
“Is everything okay?” Zlata asked, her voice trembling.
Maksim looked up at her, eyes reflecting something she couldn’t place—pity? recognition? He extended his hand, holding up a silver watch with a cracked brown leather strap. “I found this,” he said quietly. “On my bedside table.”
Faint, distorted laughter drifted from the audience. Zlata froze.
The watch glinted in the stage light. She recognized it instantly. Aleksandr’s! He must have left it there after that night—after their sexual liaison in the ballet's opening scene. Suddenly, she remembered her affair with Mikhail at the gala, after Maksim had proposed to her. She could no longer reliably distinguish between the two affairs—which one was real and which one was a stage performance—and a wave of shame and confusion rose in her throat.
“Maksim…” she began, but her words faltered.
He turned the watch over in his hand, running his thumb across the back as though searching for an engraving. “Whose is it?” he asked. His voice was trembling now—too raw, too human for performance.
Zlata couldn’t speak. The air was thick and heavy. The set around them creaked softly, as though the wood itself were listening. The rug beneath her feet was no longer fabric—it was worn carpet, real, stained by time.
“Zlata,” he said again, rising from the couch slowly. “Who does this belong to?”
Something about the way he said her name made her flinch. The syllables felt off—as if he were saying another name entirely beneath it, one she didn’t remember.
She backed toward a wall. “Please,” she whispered, “you don’t understand—”
But Maksim stepped closer, the watch glinting in his hand. The light in the dacha shifted again: the walls narrowing, the ceiling dipping lower, as if the set itself were closing in.
“I won’t ask again.” His voice broke through the false air of the theatre—raw and real. “Whose watch is this?”
Zlata’s breath caught. She could see the pulse in his throat, the tremor in his hand. The audience was laughing again, but the sound was warped now—drawn out, echoing like a recording played backward.
“Maks, please—”
He took another step. The stage light above them flickered. For a brief moment, she saw him not as her stage fiancé nor her real life ex-fiancé, but as someone else—someone she once knew in a time before this life. The same watch had been here before.
Pain blossomed across her cheek before she could process what was happening. The audience gasped—or was it laughter again? She tasted copper. Her hand went to her face in stunned silence. The air around them shimmered. For a moment, she thought she saw the stage dissolve—the dacha opening into something vast, something cold and full of stars.
“I don’t think you are who you say you are,” Maksim said, his voice betraying a sense of fear, as though he didn't think she was real.
She stared at him, scared. The sound of applause rose in waves, distorting as it grew.
“And I’m not who you think I am,” he said at last, his voice distant, as if coming from somewhere beyond himself.
The silver watch gleamed faintly in his palm. He turned it once, then again, the motion slow and mechanical. Each rotation seemed to catch the light differently—first cold white, then amber, then a strange deep blue that didn’t belong to the theatre. The ticking grew louder in the quiet; rhythmic and insistent.
For a moment, his reflection shimmered across the watch’s curved glass: but he was different somehow—familiar, laughing. A cosmonaut’s suit flashed behind him within the watch, a blur of stars and vapor. Then it was gone.
Maksim blinked hard, clutching the watch tighter. He looked as if he might speak again but couldn’t remember the language.
“I’m not…” he tried once more, but the rest was swallowed by the hum of unseen applause, the sound bending and folding in on itself until it was no longer clear whether it came from the audience—or from somewhere inside the walls of the dacha itself.
The curtains began to close, the sound of clapping thunderous now—too loud, too hollow, as if it came from nowhere at all.
Zlata Karnaeva
A disciplined ballerina caught between the rigid world of classical rehearsal and a burgeoning, subconscious descent into a surrealist dreamscape. Clad in the utilitarian garb of a dancer, she acts as the vulnerable bridge between the physical stage and a shimmering, hidden reality.
The Seven Stars
A spectral ensemble of dancers—comprising Sveta, Marya, Vika, Ksenia, Valeria, Alina, and Natalya—who lounge in the backstage shadows like colorful, retro apparitions. They embody a disjointed "dream logic," transitioning from lazy, cynical banter to a terrifyingly precise, mechanical performance that defies the laws of traditional ballet.
Allen
The Pianist of the troupe who serves as the conductor for the uncanny, sitting at his grand piano to bridge the gap between classical music and otherworldly sound. His silent, ghost-like touch on the keys triggers a synthesizer hum from the void, signaling the start of a sequence that is less a dance and more a countdown.
The Voice
An invisible, commanding presence that bellows with the authority of a mission control operator. Cutting through the ethereal melody with a rhythmic countdown, this disembodied entity dictates the movements of the Seven Stars, turning the theater into a launchpad for something far more industrial and alien than a standard performance.
Aleksandr "Aleks" Lebedev (UNSEEN)
The looming, unseen figure of authority and tradition within the ballet story whose expected disapproval haunts Zlata’s thoughts. Representing the strict protocol of the ballet world, his shadow serves as the rational anchor that makes the surreal breakdown of the "Seven Stars" scene feel like a dangerous act of artistic treason.
--
“My future betrothed, come to me,” Zlata whispered again. She was still in front of her dressing room mirror, wearing her white cotton tank top, crêpe skirt, pointe shoes and fishnet stockings. She was unaware that her subconscious had become trapped in a Soviet past.
The candle continued to flicker in front of Zlata; its light trembling across the tunnel of mirrors she had arranged, reflecting endlessly into each other. The warmth of the flame seemed to pulse with the rhythm of her own heartbeat, but an unsettling heaviness pressed against her chest. She rose from her chair, her slippers whispering across the floor.
She stepped forward carefully, her movements echoing across the silent expanse of the stage, yet the space felt private, almost secret. From the corner of her eye, she saw the Seven Stars lounging in the “backstage” portion of the set—a portion that, for her, now existed as a fully realized room upon the stage. They were dressed in their colorful, retro ballet costumes, just as they had appeared in her vision (or was it a dream?) from before. The scene, though constructed, felt uncannily alive, as if she were wandering through a hidden layer of her own mind.
Zlata lowered herself to the stage floor, sitting at the edge of the mirrored “backstage” set, feeling simultaneously drawn to and detached from the tableau before her. Her eyes scanned the group, drinking in every detail: the tilt of Sveta’s head, the mischievous curve of Marya’s lips, the sly grin Vika wore as though she alone understood the secrets of the theatre.
“Seven Stars,” Alina drawled lazily, tossing a hand in the air.
Sveta smiled faintly. “Seven.”
“And seven more,” Marya added with a laugh that sounded almost like a chime in the stillness of the hall.
Zlata couldn’t help but smirk, though unease prickled beneath her skin.
“Der’mo,” Vika muttered, her grin stretching wider than natural.
“What?” Ksenia asked, tilting her head, genuinely amused.
“Our scene is coming up and we’re not even practicing,” Vika replied, laughter bubbling from her chest as though it were the most absurd truth she had ever spoken.
“You’re right,” Sveta said with a scoff, brushing an invisible lock of hair from her face.
Valeria rose suddenly, posture sharp and commanding. “Come on, girls, let’s show those rich fuckers in the audience what we’ve got,” she said, her voice carrying across the hall like a clarion.
“Hit it, Allen!” Natalya commanded.
At her word, Allen—who embodied the Pianist in the ballet—sat at the grand piano, his fingers ghosting over the keys in a practiced silence. The third note sounded and was immediately layered with an otherworldly hum, like a synthesizer from somewhere beyond the theatre. The Seven Stars assembled into formation with uncanny precision, their movements both graceful and disjointed, as if choreographed by dream logic rather than human instruction.
Zlata watched, transfixed, as a deep, commanding voice cut through the strange melody. She couldn’t place its source, yet its cadence pressed into her chest like a pulse.
“TWENTY SECONDS AND COUNTING,” the voice bellowed. The girls danced with a disturbing, unnatural delight.
Zlata’s brow furrowed, her dancer’s mind clinging to structure. Aleksandr is going to disapprove, she thought sharply. They’re not even performing a single proper ballet move!
“SIX… FIVE… FOUR… THREE…” The Seven Stars’ smiles remained plastered, artificial and unyielding.
“TWO… ONE… ZERO.”
Suddenly, the Seven Stars, Allen, the music, the voice—all of it—vanished. The hall was empty, eerily silent except for the Seven Stars’ faint echo. Zlata blinked, dazed, her pulse still thrumming in her ears. She felt the lingering warmth of the mirrors behind her, as though they had drawn back only a fraction of the unseen world beyond them.
A flicker of a smile curved her lips, half in wonder, half in disbelief. But the rational part of her—the part trained in discipline and obedience—fumed at the thought of Aleksandr’s likely reaction. The improvised scene, the audacity, the surreal breakdown of rehearsal protocol—it would not be tolerated.
Shaking off the residual haze, Zlata rose to her feet. Her slippers whispered across the polished floor as she made her way toward the next portion of the stage, her movements precise, rehearsed, ready to continue the ballet. Yet the memory of the Seven Stars, and the uncanny voice clung to her, a secret layer of the performance she could not fathom, a hidden reality folded inside the theatre of the ballet itself.
