Cygnus cygnus
Sometimes, late at night, in the narrowness of her bed, Meg thinks of Christine, and how she would feel--the curve of her collarbone under smooth skin, her heart beating wild and fast like a bird's, her entire body slight, with hardly any weight to her at all. The Christine in Meg's mind is practically insubstantial, liable to take wing and fly at any moment.
Christine does not belong here at the opera, not really.
She dances well, and sings like an angel--oh, Christine doesn't think anyone knows about her singing lessons, but Meg was born and bred under this roof, and while she doesn't know all the secrets the building holds, she does know all the secrets Christine keeps.
But for all her talent, Christine is separate, not a part of the chorus: not an ugly duckling among ducks, perhaps, or even a duck among swans--a black swan among white? No, Meg decides, a white swan among black, like but not like, and one day she will realize this and fly away to be with her own kind.
Meg will miss her terribly when she goes, and wonders what it would take to keep her here, with her, in this world of black swans, but she can't think of a way to do it. Christine isn't a wild swan. She needs a placid pond in a manicured park, not the storms at sea, tempests that may batter but also invigorate--the wildness that calls to the soul.
Meg harbors no self-delusions that she could wake that spark of wildness in Christine; if the Phantom himself, the very embodiment of the Opera's wildness that he is, cannot do it, what hope does she have? She is nothing half so powerful. She is a sister, a friend, a sometime confidante. She is a part of the darkness, too, and what Christine wants is the light.
end
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