IC: 25 May

[bearly_legal]

[Outside the library, a music box is playing Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, specifically, Op.20 Suite - 1 Swan Theme. The birthday girl toying with the box keeps replaying it occasionally.]

Comments

[gottabeatemall]

[base-mate has a shiny, coming to sit down next to]

What's that song?

[bearly_legal]

That's the Swan Theme, from a ballet.

[plays it again, just for Kizna]

[gottabeatemall]

[holding off her questions for a moment and listening, then once it's done] It's very pretty.

Swan. . . That's a bird, right? What's a ballet?

[bearly_legal]

A performance where dancers tell stories with their bodies, not words. It's a signficant part of our theater culture at home.

The swan in this story is actually a girl.

[gottabeatemall]

Oooh, it sounds beautiful.

And what's her story?

[bearly_legal]

An evil sourcerer destroys her kingdom and casts a spell on her. She is a young girl at night, but locked away in a tower, and a swan by day, out in the wild but unable to speak. As long as she refuses to marry him, he will never lift the spell.

[gottabeatemall]

That sounds pretty bad. Is there more?

[bearly_legal]

I guess that's what evil sorcerers in fairytales do. The only other way to break the spell is when a confession of true love is made to her, but the girl is not human most of the day. Day after day, she swims out into the lake, surrounded by a flock of swans, yet set apart from them. Like all other swans, she is prey to hunters, and one day one of them happens to be a prince from a neighboring country. His crossbow is ready to hit her, but he stops when he sees the golden crown she wears.

He also thinks that she has human eyes.

[gottabeatemall]

The swan had a crown? Okay, so what happens next.

[bearly_legal]

The prince was so entranced that he followed the swan when the day started to darken, galloping through forests until the sun set down. He found the girl already transformed, ready to head into her tower. He has fallen in love with her, and will break the spell at once, but the sorcerer is always watching. If the prince kills him before the spell is broken, the maiden will forever be a swan. So, he begs her to run to his castle at nightfall, where he will choose her as his wife, and set her free.

But the sorcerer already knows, and by nightfall the next day, he locks the maiden in her prison and sends a lookalike in her place. The prince vows eternal love to the wrong girl.

[gottabeatemall]

[i am not-- okay, i am so getting sucked into this story]

Oh, no. But he realized it wasn't her, right?

[bearly_legal]

The maiden arrived at the palace too late.

The spell could never be broken, so the prince and the maiden threw themselves into the lake.

[gottabeatemall]

. . . They died?

[bearly_legal]

That's what I remember of the story. One of my caretakers told it to me a long time ago.

[gottabeatemall]

It's a nice story, but it's really sad. [ears are noticeably low] Was it Sergei who told you it?

[bearly_legal]

One of the workers at the facility where I grew up did. It was years before I was dispatched.

At least she died human.