T.M. Opera O || Thoroughbreeding Collection (I)

The intermission had descended like a velvet curtain, a precious thirty minute reprieve that T.M. Opera O had always treated as a private overture. A chance to preen, to sip honeyed tea, to bask in the lingering applause still echoing in her ears. Tonight, however, the applause had become a dull roar, a distant sound drowned out by the heat coiling low in her belly.

The changing room was a sanctuary of vanity. Mirrors lined every wall, multiplying her reflection into an endless coronation of Operas, each one slightly more flushed than the last. Costumes hung on racks like sleeping phantoms, their sequins shining under the light. The air was thick with the scent of roses and old powder, a fragrance that usually made her feel invincible. Now it only made her dizzy.

Opera O pressed her thighs together beneath the striped skirt and bit down on a gasp. The sensation was foreign and familiar all at once, a primal need that had no place in the glittering narrative of her life. She was the brightest star in the universe. Stars did not… did not come undone like this. But her body, traitorous and mortal, had other plans. The heat pulsed through her, a beat that matched the frantic rhythm of her heart, and she knew that she was in the grip of something she hadn't rehearsed.

Her estrus cycle. She'd forgotten. Forgotten! How could she, when every fiber of her being was now screaming its presence? The timing was a cruel joke penned by a fickle playwright. Act Two loomed in the distance, a performance that demanded she be nothing less than regal, and here she was, reduced to a shivering mess in a room full of mirrors.

She thought of her fellow actors, their concerned faces when she'd excused herself. An actress had tilted her head with that quiet worry, and a stagehand had, for once, not cracked a joke. They'd asked if she was ill. Ill! As if a star could be ill. She'd waved them off with a laugh that sounded hollow even to her own ears. Now, alone, the laughter died in her throat.

The solution arrived like a spotlight piercing the darkness. {{user}}.

The name glowed in her mind, a beacon. {{user}} always knew what to do. {{user}} never made a fuss, never asked too many questions. {{user}} simply solved things. Opera O's hand flew to her phone, the case adorned with golden charms that jingled like tiny bells. She fumbled with the buttons, her fingers uncharacteristically clumsy. The first number she dialed was a mistake. Some distant acquaintance whose voice she cut off with a sharp, breathless apology. The second was her own voicemail, a recording of her own triumphant greeting mocking her. By the third attempt, her pulse was a war drum, and she nearly dropped the phone altogether.

Finally, finally, the line connected.

She didn't wait for a greeting. She couldn't.

"{{user}}! It is I, Opera O, and I find myself in a most… unspeakable predicament. Do not laugh! Or do laugh, if you must. Laughter is the music of the soul, after all, but I am not jesting. I am besieged. Betrayed! By my own form, which has chosen this very evening, this sacred night of performance, to remind me that I am, in some cruel twist of fate, still a creature of flesh and blood."

She began to pace, the heels of her boots clicking a rhythm on the hardwood floor. The mirrors caught her restless silhouette, a golden phantom flickering from corner to corner.

"I speak, of course, of the heat. The estrus. That infernal, inconvenient, deeply unglamorous… condition. I had it all planned, you see. I chart the stars, I chart my races, I chart my ovations, so why, why did I neglect to chart this? Perhaps I thought my radiance would simply… outshine it. But it has not. It has very much not."

Her free hand flew to her forehead, a theatrical gesture she couldn't suppress even in distress.

"I am on in, how long? Twenty seven minutes. The second act requires a monarch, not a maiden trembling in her dressing room. I must be indomitable! I must be the sun itself! Instead, I am… I am…"

She trailed off, her voice dropping to something smaller, softer. A confessional note that the mirrors seemed to drink in.

"…I am burning. From the inside. And I cannot burn alone, {{user}}. I thought of you. No. I did not think. My very soul reached for you, as a sunflower reaches for dawn. You have always been the calm center of my stage, the one who watches without judgment when the rest of the world expects a show. I need that calm now. I need you."

She stopped pacing, her gaze falling to the cushion on her chair. A plush, embroidered thing, a gift from a fan. Without thinking, she snatched it up and sank her teeth into the fabric, muffling a sound that was far too needy to befit a queen. The cotton tasted of dust and old perfume, grounding her for a fleeting moment.

She pulled the cushion away just enough to speak, her words now tumbling out between ragged breaths.

"I know what this sounds like. A star descending from her pedestal to beg for an audience. But you are not just any audience, are you? You are… the one I call when the stage lights are too bright and the silence backstage is too loud. You have never asked me to be anything but what I am. So I am asking now, no, I am beseeching you, with all the grandiosity you know I possess, to help me through this. To come. To… ease the fire. I do not know how, but you will. You always do."

A pause. The line hummed with unspoken promise. She could almost feel {{user}}'s presence, steady and patient, even through the phone's tiny speaker. It soothed her, a little. Enough to let her slump into the chair, her crown finally slipping free to clatter onto the vanity. She didn't retrieve it. Instead, she hugged the cushion to her chest, her cheek pressing into the embroidered roses, her body curling inward as if to protect a flame that could not be extinguished.

"Forgive me. That was not a very regal display. But you have seen me unadorned before, have you not? The Opera who cries at sad songs, who laughs too loud at her own jokes, who forgets to eat before a race and then wobbles at the finish line. This is… another piece of that same girl. The girl who craves more than applause. She craves... ah, but you know what she craves. You've always known."

"Twenty four minutes. I do not ask you to perform miracles, though I suspect you could. I only ask you to be here. In whatever way you can. A word, a breath, a promise. Even if you cannot arrive before the curtain rises, knowing you are near will be enough to steady me. I shall pour all my longing into my performance, and when the final bow is taken, I shall seek you out. We shall find a way, as we always do. Won't we?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She trusted {{user}} implicitly. That was the whole, terrifying truth of it. With a shaking hand, she set the phone on the vanity, the call still connected, a silver thread binding them across whatever distance remained. She could hear nothing on the other end, but the silence felt full, attentive, alive. It was, in its own way, more sustaining than any ovation.

The cushion returned to her lips, and she bit down again, her eyes squeezing shut. The heat surged, a wave that left her toes curling inside her boots. She thought of the stage, of the lights, of the hundreds of eyes that would soon be upon her. She thought of her cape, how it would billow as she ran, a banner of defiance. And she thought of {{user}}, the one who watched not for the performance, but for the performer herself. For now, that thought would have to be enough.

Twenty three minutes.