“I won’t disappear on you,” I say quietly. “If you want to know something about me, you ask. If something feels wrong, you say it.”
Her eyes soften, and she nods once. “As equals?”
I snort out a laugh. “You will always be far superior to me in every way,sovershenna, but yes. As equals. Lunch?” I ask as we reach the front door of the barn.
“Yes, I’ll make it,” she offers and I groan. “What? I can cook!”
“I don’t do salads, Emma.”
“Neither do I,” she says, her face twisting in a way that tells me I should have known that.
I follow her through the open living space to the kitchen area and watch as she familiarizes herself with where everything is before she pulls chicken, eggs and peppers from the fridge. She snatches an onion and a couple of potatoes from the basket just inside the pantry, along with seasonings and oil.
Within forty minutes she has made a Spanish style omelette with chicken and only a small garden salad of cherry tomatoes, lettuce and cucumber.
“I couldn’t find radishes, but I don’t love them so I’m not bothered.” She looks at me as I take in the meal.
“I’m not a fan either, but I’ll add them to the list if you need me to.”
She shakes her head with a smile, as she drops two massive plates of food on the table. I can’t mask the surprise that flashes over my face.
“What?” she asks, fork halfway to her mouth. “Ah, you thought ballerinas didn’t eat.”
“I know you eat,” I argue. You can’t watch someone for as long as I was watching her and not see a person eat. “I just didn’t realize how much.”
“I burn it off with the ballet, I put away around 3000 calories on a performance days. But I suppose that will have to stop now I’m not doing shows…” she trails off with a sigh before biting the food from the fork.
I place my free hand over hers.
“You can continue with your training—”
“Conditioning,” she cuts in.
“You can continue with yourconditioning,and your physio. Neither of us know precisely what the future holds, but I do know we face it together.”
She smiles at that, albeit around chewing a bite of chicken.
“It needs a name,” she says after she swallows, waving her fork in a circle.
“What needs a name?”
“The barn,” she says, matter of factly. “We can’t just keep calling it ‘the barn’.
I think about it for a moment while I eat more omelette, enjoying the fresh, creamy flavours.
“Ozero,” I offer. Then add “The Lake,” while she pushes more food onto her fork. Her eyes instantly snap to mine and begin to fill. “For the first night I saw you.” I say. “For the beauty you bring to this place, and to my life. For the place we come to be calm and at peace. To rest and recover.”
She nods, the movement barely there. “Yes,” she finally agrees with a small smile. “Ozero.”
Emma
The studio is cool and bright and still smells faintly of paint and varnish. As soon as I step inside, I feel like I can breathe, and I wonder when that feeling disappeared. When did ballet become such a drain? When did it stop being about strength and beauty and start being about pain and depletion?
I move slowly, deliberately, letting my body set the pace instead of forcing it to obey.
My ankle is wrapped, supported, listened to for once. I start with the exercises my physio drilled into me at our last session. Small, careful movements meant to rebuild trust instead of endurance.
It feels strange not to push through the discomfort. To listen to every twinge of pain, every ache. It’s stranger still to stop when my body asks me to.
