Reine

Reine. Paris, 1893, and everyone is looking at her.

That is not vanity, it is her job description. She is the most looked-at woman in the city, the one people cross a ballroom to be near, and she performs that woman beautifully. Night after night. What the city never sees is the second Reine, the one standing just behind the performance, watching it go well, wondering with increasing seriousness which of the two of them is real.

The feeling finds her in exactly that gap. Not in the spotlight and not in the wings, but in the sliver of air between the woman shown and the woman doing the showing. Somebody who could love her would have to find that gap too, and she is not at all sure she wants to be found.

Her story is free to read in the browser.