Dancing In The Rain

Prologue

Prologue

Decisions are always the worst, but through Lenora's eyes her decision will kill her any way she looks at it. She has to decide if she wants to give up dancing now, or wait until she's too weak to move. If she stops she might live a little longer and be able to spend more time with those she loves, but if she continues she can do what she loves.

Lenora is sick. She has a rare disease that will kill her in a year tops. It will strike her hand muscles first, causing them to deteriorate and be eaten away. Then her breathing will slow considerably causing it to attack her lungs that will have weakened. The muscles in her legs will go in the next stage and then her feet until she is too weak to move and all she has left is her mind, until it strikes there too. This disease is new and only has a simple name. The name is Musculus Atropar which is the only name they have for her condition. No extremely long and ridiculous name, just two words.

Lenora, whom hates her name and insists to be called Nora, is currently pacing her bedroom as she ponders her options. Nora's mother, Ms Jacobs, stands outside her daughter's door waiting. Ms Jacobs is hesitant around her daughter in fear she will break as quickly as a china doll when it hits the floor. She knows that her daughter hates being handled with kid gloves but it is Ms Jacobs' motherly instinct that causes her to swaddle Nora.

The light tap of Nora's mother's fingers sounds across her room, generating at her door. The teenage girl takes a breath and let's her single mother in. The fraying mother takes a seat on the bed next her daughter and gives a smile of encouragement that looks more like a grimace to Nora. The elephant in the room is pressing them both against the wall but neither of them seem to be ready to let it out.

"Have... Have you decided?" The widow asks her daughter feebly, wanting her to live as long as possible.

"Yes, I want to dance." Nora whispers as she thinks of a common quote her father always reminded her of as a child.

"Are you sure? You might have longer if you don't." Ms Jacobs avoids the thought of living and dying only narrowly in her words.

"I'm going to die anyway you look at it." Nora shrugs her slim shoulders and in that moment she releases the elephant and sets it free.

Ms Jocobs nearly chokes on air at Nora's bluntness but she will learn she has to get used to it. Nora has decided not to tiptoe around a topic and to just say as she pleases because there isn't a point anymore. She now sees that you don't get anywhere by avoiding it's subject.

Without another word Ms Jacobs leaves and Nora lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. A lightbulb goes off in Nora's mind and she grabs a piece of paper and a pen, which are in the bottom of her school bag, and begins to write. She knows how she wants to be remembered now and it's not through her dancing.

The idea that came to the girl so suddenly is her final goodbye. A goodbye to all the people who made a significant change or event happen in her short seventeen years of life. She will write them all letters.