The lights went dark.
Florence used the cover of darkness to reach the center of the stage.
She wore no shoes, and her bare feet met the cold floor as the chill climbed from her soles straight to her heart.
The lights blazed bright, and the music swelled.
In that instant, Florence became once more the raw newcomer she had been years ago, the dancer the whole room had once hailed as their "principal," and the small stage beneath her felt impossibly precious.
She threw herself into her final dance.
At the judges' table, Timothy had drifted into a daze the moment her name reached his ears, and he no longer knew where he stood.
He remembered this dance as the one she had performed the first time he ever laid eyes on her.
What he had noticed in her back then was a faint trace of Amelia,
