Twice Lived, Twice Loved

Chapter One

The stage has always called her name. How she chose to respond was entirely of her choosing. Ever since Elizabeth Sanders was young, she has always had a penchant for drama, intrigue, and most especially dance. Her mother used to tease her all the time that she spent more time in her head that she did in the real world but one thing that Maria Sanders had always understood is every individual's need to discover themselves. And so while other parents would have chastised her and tried to mould her into society's standard of a good student, her mother had done the opposite. She had given her space to bloom and on God, bloom she has.

Elizabeth has been dancing since she could remember, in love with the way that dancing gave her a silent yet passionate means of expressing her feelings. And from the start, she has always been good at it. More than good. Many have been moved to tears, to laughter, to love by the way that the music moulds her body into a living breathing art. Very few people are lucky enough to do something they truly love for a living and after years of toiling and hardwork, Elizabeth can proudly say that she is one of them.

With the kaleidoscope of flashing lights on her and her salsa dance partner spinning her back towards him, he grabs her foot and with a flex of his muscles, raises her from the floor. She tightens her core muscles and folds her second leg around his waist from the back, suspending herself from his waist. He spins her round and round and then she flips over his head in a tucked somersault and lands in front of him in a split. The care-free high tempo of the music demands that she get up and she is up again, in sync with her partner and the music as she owns the dance floor. As usual, the crowd fades from her mind. They are roaring in the background, gasping as she performs nearly impossible feats of flexibility with her body. They might have hated her dance or they might have loved it, she would have never known because selfish as it is, whenever she steps onto a stage, she pours out her heart through her body not for the audience but for herself. The audience however do not seem to mind that they are invisible to her. She is a renowned, world-famous dancer, not just for her perfection of the salsa, but also for about about every other dance type known to many parts of the world.

The tempo of the music rises and the energy of her steps rises to meet it. She spins and jumps and whines faster and faster, daring her partner to keep up with her, commanding him to. They spin around each other on the dance floor, a love story in action and the audience eats up every second of it. Finally the music reaches its peak and so do they and as they drop into the final poses and the music comes to a stop, she finally becomes aware of the roar of the audience and the love being shown to her by her loyal fans. She grins and drops into a short curtsy before turning around, her hand in her partner's as they make their way out of the stage.

"Good job, Liz." One of the other performers tell her backstage and she salutes him.

"Weldone."

"That was incredible."

"You were awesome."

Numerous congratulatory words are thrown her way from all around the room and she smiles at them. There is a large screen to one side of the room where they can watch the proceedings on the stage.

"Dancing with you was a unique experience, as always." Her salsa partner says. He holds out a hand for to shake and she does sk with another smile.

"As was dancing with you." She says.

"It is different." Her partner says, shaking his head. "I have danced for years and seen just as many dancers but I have never seen anyone like you. I have never seen anyone come alive with the music as you do, it is as if you are a part of the music. Dancing with you shows me that there is a depth to the art of dance that I am yet to master."

Her smile is beginning to feel fixed and so she dazzles him once more with teeth before letting her face relax.

"You flatter me, John, but thank you." She says conclusively and turns away. "See you around."

"I hope to dance with you again sometime." He calls to her back. Alot of the watching audience sigh and a round of 'Awwwn' ripples down their gathered length. She does not stop her forward strut nor does she turn around.

"Sometime." She calls to him as she makes her way to the back of the room where her team awaits her.

Only a blind and deaf man would not see what John truly wants. He had asked her out some years ago and she had firmly and gently turned him down. While she gives him points for determination, she is also generally irritated that after two years, he is still after her like a dog in heat. She had put her personal feelings aside when she has been contracted to dance with him and she is grateful that he had too, but during work, while dancing, is the only time that she ever wants to interact with him. He is handsome enough, a heart-breaker by many standards with his wavy blonde hair and pant-eater smile but she has never been sexually attracted to him and does not think that that will ever change.

Her personal assistant throws a fur jacket over her bare arms while she takes a seat.

"That was well done, as always." Her manager, Adam Lowman says with a smile.

"I try my best." Elizabeth says, trying to hold still as her make-up artist makes some last minute reparations to her make-up before she has to meet the press outside once again. Her body still thrums from the remnants of her high-paced dance and her feet tap impatiently as the lady flutters around her. Adam excuses himself to attend to more pressing issues on his table.

Meeting with the press always takes an extra fortification from her side, especially after she just had a performance. Something about her giving her performances her all always drains her after, body, mind and soul. But overall, the feeling of contentment and relief she feels as she finally lets go of herself is not one she would trade for anything in the world.

"Are you sure you have plans after this?" Her personal assistant, Hannah Drunan peers at her suspiciously from behind her white-framed correction glasses. "You always do." She says.

"And this time is no exception." She tells her without missing a beat. Most of the exclusive events hosted to celebrate the success of the main events usually find her absent, in her suite practicing some dances or crashing hard until the next day. She almost never attends them, to the eternal frustration of her industrious personal assistant.

"I know, but perhaps you can make it one? There are alot of important people that are going to be there." She says slowly as if she is explaining something difficult to a child.

"No." Elizabeth says shortly, living up to her PA's standards.

"Come on, Liz. This will be good PR for you. Events like this could open even more doors for you than there already are." She says and Elizabeth sighs.

"My hard work is all the PR I need but if you insist, I will attend the next one." She says and Hannah sighs in turn, knowing that it is about as much concession as she is going to get from her. Elizabeth smiles at her, acknowledging how difficult it must be to work with her. Her make-up artist is finally rounding up.

The truth is that there is a hole in Elizabeth's heart, a roiling mass of need that pulses in her chest. She cannot explain what it is but she knows that it makes her soul restless, searching for something that she has not the slightest idea about. Being with large gatherings of people exacerbates the feeling, making her feel isolated, cornered and she can surely do without such wasting diseases on her psych. The only thing that makes the feeling go away is dancing, and dance she does. Any other thing is negligible. She actually has no plans after this, unless if answering the siren call of her suite and her bed counts as an appointment. But she would take the comfort of her home any day, over an evening of fake smiles and forced politeness.

Are you sure you can do this? Her mother would always ask her, years ago. The celebrity lifestyle is not for everyone and the Lord knows you are nearly anti-social as it is.

But it had never been about being a celebrity. It had been about doing something that fulfilled her, and the inevitable fame was something she could suffer through to keep true to herself.

"There, we are done." Her make-up artist says and steps back.

"Thank you, Anne." She says and gets up. "Time to face the firing squad." She says with a wiggle of her fingers at Hannah. She makes her way to the exit, stopping to take a picture with a group of girls that would have paid a fortune to make it backstage with the performers.

Out into the night, she is temporarily blinded by the flash of cameras and then questions are lobbed at her like missiles.

"Liz, what is the relationship between yourself and John?"

"Please make a statement on the rumour that you said yes to John." Another says urgently. Yes, the joker had made his chase public.

"Word on the street is that you are gay, how true is this? Is that why you have not taken any lovers?" Yet another question is lobbed at her with no intervals between them. 

She scoffs at the last one. Where do these reporters get their information from? Their conspiracy theories only get wilder and wilder the longer that they are not addressed.

She stops in front of a reporter who eagerly shoves his mic into her face.

"Once again, I assure you there is nothing going on between John and I. We are colleagues and he dances like a stallion on steroids which is why he and I work so well together but there is most surely nothing there." She says and begins striding forward once again, two burly guards by her sides, their fierce expressions daring any of the reporters to get too excited.

"What do you have to say about climbing to the top of the poll and displacing Naomi Stone?" Another reporter asks and she stops in front of him.

"I believe the world is large enough for each and everyone of us to shine as brightly as we can." She says. "Naomi Stone will always be a phenomenal dancer and so am I." She says with a smirk.

"So are you gay?" Another queries.

"Word is that there is a footage of you with your alleged girlfriend. What do you have to say about that?"

She ignores them and their baseless questions, striking a pose in the middle of the red carpet before striding straight for the red Lamborghini which awaits her at the end and leaving them behind. She has no idea where these reporters get their wild conspiracy theories from but she is far from inclined to indulge them any further. Her driver holds the door open for her and she climbs inside and when he shuts the door, there is finally blessed quiet. She rests her head, pounding slightly from the lights and the noise on the headrest and then her car pulls away.

When Elizabeth Sanders gets back to her house, she discards the half formed idea to dance a little more in her studio. The headache that had been simmering at the back of her head has turned into a full-blown migraine and her temple throbs with pain radiating forward to her eyes. She takes an aspirin tablet with a grimace and forces down the French delicacy her chef has taken the time to prepare for her and when she is done, she stumbles straight for her bed, collapsing into it with a sigh. She draws her thick white covers to her chin and snuggles into her pillow and a second later, she is asleep.

Elizabeth knows that she is dreaming. That is the only reason why she would ever be in a deserted unkempt forest. She glances down at her boot-clad foot, glad to have something between her and the forest floor swarming with activities of a thousand tiny little animals. A furry caterpillar scrambles over her boot and attempts to climb up her bare leg and she shakes it off rigorously, her lips curling in distaste. Insects. How she dislikes the pesky little things. She has spent all of five seconds in the forest and is just about ready to be done with it when she freezes.

Whispers. There is someone talking, whispering something to her. The wind carries the female voice from a definite direction in front of her and Elizabeth automatically strains to hear what is being said. Is there someone in this landscape with her?

She finds her body moving forward of its own accord, towards where the voice is coming from, her curiosity getting the better of her as usual.  With her curiosity rises dread and with every step she takes forward, the dread curls around her stomach, settling in tighter and tighter until she feels sick. She does not want this, she wants to stop going forward, to go back because she has a definite dreadful feeling that nothing good awaits her at the other end of the whispers. But an invisible pull tugs her forward and no matter how much she drags her feet or tries to turn around, her destination has been set and as if in a trance, she watches her body move through the dense growth of the forest, gaining more and more speed until from walking, she is running. The forest around her fades away, and even the incessantly crawling insects fade from her awareness. All that she sees is the top of a craggy mountain, becoming progressively larger in her vision as she nears. She does not know when she clears the forest and begins making the climb up, all that she knows is that she must reach the owner of the voice with an urgency that presses on her back and shoves her forward. In no time at all, she clears the slope of the hill and is at the top of the mountain. Lava bubbles from within and heat billows out to scorch her skin and Elizabeth recoils, her self preservation kicking in as she tries to wrestle herself from the edge of the volcano but her feet have other plans. Without hesitation, they step into the volcano and a scream rips from her throat as she falls into the depths.

The heat seizes abruptly and Elizabeth is once again, firmly on her two feet. She looks around, confused and at her body, unburnt and unblemished despite the heart stopping proximity she had just had with a painfully realistic live volcano.

The room that she finds herself in is huge and empty, its walls and floors reflecting the sunlight in the most mesmerizing way but it is not the walls that capture her attention but the large, immaculate mirror taking up nearly the entire length of a wall opposite her. It reflects the wide expanse of the room, the thick spiral columns stretching up from the floor to meet the roof and the strange balls of light floating in the air around the room. What captures her attention however, is her reflection in the mirror.

Elizabeth blinks, and when nothing changes, she blinks again. For surely she sees wrong. In all of her years of life, she has spent a fair amount of them looking at mirrors so it would only be expected that she be able to recognise herself at the very least. And the person that looks back at her from the other side of her own reflection is most surely not her.

The person that faces her from the other side of the mirror is about a foot and a half taller than she is. She wears a white garment, startling in its purity which goes down to pool on the floor beneath her. The dress is sparse over her arms, her midriff and barely covers her thighs and what Elizabeth can see of her body is full and lush with curves. Full high breasts stretch the delicate fabric over her chest, tapering into a waist so small that Elizabeth's hands could span it before flaring out over rounded hips and legs that seem to go on forever. Icy white hair spills down to her waist in straight ringlets. Impossibly high cheekbones and full supple lips complement her icy blue eyes, the only features of the woman that are familiar to Elizabeth. The woman in her reflection is so beautiful it hurt to look at her, and the look in her eyes as she stares down at Elizabeth is assessing, taunting, daring. Was she the one that had been whispering?

Elizabeth cants her head to the side in confusion and to her surprise, the woman in the mirror does the same. She takes a step forward and so does the woman and when she stops, so does she. Intrigued, mesmerized, she takes another step forward, and another, and yet another until she stands directly in front of the mirror, having to tilt her head upwards to meet her reflection's eyes. Her eyes widen when she sees it. Her reflection's icy blonde hair spills over very long ears pointed at the very tip, ears that are most surely different from her small, rounded ones. The woman in the mirror is not even human!

As if in a trance, her hand lifts of its own accord, her reflection mirroring her motions as the both of their hands rise until they are the same level. And then she presses it onto the surface.

The shock of not meeting a cold, hard surface like she had expected to jerks her out of the trance and she yanks her hand back, or attempts to because her hand is stuck. She pulls hard, her heart beginning to flutter in her chest when her hand does not budge. A sound grabs her attention and she looks up at her reflection to find her lips twitching, the same silver blue eyes as Elizabeth's dancing with amusement. And then her hand is being sucked through, in the opposite direction and into the mirror and full blown panic drenches her body. The vacuum sucks harder now, pulling her entire body through the liquid surface of the mirror and she glances at her reflection with a plea on her lips.

Help

But the woman's expression is grave as she watches her struggle. She grabs her hand, the shock of her hot fingers on her arm searing though Elizabeth and then, she yanks her through.

Elizabeth's body ignites and her scream is cut off by fire flooding her throat. Her body, inside and out is lit with excrutiating pain as she falls and falls...