It made Dara think about a story their mother told them once. About the famous ballerina in the nineteenth century, a gas lamp catching on her skirt, enveloping her in flames before the entire audience’s eyes. How she spun and spun, the blaze consuming her until she was rescued. She lingered a few months after, her corset melted to her ribs. The surviving scraps of her costume still hung in the Musée de l’Opéra in Paris. That, their mother told them, is love.
