🪞The Things We Were Told

Jun 25, 2026

What remains after we’ve removed everything that wasn’t ours?

The stage sits dark, save for a single lavender spotlight aimed in a pale circle on the old floorboards. Dust hangs in its beam like forgotten applause.
Faint footprints disturb the powder, telling us this stage has been empty for far too long.

Tonight, the emptiness ends.

You mingle with the crowd, drink in hand.

People circulate with champagne flutes and folded programs. Old friends embrace. Strangers smile as though they've known one another for years.

It feels like New Year’s Eve, in another era.

You find your seat. It creaks.
The stage floorboards are worn.
So are the purple velvet curtains.

The day, the date, the hour suddenly seem irrelevant.

The house lights dim.

A voice emerges from somewhere behind the heavy fabric. Rich. Warm. A little amused.

“Ladies and gentlemen...”

A pause.

“Tonight...”

A longer pause.

“For one night only...”

The spotlight brightens just enough to reveal drifting feathers suspended in the air.

“She returns to the stage.”

A beat.

“Miss...”

A smile can almost be heard.

“...Dia Vantis.”

The music fades.

You hear her footsteps before you see her.
A creaking sound across the wood floorboards.

There she is.

A woman. Glamorous. Burlesque-dressed in the same lavender-silver as the spotlight. Silver hair. A silver aura. A silver-screen icon come to life.

Dia Vantis herself.

She stops, pivots, turns her back to the crowd and the applause, and simply waits.

The applause swells.
Dia holds.

Not because she’s enjoying it.
Because she doesn’t quite hear it.

Slowly, awkwardly, the applause ends.
Only then does she move.

Dia turns, faces you, but doesn’t look at you.
She’s remembering something you can’t see.

She’s not broken.

Just... elsewhere.

She’s beautiful and poised.

Like an old photograph has come alive for three minutes.

She is carrying two enormous lavender ostrich fans.

The audience thinks, Finally. The show begins.

She opens them. One slow sweep.
The feathers catch the lavender light.

Everyone relaxes.

Ah. This is what we paid for.

Then...

She closes them.

Walks to the piano.
Leans the first fan against it.
Not tossed. Not discarded.

Displayed.

Like a painting. Almost reverently.

“Smile.”

The second fan joins the first.

“Don’t be difficult.”

Now the audience is confused.

They thought the fans were props.
Dia thought they were artifacts.

You notice the piano sitting in the back corner of the stage, barely lit. A large piece of antique silk, lavender-silver and stitched with pearls, is draped over the top. A scarf, perhaps, forgotten there long ago.

The bench of the piano shows an impression, as if the last person to sit there, remains. Maybe he was the accompanist forty years ago. Maybe he’s the composer. Maybe he’s memory itself.

Maybe he’s no one.

Dia begins removing one glove with the practiced precision of someone who’s performed this routine a thousand times.

Not dramatically. Not seductively. Almost... automatically. She isn’t trying to convince anyone. She’s simply doing what she came to do. The audience sees elegance.

You see memory.

She strolls to the piano. She finishes removing her glove. Finger by finger. A slow, gentle tug. Unhurried. She has all the time in the world. Whichever world she is in.

She stops moving, looks at the piano. Not at you.

She lays the glove across it, as if she is leaving a sacred relic on an altar for an invisible god.

Barely above a whisper, she says:

“Don’t make a scene.”

Not announcing.

Remembering.

The audience almost isn’t sure they heard her.

She turns sideways, in profile now.

Slowly, she repeats the motion with her second glove.

Gather.
Tug.
Gather.
Tug.
Long, slow pull.
The second glove comes off.

She lays it on top of the first.

“Don’t be moody.”

The gloves rest across the piano top exactly where her fingers left them.

No one applauds. No one quite knows whether they should.

Dia remains beside the piano, her hand lingering above the polished wood as though listening for a note that has not yet been played.

The theater is so still that someone coughs three rows back, then seems embarrassed to have interrupted whatever this is.

Dia smiles.

Not at the audience.

At the empty piano bench.

The smile lasts only a moment.

She reaches slowly to her shoulder and unfastens a small silver brooch shaped like a swallow in flight.

For an instant she holds it in her palm, turning it so the stage light catches its edges. It flashes once, then settles into quiet silver again.

She walks away from the piano.

Not toward center stage.

Toward the old coat stand waiting in the wings.

The brooch is pinned carefully to the frayed lapel of an abandoned evening coat. She smooths the fabric with the back of her hand. Almost affectionately.

Then, barely louder than breath,

“Be pretty.”

She waits.

Not for applause. For the word itself. As though expecting it to answer. It doesn’t. She nods anyway and returns to the lavender circle. The audience watches every step now.

You suddenly understand...

this isn’t going to be the show that you thought you bought tickets for.

Dia doesn’t smile. She doesn’t frown.
She simply resumes.
The audience feels a wave of uncertainty.

“Should we have been clapping?”

“Should we be clapping now?”

You realize that you’ve forgotten how to sit in silence.

You hear the floorboards creak as she pivots.

The stage is now her dance partner.

Every pivot.

Every breath.

Every tiny rustle of silk.

You can’t escape her.

Dia looks back one more time at the piano...

at whoever is sitting there.

The invisible pianist.
For just the smallest moment.
Almost thanking him. Then she turns away.

For the first time, someone in the audience cries. Not loudly. Just one surprised breath. Dia never looks to see who it was.

Only now does she look down. She bends at the waist, every movement precise. Her hands drift to the delicate straps of her shoes. She pauses. Longer than before.

The pause itself feels ceremonial.

She slips one shoe free.

Then the other.

The sound they make against the old floorboards is impossibly small.

She carries them as though they weigh much more than satin and crystal should.

She walks to the edge of the stage. Not the piano. Not the coat rack. The very lip of the stage. The place where performers once stood to bow. She places the shoes side by side.

Perfectly aligned. Facing the audience.
Almost as if waiting for someone to step into them.

“Cross your legs.”

She leaves the shoes exactly where they are.

No one moves. No one dares. Barefoot now, she crosses the stage differently. Not slower. Lighter. The old floorboards answer with softer voices.

She stops beneath the lavender light.

For the first time, she seems almost... younger.

Not in years.

In weight.

She reaches to the nape of her neck. A single strand of pearls. The clasp hesitates. So do her fingers. A memory catches. She closes her eyes. Only for a heartbeat.

Then the clasp yields.

The pearls gather into her palm with the smallest whisper.

She smiles.

A real smile this time.

Brief. Private. She walks to the empty chair beside the coat rack. No one noticed the chair before. She drapes the pearls across its back as though someone has just excused themselves and will be returning any minute.

She smooths them once.

Carefully.

Lovingly.

“Be a good girl.”

She waits.
Nothing answers.

Still...

the chair somehow looks less empty.

In the audience, someone laughs. A tiny, involuntary sound. It escapes before they can stop it. Embarrassed, they cover their mouth. Another person smiles without knowing why.

Dia never turns to look for them.

She is already walking back toward the lavender circle.

The light falling on the circle seems brighter now. Dust motes and tiny bits of feather float in the air. Dia pauses, leans forward, takes hold of her foot and stretches her leg behind her in a move that defies physics.

She slides her silk stocking off, slowly. She does not wobble, does not struggle. Just slides the stocking off, lets it fall to the floor.

The first stocking pools around her ankle like lavender water.

She steps free. The second follows. She gathers them together. Not hurriedly. Not delicately. Familiarly. As though she has folded them this way a thousand times before.

She walks to the footlights. The stockings are laid across the front of the stage. A quiet border.

A line between the audience...

and the world she remembers.