She stands there in the pit, the lowest point of the whole place, the point where a piece of the magic begins. She turns to the back of the room, looking upwards over hundreds of battered, worn seats, seeing shifty figures and faces that have occupied them through the years. She sees the tears and the laughter, the intense attention and the restless boredom, the family, the friends, the faces of people who made a regular moment wholly unique and irreplaceable, never to be found exactly as it was again.
Her eyes travel up past those seats to the doors which welcomed those faces in, to the booth which controls other pieces of the magic. She lets her eyes travel across the high ceilings and up to the catwalk, caging in streams of light which illuminate and inform the magic, hanging from above the pieces that will bring people and moments to life.
Then, ever so slowly, she allows her body to turn, facing a gaping hole--dimly lit, empty. The floor gouged, splintered, worn. Remnants of tape and paint and blood, sweat, and tears sprinkle the surface which so many have occupied before her. Remnants of successes and failures--that she does not remember--haunt the space before her.
And she is not sure she belongs in this room, like she has in others from before. The pieces of the past do not speak to her here, the pieces of this room are still foreign, strange. She stands there looking, questioning, hoping, that before too long that strangeness will disappear. She stands there hoping that the various pieces of the magic she knows so well will come together for her here.
Because then, standing in the middle of things will feel less daunting.
