Swan Lake Ending Rewrite

Spinning methodically, hypnotically, the last moonbeam withdraws the final phantom glint in Odile’s eye. Day breaks with fingers of warm light, revealing a slick sheen of gasoline purple upon her feathered skirt. Inhaling whisps of deception the Prince turns on his toe and leaps out the grand doors to find his true Queen. Odile settles in fourth, an arm reaching front, in Siegfried’s direction, and the other urging Odette farther, in plié deep enough to return to the Prince’s wingside with a single bound. 

The swindling sun hides true form of many a creature, but not a bevy of lace whiteness to be seen. Beaten upon by the rays, the guilty Prince coos at strange fowl urging for even a honk let alone a reaffirmation of devotion. The sun strokes by, pooling and melting into the Western Sea. Already overhead, Lady Luna gains the light left in the wake of her lover. The surrounding sky darkens, silhouettes of transmuted vampires chirp against a milky blue.  

By the lagoon the Prince wails, head lifted to the stars in prayer and loss, suddenly shadowed by the shape of a regal swan obstructing the moon. Neck cranes back in agony, wings in bras en couronne above her head. Ceasing to exert, Odette’s head bobs forward to the stream and her feathers fall away as she dives into the calm shallows below, spraying Siegfried with a pleasant mist.  

Before a ripple even reaches his eye he is engulfed wholly in the inky black, searching for the White Swan. In the depths, her feathers sink alongside him, though the Prince does not wonder why they follow him instead of floating upon the surface. Deeper down he churns himself, gripping to the unstable. The pointed calamus of silky fibers lightly pass over his skin as if to taste. They begin to flock, puncturing his arms until immobile and unswimmable.  

Forced to slow and fated to sink, feathers twist themselves between tight layers of skin, blood dispersing into the current and absorbing as pigment into the pure white filaments. To blackness, the stage is surrendered.  

The day fragments once more, shining unbeknownst to the transformation under his lady’s supervision. Upon the shore is a violent trail in the sand, a life forced to continue despite the necessary end. The Red Swan, frail human arms mutated with unnatural plumage, lies curled in a peaceful and nearly breathless bow, neck curled too far in on itself between arms en avant.  

Across the water, an angel unfurls. Pale, soft, white. The Queen, no longer of swans.