...

He was one of few who still knew the silver tongue, who kept it secret and close to his heart. A star -- of course; only such a thing could come from the heavens.

In what all said was a fairy-tale story, the painter and the dancer fell in love -- and his greatest masterwork became the mural on the ballet hall's walls, which featured this angel sliding down from the skies.

She did not remain at the ballet for long -- giving up her wings to become a wife and a mother to this remarkable man, giving birth to a little girl with perfect fingers and her mother's green eyes that they named Roux: for names were not as illegal as the language both spoke in the walls of their home. As an infant, Roux knew nothing but the sunlight through the windows of the nursery, of her mother's silver songs and of her father's arms lifting her high into the air, where she flew as Estelle once had.

The painter had never been so happy, with a beautiful wife and a daughter made of nothing more and nothing less than sunlight, and this was the life of the girl for many years, years which were warm with her father's happiness and her mother's golden laughter.

But the painter still had his masters, and as she grew older, Roux learned to keep her happiness close to her heart, for so much of it was dangerous; to silence her mother's silver songs, to only dance the sanctioned steps.

She did not understand why.

The painter was dissatisfied with his official work, and his masters became displeased. "Forget," they said, "your ideas and abstractions." They longed for the technical work of his earlier years -- work which never made its readers think of anything other than its beauty.

But the painter could not forget, and did not forget, and when Roux was thirteen years old, police officers stormed their home full of light and took her father away.

Her mother would not stop sobbing, and in their perfect home, someone had stolen the sun.