She felt ridiculous, like some sort of trussed up chicken or an overly decorated present that would never be unwrapped. Or, maybe, it was something between the two? A plucked, ripe-for-roasting bird that would never be placed in an oven due to the flammable nature of all the silk bows and ribbons that had erroneously been attached to it. Neither one thing or the other, and rendered utterly useless because of it.
The bare shoulders and arms weren’t an issue – she had never been shy about showing skin, and cared little for the prudish sensibilities of others. Neither did the twin circular scars – one front, one back – beneath the ball joint of her shoulder from where she had been once shot by an arrow. It felt like a lifetime ago now.
Indeed, all of her scars, from the missing ear, to the crescent below her eye, to the tiger stripes across the backs of her legs were just… part of her now. A part of who she was, her past, her present, her sense of self. Many would look upon them and decry such things for detracting from her outer beauty, for marring her looks, as if her softly angular countenance, plump lips and wide, shining eyes existed only to satisfy their sense of aesthetics.
And wasn’t that partially what this expensive exercise in idiocy was all about? Someone else's idea of how she should look.
She huffed a soft sigh and pushed herself to her feet, turning away from the elegantly carved table, leaving behind the pretty but almost painfully uncomfortable chair, to walk slowly toward the privacy screen at the back of the room.
She was in no real rush, and yet she wanted to be done with this. She already knew what she looked like, yet she dreaded what she would see.
An open mind. Had that been a part of it? She couldn’t quite remember now. She recalled only that she had lost a bet, and her forfeit had been to get a dress, to wear it, to look, truly look at herself whilst in it.
Why?
Something to do with overcoming past prejudices? Something to do with not letting other peoples actions spoil her views on femininity or cloth, or giving into trauma or… something. His explanation had been along those lines anyway. What it all boiled down to, as far as she could see, was that he liked the way women looked in dresses. Had he hoped that by giving her this particular task, she would magically decide that, after thirty-odd years, dresses were suddenly for her?
He had, over the past few years, suffered his fair share of stupid moments – who didn’t from time to time? - but he had never proven to be lacking in intelligence overall. And although he could be cruel at times – and despite some of the less pleasant things he had done – she doubted that he had chosen this penalty merely to satisfy his own ideas of how she should dress, or to force her into an uncomfortable situation. Indeed, he had been quite clear that she need never show him, that he did not expect to ever see her in such an outfit. This was, supposedly, somehow for her own benefit.
The truth being that she could just tell him that she had done as agreed, without actually doing so, and he would never know different. But she would, and it had never occurred to her to renege on that deal, despite her distaste for it.
The rich silk swished around her ankles like a particularly attention hungry cat, luxurious but somehow annoyingly restrictive. Carefully placing one slippered foot before the other, she pushed away the feeling that she was going to trip over at any moment.
She reached out, long, slender fingers touching the delicate wood of the privacy screen. Given how thin it was, how precariously it stood – needing to be fashioned into a zigzag of several frames lest it simply fall over – it would have done her no real good had she truly been in need of assistance staying on her feet.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and rounded the flimsy barrier. In front of her now would be a mirror. A tall one that could show her all at once, from head to toe. She knew exactly where it was even without seeing it – her spacial awareness was excellent. It was waiting, as much as any inanimate object could, for her to make use of it.
She waited, too.
The dread of seeing remained, muted now, but it wasn’t that which prevented her from opening her eyes just yet. Rather, it was a simple, fundamental truth of her:
Life was something of a cosmic joke. One could either learn to laugh at it, or with it, or be crushed beneath its relentlessly churning steel-rimmed wheel of horrors. She had long since chosen to not take it all that seriously, except…
Except for one or two small matters which she took very seriously indeed; promises and debts. At least, those she had made or herself owed to others. So, instead of just getting this over with, she waited, and she felt.
The slippers were too light, too malleable, too pliable. She wiggled her toes and sensed only the slightest of barriers between her feet and the outside world. It was like wearing naught but thin socks with a slender strip of flexible doe leather beneath to cushion the footfall. Pointless. There was no true protection in these. If something fell upon her foot, the bones would break. If she kicked something too hard, her toes would shatter. Even treading upon a shard of glass or a small pin would do damage. They existed as frivolity pure and simple, a way to make feet look pretty. It was a vanity and nothing more. These feeble foot coverings held no true worth. She kicked them off and to one side. She didn’t like those things at all.
She felt the whisper of a cool breeze against the bare skin of her shoulders, swiftly followed by the wisps of the same slipping beneath the dress, looping around her ankles. The lightweight material stirred with it; that damned cat again, trying to invade her personal space. But the breeze didn’t touch the parts of her that the silken material truly clung to. The outside of the legs, the hips and waist, most of the torso. The air didn’t reach her skin, but she barely felt the dress itself. It was so soft, so light, like the blouses she had favoured in Bree, and the dressing robe she had worn during that ill-fated attempt to domesticate herself. She liked the feel of the silk against her skin – it almost felt like it wasn’t really there, just an illusion of material that others’ eyes were unable to penetrate – but the shape of it was all wrong. She shouldn’t be able to sense the air around her calves and inner thighs, she shouldn’t be able to detect a coldness where warmth should be.
It was like being naked, but not having made the choice to be naked. Yet, when she moved, instead of having all the freedom of nudity, there was instead a cloying restrictiveness. Invisible, weightless ropes that nevertheless prevented her from taking as long a stride as she would prefer. Like shoelaces that came undone and, unnoticed, would pitch one onto ones face.
All the more reason to wear buckles on ones boots!
Squaring her shoulders, she opened her eyes.
The dress itself was beautiful. A deep, rich, cobalt blue; her second favourite colour. Tailored just for her, it pinched in at the waist to accentuate her slender figure before flowing down like a waterfall to her feet. The skirt hung there in ripples and folds, gentle and pleasing to the eye, meanwhile the belt of braided silver and the almost transparent… sort of… frill? Trim? The whatever-it-was-called that ran around the bust and arms, gave it just enough of a contrast and splash of other colour so as to make it seem less… homochromatic.
Shifting her gaze, she caught sight of the tattoo she had recently acquired; running from her right wrist to shoulder, it was bright and colourful; shades of gold and red and blue and white – the firebird and the two ghostly roses. Usually, it was hidden beneath her blouse and coat, just as it, in turn, hid the large burn-mark that had marred the skin of her arm. A testament. A memory. A homage.
Her gaze lingered there a while, a small, sad smile dancing about her lips. That marking she had chosen for herself, and there was as much love in it as there was sorrow. Two things, so intricately entwined, that she could not, and would never want to, rid herself of.
Her attention travelled upwards, over the warm, burned-honey hues of her shoulders and neck, up further to her face.
Yes, that was definitely her. Those were her full lips, darker still than the rest of her skin; a pleasing shade of almost-plum, even without the face paint that so many women seemed to favour. There were her high cheekbones, her nose that somehow had remained slender and straight despite the pummeling she had taken over the years. There were her eyes, wide, sparkling and reflective, like polished silver mirrors. Gone, now, was the mischievous glint, the merry twinkle, and in its place was a limpid anguish. Alone in a room, with no one to see but her, she had no need to conceal her truths in that regard. But it was more than that, wasn’t it?
She turned her face away from the reflection, white teeth biting lightly upon her lower lip. She hadn’t truly made any attempt to conceal that for a while now. She wasn’t sure that she could, given how deep that well had been dug. For how long now had that light been fading? For how long had the stars – both real and illusory – been winking out?
Forcing her attention back to the mirror, she continued the last part of her inspection – the rest of her forfeit.
That was her hair. A red so deep that it seemed unnatural, shot through with that single, ineffable streak of white at the front. It had appeared overnight, and it would never leave her now; one more scar, after a fashion. It was longer now, her hair, nearly brushing her shoulders and seemingly messily cut, almost wild in its styling as it grew back out from the shaved head she had been forced to sport not so long ago.
It was all there. The pretty, pretty dress, her sculpted body with its tightly toned musculature, the symmetrical delicacy of her dusky countenance.
Pieces of an elegant puzzle that just did not quite fit together.
One hand raised again, fingers slowly, lightly, pressing to the glass.
It looked wrong. She felt wrong.
This… slender figure clad in a cloud of silk, this effigy of womanly grace, this false idol of other peoples ideas for who she should be and what she should look like…
It was wrong. All of it.
Her lip curled upwards in a disgusted sneer, and it was all she could do not to bunch her hand into a fist and break the glass.
A silent snarl as she turned away from her own reflection, wasting no time in divesting herself of the garment.
Is this what he had wanted her to see? This… this… tragic figure, this mockery of her own experiences and philosophies.
No. This wasn’t on him. There was a lot she could blame him for, and at least one thing she still could not forgive, but not this.
She couldn’t change the past. She couldn’t restore all that had been lost. She couldn’t make the world a better place, or reclaim all the time that had been stolen from her by her other selves. But she was only one self now, one person, one mind. She had fought all her life, through one means or another, and though she had suffered setbacks, betrayals, horrors and disasters, though she had fallen and been broken more times than she could accurately recount, she had never truly been defeated. Still she lived, still she breathed, still she stood tall and that, in and of itself, was victory.
And though her pride had taken a very thorough battering, though she had cried bitter tears of heartbreak, though she failed in a myriad of ways, still, at her core, some things remained true.
No, she couldn’t change how she had gotten to where she was. But she *could* change where she went from here.#
((Companion picture: https://laurelinarchives.org/node/60148))
