my inner life
is a sheet of black glass.
if I fell through the floor
I would keep falling—
It is on the coldest day of winter that I first see my mother in her warpaint.
Outside, the city is covered in snow. The roofs of the barracks, the storefronts, the prayer-places, are all capped in thick swirls of white; they look like the buns that the bakers downstairs are always careful to slather extra icing on when they see me skipping out of my room. And the little flurries in the air make everything faintly smudgy, so that the streetlamps bleed into one another like stars in a fairytale. When I press my head against the window to look further out, the glass is cold enough to make me flinch, and from my silent room I watch the snowflakes drift softly down and glaze the world in pale glitter.
I feel peaceful. It’s the only feeling I know so far.
When my door swings open, I don’t jump. I don’t even turn to check who it is. My mother’s steps are a pattern I’ve come to recognize within just a few beats, and the scent of pine needles and clay paint that follows is another confirmation of my suspicions; when she reaches out and touches her mouth to my small shoulder, I know the shape of her kiss and lean back into it. Her breath warms the back of my neck. I tell her: “I was watching the snow come down.”
“Do you know why it snows, elskede?”
“No,” I tell her. I turn to press my forehead into the warm curve of her neck; and that is when I see that her usually unmarred dark skin is marked now with cracked lines of paint. A setting red sun is painted on her shoulder, underlined with angular waves. Little streaks of red and white flow down the side of her neck and from her forehead over her eye; her wing is dipped in white, drawn on in narrow lines: she looks dangerous, beautiful but intimidating, and I stare at her with my eyes blown wide in surprise, silent in my sudden awe. “What—what are you wearing?”
“My warpaint, elskede.”
Without thinking, I ask excitedly: “Can I wear it too?”
I have never seen her disappointed in me. It is my first taste of real pain.
She says something to me—something kind and loving, I’m sure, if a little stern. But I can’t hear it over the rush of blood in my ears, and the way my heart beats at the way she looks at me, her lips turned down into a frown so mild it’s somehow worse than being screamed at. (But she would never do that, anyway.)
And if she finishes her story about why it snows; well, I don't hear that either.
The snow is still falling lightly when I make my way outside. My eyes are puffy and red, and I rub them agitatedly against one shoulder and then the other as I walk, white hair streaming loose and wild around me, my head tucked into my chest. I don’t know what the feeling in my chest is called, exactly; but it burns and steals my oxygen, and I have a hard time breathing properly as I walk.
I’m headed to the barracks, but I don’t think I know that.
