laikamaeris:roses in my hair, dazzling in white, dress me up in ribbons just to wake under the knife
laikamaeris:roses in my hair, dazzling in white, dress me up in ribbons just to wake under the knife 3 This inspired me to finish a piece about Cassandrea I started ages ago! It’s available now for all Patreon tiers! Sneak peek below! CONTENT WARNING: Suicide, abuseI was seven when my mother realized I would be beautiful.I remember the moment so clearly. I had spent the day foraging, and had come home with my little woven basket full of sweet, ripe berries. The day was cool, and my cheeks were warm from running up and down the mountain in the crisp early spring air. My mother looked up from her mending by the fire and there I was framed by the last of the afternoon light, my dark hair curling free from my braids. Her face went gray. She got to her feet and grabbed me by the shoulders, staring down at me, wordless. Then she bent down to the fire, grabbed a handful of hot ash, and ground it into my eyes.I screamed. My berries rolled over the floor as I dropped my basket to rub at my eyes, but it just made it worse. When I tried to blink away the tears that welled up, the world was blurry, gone white. I screamed more, howling in pain and shock. She held me close, rocking me back and forth, making low keening noises.“Not you,” she said, and our tears mixed together on the dirt floor of our tent. “It can’t be you.”When I awoke the next day and opened my eyes, I could see again. My tears had cleared the ash as I slept, and while my eyes were red, the village healer said they would be alright in a few days. My mother cursed the healer, and begged her, on hands and knees, to scar me.“If she recovered from the ash, then it is the God’s will,” the healer told her. “We cannot change it.”The next day she picked me up from my blankets early in the morning. The gray mists that clung to the mountains had not yet been burned away by Dessa’s light. I remember looking through the impenetrable gray wall beyond the trees as I rested my head on her shoulder. I remember watching the shapes of ferns and fallen logs as they went from shadows of monsters to objects I recognized when we got close, and then back to misty shadows as we left them behind.She took me to the edge of a cliff and stared out at the valley, a dark green blanket of canopy that rolled out beneath us only to be snatched up by the mountains on the other side. I could see the ocean beyond the far side of the valley as glitter, the sun reflecting off the water into a thousand shards that shot over that vast expanse of green and gray and hurt my still tender eyes.My mother set me down and stood behind me, her arms wrapped around my thin shoulders, our toes on the edge of the cliff. She was weeping again, and her hands shook even when she clasped them at my breast bone. Her breathing was short and heavy, gasping. She prayed.“I am filled with the blinding clarity of Rage, oh lord. Clarity and certainty. The Rage outweighs my fear and my sadness at what must be done. Oh Lord of the burning coal in the belly of all mortalkind. Oh Lord. Please. Please my lord. Let the direction of my rage have no bearing on the courage it brings me. Let me spare her. Let her be spared.”I remember her prayer so clearly. Her rough, ragged voice, hoarse from days of weeping and screaming. I didn’t understand it at the time. I didn’t know why she held me there on that cliff edge, only inches away from death, and rocked us back and forth. When I think of it now, I think that I should have been scared. I should have known to be afraid.But I was foolish, and I did not understand what fear really meant. -- source link
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