𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔏𝔞𝔰𝔱 𝔇𝔯𝔬𝔴𝔰

part ii | chapter iv

The dirt caking her hands dissolved in the lukewarm water. Muddy rivulets swirled down her arms, dripping from her elbows to her hips and legs, they followed the tracks bordered by her tattoos. To the outside world, the Silverheel sisters' tattoos only existed on their arms, and Winona was often thankful for the invention of clothes – they hid the marks covering the rest of her body. Those were a tracery of thicker, blacker lines netting her sides, sloping along the curves of her breasts and her buttocks, all the way down to the tops of her calves where they spindled into points. The designs were only separated by a blank space along her spine and tailbone.

While Winona lathered herself with the citrus-scented bodywash, her palms feeling the ridges of the inked skin, she once again found herself puzzled by why she didn't have any memory of getting these tattoos. The scarification was so prominent, so ropy, it was a surprise she didn't remember the pain of the procedure. And neither did Meda, strangely enough.

Comparing those to the tattoos that she had gotten after she'd started working at the studio in Andover, she also couldn't help but ponder on how deep they had to cut into her epithelial to get scars that thick. The dark forests around her ankles, the snake that twisted up from her groin and rested its scaly head in the valley of her breasts, the wild bouquet of skulls and flowers on her left thigh, and the raven on her right – they had all set into her skin comfortably, smoothly. They were rather unscarred...

Regardless, tonight, her and her sister's warrior-markings didn't stay for long, since her thoughts were quick to drift onto things that weighed more heavily on her mind. Winona watched the browned water whirlpool around the drain. She watched but she didn't see, preoccupied with what she had done and what she still had to do. Turning her attention back to her hands, she scrubbed at them further. She had to get the mud out from underneath her nails.

Winona's decision to make use of the spoils from their impulsive nicking and picking had been finalized. Instead of throwing them into boxes and then burying the boxes all over Harold Parker Forest, away from their eyes and their minds, she was going to thrift and pawn them. She had been thinking over this plan for the past month; today, she'd acted on it. First, she used the computer at work to take down a list of all the pawn shops in Andover, Salem, and other nearby towns. Then, after her shift, she'd hurried home, grabbed a shovel from their garden shed, and gone deep into Harold Parker Forest – purpose on her mind, purpose in her strides.

A couple hours later, Winona had returned from the woods, her arms laden with three garbage bags full of things that still had some commercial value. She'd snuck in from the kitchen door in the back, and quietly locked herself in her room. After safely stashing the bags inside her boxbed, she'd showered to clean herself of all evidence of being in the forest.

Now, as she dried herself, she tried to adjudge the pros and cons of creating a savings bank account where she could deposit the earnings from this endeavor. Winona had to pick a bank which offered a good interest rate and was a few towns away. Those savings would help with paying for Meda's additional college expenses, of things outside her tuition scholarship. It may be unethical, it may be immoral, and it may devastate their father if he ever came to know – but it was the smart thing to do. And it had to be done, because a loan was out of the question – their little family didn't have much to write down as collateral.

Meda deserved to be able to live her dreams and Winona wasn't about to let something like financial instability get in the way of that. If anyone deserved a chance to shine against all odds, it was Meda, and Winona was willing to beat a few unfair odds out of the equation. It was the least she could do.

Winona's financial rumination only ceased during dinnertime. Dinner was for fully investing in the family, since it was the one meal they ever enjoyed together.