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╰┈➤❝ [he showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that i had none.] ❞ ╰┈➤ madeline miller
THE BRIGHT AFTERNOON LIGHT STARTLED HER AWAKE. Her hands reached up, rubbing her eyes. A soft groan dripped from her lips as she pushed herself up on the empty bed. Staring down at her hands, she frowned. It all came flooding back to her. What had happened the night before. What she'd seen. Her mother's last words to her. There were no more nightmares that haunted her. The bird no longer pecked at her parents' corpses. In her dream, she sat under the tree, alone, no bird in sight. Shutting her eyes, she leaned her elbows against her knees, her hands running through her hair. Where did this leave her? Was she just supposed to go home, sit in a newfound silence - one that was heavier than before? A sigh escaped her as she pushed herself up from the bed.
The clothes hung loosely from her, two sizes too big. Her arms wrapped around her body as she looked around the room. She'd been so tired the night before that she hadn't really paid any attention to the room. Her finger ran along the cover over the mirror. She gently pulled it off, revealing her own reflection. The eyes that stared back at her were tired and worn, they screamed at her to sleep peacefully. To chase after a rest she might never get again. Frown lines were permanently etched onto the corners of her lips. Before she was fired, Penny had told her that she'd always been an unhappy baby. Crying into the early hours of the morning, refusing to let up. How her parents would threaten the staff's jobs if they couldn't get her calmed down. Part of her feared motherhood. The idea of it. The worry that came along with it. The worry that she, too, might become resentful like her own mother had.
She often wondered what her mother had been like before she had come around. Had the woman been joyful, pleasant? Was she full of smiles and quick little jokes? Was she behind her mother's anger, her resentment? She was beginning to suspect that she'd been born with some hideous deformity, something so horrifying that not even a mother could love. It was the only reason she could think of. Why else had her own mother, the woman she shared a body with for nine grueling months, become so hateful towards her? But maybe that was just motherhood. A curse. It made you resent the thing that had slithered out from under you. The creature that wept and wept, begged and begged for more. Never satisfied. Like some parasite.
The eyes that stared back at her were her father's. Everything about her was her father. Barely even a hint of her mother left behind. She'd probably be angry too if she'd birthed a child and the only evidence left of it were the stretch marks. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she tossed the drape back over the mirror, sick of looking at her own face. Maybe she got why the mirror had been covered up. Could he, like her, no longer stand his own reflection? Her hands rubbed her eyes as she left the room to delve deeper into the quiet mansion.
