i’ve been thinking a lot about mask stories, so i’ll tell you a few if you want.
1. the prince wears a mask. his magic is too bright, they say. his eyes burn like two suns and every inch of his skin radiates light. glance for a second too long and your eyes will hurt, blinking purple shadows of his silhouette wherever you look. he wears the mask for your protection. for everyone’s.
2. there are three monarchs and three thrones and three masks. they are:
the night queen in her silver moon mask, dressed in every shade of purple you have ever secretly coveted, her uncovered mouth smiling like she knows every secret in the world.
the day king in his blue topaz mask, his face rippling beneath the layers of gems as if drowned in the brightest, most deceiving ocean.
the unknowable one in their mask of twilight mist and sunrise fog, dressed in every forgotten daydream the color of diamond or wistfulness.
1. it is not just the prince’s face that is covered. his gloved hand is warm in yours. does he radiate heat as well as light?
people part like an ancient sea as he moves through the ballroom. the eye slots of his mask are covered in golden mesh impossible for you to see through, but he walks with uninhibited grace.
and you are next to him. and you have no mask to hide the raw honesty in your face the way he does. and they will look at you because they cannot look at him.
3. the princess wears a mask because each member of the royal family wears a mask. because they are not human — because they are unknowable — because that is just the way they are.
forgive me. this story splinters more than the others. i cannot tell you why they wear masks. i can only tell you that the princess wears one and you do not listen to those who mutter that you cannot trust the masked heirs to the throne, they could be hiding something, they could be someone other than who they are.
you don’t listen. the reason is the same in every story.
1. you can fall in love with the absence of a face.
2. you bow before the three thrones as every other suppliant does. three masks. three chances for forgiveness. you feel when the queen’s eyes land on you and suddenly there is hesitation in her smiling mouth.
“i beg forgiveness,” you say.
and the day king in his ocean-mask says, “for what do you ask forgiveness?”
3. when the princess is in trouble you feel it in your bones. your wrist snaps and your ribs contort with pain. everything in you is undone and reformed by the absence of her in your life and the presence of the army that sweeps the castle.
you should run away. you could run. you could be safe.
instead you run to the red-armored knight who slaughtered the princess’s parents on their thrones.
1. you love him though you have never seen a single inch of his skin. collar pulled up to the chin of his mask. hands gentle beneath gloves meeting sleeves at the wrist.
“do i know you?” you ask, because you have to.
“yes,” he promises, and his voice spills all the light his cloak and mask hide.
2. “i beg forgiveness because i saw your faces,” you say, and the gasps of three gods becoming mortal become three screams as arrows hit their hearts so fast it seems as if they grew there.
3. she is alive. she is alive and your ribs can clutch your heart and your fractured bones meet again with a pain that brings tears running down your face. arms tighter than iron hold you helpless on your knees but she is alive, framed in red armor as the invader holds a dagger blade to the exposed skin beneath her mask.
“shall we see what our beloved princess looks like? shall we see why our precious heirs hide their faces from the sun?”
she is so quiet you would almost think she’s smug.
4. when you were little your mother told you the sun was a mask the moon wore during the day, and as proof asked when you ever saw them both at the same time.
the first time you saw the ghost of the moon still lingering in the morning light while the sun rose across the sky you felt a bitterness take root beneath your heart and you put on a mask and you refused to answer when the stars called.
3. the mask lifts from her face and she is not the princess.
2. without their masks they were nothing more than handfuls of shadow and light that had been allowed to play at law and power. when you saw their faces you knew what they were and you knew it was time for their power to end.
3. you have seen her before. a laughing, dashing thing, a common sight around the glass-painted castle where guards comfort every doorway with their presence.
the scream of the red knight’s fury as he pushes her away shatters towers.
“are you angry?” she whispers as you pull her into your arms, feeling bones stretch and settle with the rightness of her near.
“i’m so happy i can have you,” you whisper. because a decoy princess is not a princess and you can kiss her shoulder, her hair, her mouth.
4. you have tried so many masks. silk, steel, defiance, gold. the one you like best is anger.
1. the night after the ball you lean against him on a terrace and watch the moon and stars dance overhead. it is so bright, and so dark. everything is silver and velvet and wanting.
you turn your head only halfway and reach up one hand, feel the edge of the heavy mask against your palm and push it up.
his eyes pool like two galaxies as he looks down at you in the darkness. your hand settles lightly on one cheekbone and you sweep your thumb softly across smooth skin.
he does not radiate light. there is no sun in the night.
my stories wears masks and hide from me.
1. beneath his mask there is nothing but ordinary skin.
gummygunk
stormborns
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
snowghoul
dededos
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
