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Luis Ricardo Falero - "The Pole Star" - 1885
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Title: Pandora
Artist: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Date: 1881
Style: Romanticism
Genre: Mythological Painting
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IV
He had turned his apartment upside down and found no books at all, except of course for his trusty truck maintenance handbook, which he had already almost memorized. It made no sense, and yet quotes came to him unbidden, from authors he had never heard of, let alone read. Still, the man at the bookstore had been adamant. He had purchased Valley Flower. Suddenly, he had the simple idea of logging into his bank and looking at his card statements.
Sure enough, the evidence was there. Several payments, all to nearby small bookstores. Nothing too expensive. Somehow, he knew. The first one was a collection of Byronâs poems. The second one a history of ancient female rulers. The third was, of course, Valley Flower. He had no memory of reading any of them, and no idea where they were. Had he been blacking out more? Doing other things when he thought he was watching the game on sundays? How could he even be sure of anything anymore? Maybe Hayley was⌠editing his experience somehow. Making him see or not see things, messing with his memories, making him more and more confusedâŚ
He wanted to hate her. He really did. But he couldnât. He knew what she would say, with her big green eyes pleading to him. âSorry, I just really like to readâ. He could almost hear her meek voice inside his head. How could he hate her? Besides, she had become his only true companion. Maybe it was just fair to let her have her little moments, her books. It wasnât as if anyone would ever know.Â
As to where the books had gone⌠it was obvious.
âI donated them. I want others to enjoy books too, you know?â
How could he be mad at that?
He soon fell victim to a rather nasty flu. He spent day after day swimming in and out of consciousness, being himself for brief periods before sinking again and watching as Hayleyâs thoughts occupied his consciousness in a swirl of fantasies, desires, ideas and frustrations to the point that separating what was He and what was Her was a pointless endeavor. He knew the reluctance to call a doctor was all he, though. Things would sort themselves out, as his dad used to say.
On the fifth day he felt well enough to roll off the bed and get a shower. He looked in the mirror through a feverish haze. He had barely eaten, so no wonder he had lost weight. Quite a bit of weight, in fact. His beer belly was practically gone, and⌠no, no way he had gotten shorter. That was fever talk. No illness could make a man shorter. Still⌠Whatever. He pushed the fear down and showered before stumbling back to bed.
Had he been more alert, he might have seen the single, long, red hair he had left in the shower.
Thereâs something special about that moment in which a sickness gives way, when one realizes that one is getting better, that energy is coming back, that the brain fog is lifting. He awoke feeling renewed, a brand new man indeed. He rubbed his eyes and soon noticed something alarming. His goatee was gone.Â
He rushed to the bathroom and stared at the face in the mirror. He could hardly recognize it: he had sported a beard as soon as he had been able to grow one. The face looking back at him was smooth, almost child-like in the softness of its skin. It almost seemed to glow, and a spot of panic burned inside his chest. Had he shaved in his feverish state? When? Using what? He had scissors to trim his goatee, but no proper shaver- and the job looked almost professional. Hell, it looked like he had never had facial hair at all. He studied the strange face in the mirror. It looked nice. Soft, even. It was his, no doubt about it, but it seemed⌠slightly shifted. The angles were a little bit different, the lines of his face just the tiniest bit altered to be⌠he settled for âprettierâ. He needed to settle for âprettierâ. He couldnât bear to utter, even in his mind, the words that would more exactly describe the shape.
More feminine.
Also, there was no denying it: he was getting shorter. Slimmer. Even his fingers looked more dainty, and his nails had grown in a most alarming way. As far as he knew, nails didnât grow beautifully shaped as if a manicurist fairy had worked on them throughout the night. This was, he decided, a nightmare. It wasnât real. Couldnât be real. Like a child, he rushed back to bed and covered himself with his blanket. Things would go back to normal by themselves, he knew that. He was just having a little bit of a psychotic break. He didnât want to imagine himself disappearing, becomingâŚ
And he hated that part of his mind was thinking of the clothes he should buy.
He had to go back to normal, regular, predictable life. That was the ticket. He had been too much in his head, looking into the mirror too often. There was a world out there, a solid, real world. A world that made sense- and not a minor concern, a world that paid him for his labor. He was sure there would be someone looking for a simple delivery, something to ease his way back to the comfort of the familiar. And sure enough, there was a simple run requested waiting for him in the system. He almost slammed his finger into the âaccept requestâ button on his phone. It might as well had been labeled âreturn to reality.â
Emily felt strange. Too big. Her driving wheel intimidating, unwieldy. He looked around, shifted in his seat. It didnât make sense. He had been inside Emily countless times, had traveled the country with her. She had been almost an extension of himself. That was why he had given her a name, after all. When a trucker moves on from a loaner or a company vehicle, when he finds the right truck to call his own, they named it. And, he noticed after observing his friends, the name had to be a girlâs name. Big Bertha. Dolly. Gladys. All his friends had their truck-wives, so he felt he had to name his own. He wasnât sure why trucks were girls, or why truckers treated them like close, cherished companions. Sure, he did maintenance and took care of his truck. He knew it inside out. He just didnât feel that kind of⌠close attachment to it. But men named trucks, and so, his was Emily. But Emily felt like an unwelcoming behemoth of metal.
He took to the road as he had done so many times before. Normally he would zone out, let his muscle memory take care of the driving, listen to his sport radio and bask in that space between spaces, that special no-land that was the wide, open road. Instead, his body tensed up. His mind was racing, paying close attention to every sign, every other vehicle, every turn. He hated every moment of it, hated the way the patter on the radio only seemed to assault his brain with shrill laughter and screaming and a soundboard of air horns and silly noises. Without even thinking it, he pushed a button and the radio hissed and blabbered before finding another station. Music. That was better.
He had to admit the music calmed him somewhat. He still wasnât enjoying the drive, not one bit, but by moments he could almost be carried away by the melodies. Maybe he could pull it off. Maybe he was returning to being something like himself again.
Oh oh you think youâre something special
Oh oh you think youâre something else
Ok. So you have a car!
That donât impress me muchâŚ
Suddenly he caught himself. How long had he been singing along? Why were his hips moving in his seat? How did he know all the words? Why did Shaniaâs voice sound so⌠right coming from his mouth? What the fuck was going on? And did he almost crash a few miles back? He felt sweat dripping down his face. He checked in the mirrorâŚ
It was only a flash, shorter than a second. That was enough to make him pull over and jump out of Emily. He panted, his hand resting on the door, his gaze to the hot asphalt. No way. No way. He hadnât seen⌠that. He shut his eyes, tried to push the image away. It was no use. What he had seen was engraved behind his eyelids.Â
He had become a strange sight indeed: a petite man, oversized clothes hanging off his slender limbs, propped against a massive truck in the middle of nowhere, baking under the blazing sun. He knew he needed to get a move on, butâŚ
Deep green eyes accentuated by perfectly applied eyeliner. The vaguest hint of tasteful, understated eyeshadow. Playful freckles on his nose and cheeks. A wisp of red hair falling between plucked eyebrows.Â
It was impossible, yet that was what the mirror had shown him. He shuddered as he remembered a dream, a conversation in a coffee shop. Hayley. He had seen Hayley.Â
He could dispel the fear in an instant, of course. All he needed to do was look in the mirror. And still, he didnât. His breath came in ragged, short bursts. It wasnât just that what he had seen was bizarre, beyond all logic or reality. It was that if he were to be honest with himself, even for a second, he would have to admit that for the first time in his life, he had felt beautiful.
How long did he stay there? Impossible to tell. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. Eventually, spurred less by bravery and more by the starting aches of a sunburn. He trembled as he glanced in the rear view mirror.
He was himself. Sort of. It was hard, with the recent changes, to be sure of what âhimselfâ meant. He should have felt relief, and he did- but there was also a hint of something else, a longing he could not name. But there was something else. Maybe the sun had burned him more than he realized⌠however, the marks didnât look like burns or irritated skin. He leaned closer to the mirror.
Were those freckles on his nose?  Â
V
Heâd never thought a lot about clothes. Well, that wasnât entirely true- he had never allowed himself to think about clothes. Fact was he had thought about clothing a lot exactly once, when he had pondered long and hard what his âstyleâ would be. He didnât think about it as style, obviously: the proper style for a man, he had decided, was to have no style, which in itself was a rather complex style, since any evidence of even acknowledging the concept of style was suspect. Ideally a manâs clothing should embody the very concept of âdefaultâ, should be banal to the point of invisibility, should silently scream the word ânormal.â
âNormalâ was hard to achieve, but he had done so and buried the entire sartorial world deep underground. From that point on, buying clothes had been a functional, gray, dull affair: one punctuated sometimes by the lingering fear that a certain color or pattern was too⌠out there. Luckily, there were many stores that stocked their shelves with sturdy, practical, utterly boring shirts, pants, shoes. He had built himself a reasonable wardrobe, one that kept any thought on what to wear to a minimum.
A wardrobe that was of no use to him anymore.
Shirts hung off his back like he was a scarecrow, or a child dressed like a very boring, very practical ghost. His belly was gone, but so were his broad shoulders, his muscular arms (and the hair on them as well), his large back. The only word that came to his mind looking at himself in the mirror now was âpetiteâ. It was a nice word. It was a pretty word. It was an utterly terrifying word. His body was changing and there wasnât a damn thing he could do about it. He felt as if he was a spirit trapped in a black wind, carried away to God knew where. Sure, he could go to a doctor, but what would he say?Â
âNo, Doc, I used to be a big burly man, balding with a beer gut! I drove a truck! And now Iâm becoming⌠I donât know what! I swear I wasnât this short, or a redhead, or freckled, or⌠and I didnât have boobs! You have to believe me!â
Yeah, that was a no-go. Which led him to the thing he had been trying so, so hard to avoid.
He was growing breasts.Â
There was no other way to call them, and Lord knew he had looked frantically for any other term, any plausible explanation. Remembering his blackouts, the novels he⌠or Hayley had read, he had looked up the effects of estrogen on the body. If she could make him buy books when he wasnât looking, who could say what kind of stuff she was making him take? It would be a terrifying idea, but it would be, at the very least, an answer. As far as he knew, grown men did not spontaneously manifest tits, after all. Sadly, even the most superficial research was enough to inform him of the fact that no, estrogen did not work that fast, or change hair color.
The person in the mirror resembled him less and less by the day. He kept turning around, spinning, taking in every angle. He needed to stop it, and he needed to stop it right then and there. But how? Tears pooled in his eyes, and his fists clenched in complete, impotent rage. Rage was good. Rage was manly.
Before he knew it, he was on the ground, surrounded by reflective glass shards, his hand bleeding. He hadnât meant to punch it. To punch himself. To punch her.Â
âWhy are you doing this to me?â
âIâm notâ, she said, an echo in his head.
âThen what is happening?â
âI⌠Iâm not sure. I think Iâm starting to become⌠myself. Just⌠by moments. They add up, I supposeâ
âWell fucking stop it!â
âI tried! I did, at first. But⌠donât I deserve some happiness too? Donât I deserve to exist beyond the cage in which youâve locked me? The world has so much to offer, so many wonderful things, art, books, music! I canât just look at it from behind your eyesâ
âNo. No, no, no. Fuck you. My body isnât a fucking time share and you sure as shit are not allowed to redecorate it, so take your red hair, and your boobs, and fuck right off! I was fine before you came along!â
âWere you happy?â
âThatâs not the point!â
âIt seems to me like it should be the entire point. Happiness. How long do you expect to keep living a lie?â
âIâm not⌠I was fine!â
âWell, change is inevitable. Iâm not going anywhere, so you can suffer every day or you can at least try to have fun. Speaking for myself, Iâd much prefer it if you didnât suffer. For instance, youâre going to have to buy new clothes. Why not enjoy it?â
âFuck. Youâ
Hayley didnât respond. He hated to admit she was right, tough. He did need new clothes.
VI
The battlefield stretched before him, infinite. He saw safe areas, sensible shirts and gray pants. He also saw the minefield he would have to cross: rack after rack of yellows, reds, greens and pinks; tops and blouses and skirts, menacing like fanatical enemy soldiers, sharp like spike traps trying to break him, to send him into a pit from which there would be no escape. He took a moment to get his body ready, to make sure his oversized t-shirt properly hid his breasts. He wore a ballcap to somewhat obscure a face that, it pained him to admit, could just very well belong to a woman. The point was to avoid the dreaded Shopping Assistant.Â
That particular fear had come from a long, unflinching, objective look at the bathroom mirror, given that he had smashed one in the bedroom. He did his best to push away how he had once looked, the residual image of himself he had been holding onto like a piece of driftwood in a stormy ocean. What would other people see when they looked at him? The answer was obvious. Devoid of his masculine clothing, he looked like a slight, petite, slightly androgynous woman. He hoped that a new outfit, a manly outfit that actually, well, fit him, would push him at least to the level of a slight, petite, slightly androgynous man. He just hoped no one at the store would peg him as a woman and drag him to the womenâs section. He was terrified of what might happen then.
He took a deep breath and went inside, heading straight for the safe, masculine blues and blacks.
It took him a moment to understand where he was. The white light overhead hurt his eyes. The miniscule cubicle made him feel trapped. His heart was racing, and he could feel something in his chest, some residual adrenaline⌠no, not fear. Something else. Something like joy. It was overwhelming, so much so that a full minute passed before he realized he was naked, staring at himself inside a changing room, a pile of colorful clothes arranged by his side.
Hayley, you absolute bitch. Of all the times to give him a blackoutâŚ
He looked around. His t-shirt and pants were gone. Hayley had thrown them out the changing room while he was away. Fuck. Check and fucking mate. What could he do? Call for assistance? They would think him crazy- or more accurately, they would think her crazy. Who knew what Hayley had told the workers at the store? And walking out in the nude was, obviously, not a choice. Fine. He would wear whatever the hell Hayley had set out for him, just to fetch his own clothes and get the fuck out. He picked up a top.
Huh.
He couldnât be sure, but at a glance it didnât look as bad as he had feared. It wasnât some pornographic, stare-at-my-boobs top. If anything, it was modest, the emerald green would compliment his eyes, and what cleavage the top did have was tasteful, playful, flirty but not trashy. Of course, there was only so much he could eyeball holding the top. There was only one way to be sure of how it would lookâŚ
Wait. What the fuck was he thinking? Tasteful greens? Playful clothes? Those werenât his thoughts. They couldnât be. They shouldnât be. He would just⌠wear the damn thing, then find his own clothes. Quickly.Â
God fucking damnit. Hayley might be some sort of⌠weird mind⌠stealing thing, but she did have a good eye. Before he knew it, he was turning, checking the top from different angles. It fit his new body perfectly, drawing tasteful curves on his skin, suggesting a trove of beauty while concealing it. A smile escaped his lips. Coy, yet flirty. Cute, yet slightly provocative. The kind of smile that was a promise and a dare, a diamond half-seen through the glint of morning mists. A smile he had never smiled before. When had he last smiled? Truthfully, spontaneously, not the result of a calculation or social norm? He couldnât remember. Had he ever smiled like that? Just⌠naturally?
It just felt⌠right.
Suddenly, he snapped back. What was he doing? He was being ridiculous. He was being a fool. He was being a freak. Then again, no one was watching. Yes, it was a ridiculous image to be sure. He was wearing a top and nothing else. What was he, Donald Duck? He put on a pair of pants in a hurry, grasping for some notion of normalcy.
Well, that was new. He turned and stared at the mirror in primal fascination, like an ape seeing fire for the first time. He had a butt.
He had always possessed a behind, of course. It just had never been a factor in any aspect of his life, much less on his appearance. Men did not care about their asses. Or at least he didnât think they did. His friends never mentioned their asses except in the context of working those butts off behind the wheels of their trucks. Did they secretly care about how their asses looked? He now did, that was for sure.
He did a little twirl. It was a thing of beauty, of absolute joy. Cute, not too big but certainly appealing, highlighted by the perfect fit of the shiny, black pants. A part of him was aware that if he came across a woman with that pretty butt he would stare. Would others stare at him? He wasnât sure how to feel about the idea. He suspected a part of him liked it. He ran his hands over it. It felt so sensitive, so smooth, so firm⌠and yet it seemed to give him a balance, a sense of truly being on the ground he had never known he had lacked. But how could one miss what one had never known existed?
He felt light. Bubbly. As if he could skip, hop, dance. Instead, he did a little wiggle, and a cute laugh sneaked out of his chest. He didnât mind. Instead he felt slightly miffed as he looked around the changing room. Where were the shoes? Surely Hayley would have picked out shoes to go with the outfit! Maybe they were outside? He felt almost outraged. Who didnât choose cute shoes when putting together a wardrobe?
Without a thought getting in the way, he left the changing room. There, on the floor, he saw a dull, brutal heap of cloth. It took him a moment to recognize them as the clothes he had been wearing not long ago. They looked heavy, as if they were made of lead. The thought of putting them on sent a shiver up his spine. A picture of iron chains flashed in his mind. He started sweating. He knew he should put those terrible clothes on. That was the plan, after all. Instead, he stared, paralyzed, shaking.
âOh. My. God. You look so good! Honey, you were made for those clothes!â
He turned around. The clerk was there, her eyes beaming. Sure, it was her job, but⌠it felt so sincere. It felt like the blonde woman was genuinely amazed and happy for him, like she was a sister in a world he had never imagined. There was so much emotion in her eyes⌠and all for a stranger. His friends didnât show emotion like that. Even their support was usually more⌠ironic, or clad in jokes or teaseful ribbing. This was different. Unvarnished. Unashamed.
âGirl, I have to say⌠when you came in, wearing⌠those things I thought you were a lost cause but damn! You are positively radiant!â
Girl. She had called him a girl. Should he correct her? Could he? Could he really, with a straight face, utter the words âI am a manâ after all he had felt? Also⌠he did feel radiant. He felt as if he was hovering above the ground, surrounded by a halo of bright, white light. He searched for words, any words, anything at all.
âShoesâ, he blurted out.Â
âShoes indeed! Let me show youâ
The pile of discarded clothes said nothing as it was left behind.
VII
Horns shook the city air. Angry, shouting voices lodged themselves in her stomach. The shift stick felt stiff, unwieldy. She preferred to stick to the pedals, which the drivers behind her didnât particularly appreciate. The wheel felt like an enormous monster she was forced to fight at every turn. The truck was a lumbering leviathan, and with every block she realized more and more of the simple, undeniable fact that she hated the damn thing.
At some point she found herself parked on the side of a quiet road. She looked at the trees beside her, the birds above her, the scattered clouds lazily floating along. She looked at the mechanical monstrosity that appeared to her eyes as a sort of disgusting predator. Large, cumbersome, threatening. She sat on the grass by the road. What was she doing driving that thing anyway?
Looking at the sun, it seemed to her as if she had been living inside a trench, toiling, fighting a war with no meaning or purpose. Sure, the truck was her job. Or his job. The distinction grew less clear by the minute. What was evident was that she simply couldnât keep going. She couldnât spend her hours inside that awful metal prison anymore. But where to go next? What did she truly want to do? Who was she, really?
Her phone vibrated. She glanced at it, recognized it was someone from work and let it shake impotently in her hand. She supposed the name on the screen belonged to a friend, in a way. He just didnât feel like a friend. Not anymore. Before, friends and coworkers had been the same thing. Now she saw inside herself, realized how lonely she truly was. She wanted more.
She dreamed of smart conversation, of books, of delving deeper into the world of Literature. She dreamed of cozy coffee shops. She dreamed of laughter, of sharing. But how could she turn those fantasies into more than mere dreams?
The answer was staring right at her.
She could feel the wind picking up. It was something electric, exciting. She knew she had been scared of change, not that long ago. Now her life was growing, flowering, transforming. Her body was never exactly the same by morning as it had been at bedtime, and waking up was an exciting thrill. Why then had she insisted on keeping the rest of her static, trapped in amber? The truck, the apartment, his friends had been essential in the past, but now they simply didnât fit her.Â
Well, what would fit?Â
She was looking into the mirror, trying out a new makeup look she had seen on Youtube. A thing that was becoming more and more apparent with each passing day was the cost. Makeup was expensive, that much she had realized immediately, especially since she had resorted to trying out various shades, brands, styles. But that was only part of the cost: the rest was time. She had a foggy memory of waking up, throwing on some clothes and stepping out into the world; such a notion seemed absolutely ridiculous to her now. After a few missed appointments (one to get her nails done, one to buy a particularly rare book from a private seller) she had learned to clear out at least a solid hour to get ready before heading out. She really hoped practice would make things quicker. Besides, once she had learned her⌠style, she supposed, things would go far more smoothly.
There was a joy, a playfulness to the whole affair. Her face was a canvass in which color, shades, highlights danced and underlined this or that feature, made her cheekbones more pronounced, or her lips look thicker, or her eyes pop. She felt a bit like a newborn fawn, learning what other girls had mastered by age fifteen, but she took to her new hobby with the excitement of a teenager. In a way, she felt like one, like she was going through a second puberty. The right puberty, this time. Back in the day, she⌠or he, had been afraid of the changes, afraid of what they meant about her place in the world. She vaguely remembered feeling as if she was not ready, silently begging for more time to figure the world out. Those memories seemed more and more distant every day, like a half-forgotten movie. Well, she didnât have time to reminisce. She could not miss the dayâs appointment.Â
She had done her homework. She knew what she had and what it was worth. Still, she was a bit shocked by the tone of the man, the way he talked down to her. She understood: a willowy redhead girl who had âinheritedâ a truck would look to a sleazy auto seller like a prime mark. She was many things, but gullible was not one of them. Politely, always wearing a disarming smile, she refused to budge an inch. In the end she got the proper value for the vehicle. Enough to purchase a small, compact, rather cute electric car. One that felt like her. And enough to kickstart the next step in her project.
The ads went online later that day. So many people had trouble interpreting books, analyzing them⌠while she could do so quickly, effortlessly, with sensitivity and academic rigor. It made her happy, and she wanted to share that happiness, to teach others to see the wonderful world of words the way she did. Besides, she needed a job. Tutoring sounded just perfect.Â
Of course, her plan included a couple more steps. Steps that required certain paperwork. She had been lucky in that the gods of bureaucracy had chosen to answer her requests speedily, and had scheduled the big day for less than a week since she had requested it. She smiled, pondering if ever paperwork had felt so good for anyone else.
Two days later, she walked out of the big, gray building. She was beaming, holding the small piece of plastic. The picture on it was terrible, as such pictures inevitably were. She didnât care. She looked at it again and again, and every time a surge of energy burst from her chest and made her laugh in sheer joy. Terrible, overexposed, harshly lit photo or not, it was a photo of her. There could be no doubt about it. Surrounded by all the official seals and symbols, made official by the hologram that guarded against forgery, validated by all the boring, subtle aspects of properly-acquired government I.D. Her. And the ink, black, impossible to erase, proclaiming that she had always known to be true.Â
âHayleyâ, it said in the space allotted for the citizenâs name.Â
VIII
The huge man looked at the I.D., then at Hayley, then back at the I.D. She couldnât help but smile. She had never been carded before. She understood the manâs confusion, given the date of birth on the card and the way she looked. Of all the changes, her apparent youth had been the most surprising one. Sure, her skin had become smoother, softer, more sensitive. Her once imposing frame had become petite, slender. She had grown breasts, a source of endless fascination for herself and others, just the right size to fit her body without looking artificial. She had a shapely butt and a vagina. That last one she couldnât remember getting, couldnât pinpoint exactly when it had happened. It just felt⌠like it had always been there, even if she knew that wasnât the case. Just like the way she spoke, her thoughts, her dreams. They had slowly made themselves apparent, washing away what had been a false self in a slowly rising tide. Where the past ended and she had truly begun, she couldnât say. She didnât much care either. She was in the world now, and she intended to make up for lost time. On this particular night, by celebrating her first batch of students.
She knew clubs werenât her thing, but⌠better to make sure. Besides, what was life if not there to be experienced fully?
One minute inside and she knew she was in the wrong place. Or at least not a place that felt⌠hers. But she did have to admit one thing: she looked amazing. She was proud of that. It had taken a lot of work! Choosing clothes, seeing how they fit, trying out different styles, practicing with endless tutorials to get her hair and makeup just right⌠in a way the looks of the people around her were invasive, yes, but also⌠validating. After years of feeling invisible behind the wheel of a truck, she felt seen, physical, real. Sure, she didnât intend to make clubbing part of her life, but for one night⌠The books and coffee could wait. Even the new friends she had made at her advanced Literature courses could wait. For one night, she would just⌠let go.
Hayley closed her eyes and let the music vibrate inside her. She let her body feel light, her hands go in the air, her feet do as they pleased⌠She let herself fly.
Many saw her that night. They couldnât know the effort, the pain, the silent suffering that had come before that moment. The dull, heavy years behind her were invisible and growing less and less substantial, leaving not a hint for anyone to observe. They didnât see the full picture, and yet what they did see was, in the end, what truly mattered.
They saw a woman dancing with her eyes closed and a smile on her face. They saw a beautiful girl letting loose, not caring about the weight of the world, twirling and enjoying herself under the shifting, colored lights. They saw someone utterly comfortable with herself, with her place, her body, her life. They saw sensuality and joy, euphoria and childish abandon. The Universe clicking into place.
They saw, quite simply, happiness.
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