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Title: Freedom of Wings
Author: wild-dreamer
Fandom: Original fiction
Warnings: None
Summary: To sever this final tie to everything she held dear would be as to kill her, even as it would free her wings and allow her to rise above it all.
She wears so much of other people that it weighs her down.
She could fly, but for the chains about her neck and the bands on her fingers, the beads and cords that wrap her narrow wrists.
But these are the substance of her mortality, and to give them up and not replace them again would be as to kill her, even as it would free her wings and allow her to rise above it all.
She grows out her hair to become who she thinks she wants to be. Years pass, and still she strives to become that woman she saw in her dreams as a teen. She bears all her burdens with a contented smile, and not a word said in complaint. Every memory is written in her eyes and worn on her person so she doesn't forget who she is and what she's living for.
To be sure, it changes. She cannot wear it all at once, she chooses her burdens around her emotions. Sometimes it changes day to day, sometimes one memory will hold sway for longer than another. Her moods shift with the passing of hours, days, or sometimes the changing of mere minutes.
Pieces of the past wear her out even as she wears them. A love lost, a child unborn, a hundred potential lovers passed her by. Her closest friends, then and now; some remain, most do not. Every life she has touched is painted on her heart and soul until she is vivid with their mingled colors.
Until the day when that weight becomes too much for her to bear. The day she finds herself in no one else.
Silver of hair and heavy of heart, she sits at a vanity older even than she, and the reflection before her offers up a peaceful smile as she lifts her scissors in unadorned hands.
Her neck is bare of chains, wrists empty of decoration; her hair is loose around her shoulders, reaching past her seat as it cascades down her back. Her ears hold none of the simple hoops and elegant dangling gems of her normal life; all of her rings are neatly lined up in the jewelry box beside the mirror.
She smiles at her stark reflection as the silver scissors glint in one hand, her other smoothly gathering the long grey locks together.
The sound the scissors make as they slide through the long-tended strands is both a sound of freedom and a sound of sorrow, and blue eyes watch as the cut hair falls to the floor around her seat until nothing remains but a messy bob. The weight of it falling away is like her heaviest burden lifting from her shoulders, tumbling to the ground like a discarded cloak in the summer heat.
It isn't entirely sadness that brings the tears that begin flowing over her cheeks when she turns that ice-blue gaze to the mirror once more. It will be the last time she sees her own reflection, or much of anything at all.
But for the first time in years, she feels truly free.
~Fin~
Author: wild-dreamer
Fandom: Original fiction
Warnings: None
Summary: To sever this final tie to everything she held dear would be as to kill her, even as it would free her wings and allow her to rise above it all.
She wears so much of other people that it weighs her down.
She could fly, but for the chains about her neck and the bands on her fingers, the beads and cords that wrap her narrow wrists.
But these are the substance of her mortality, and to give them up and not replace them again would be as to kill her, even as it would free her wings and allow her to rise above it all.
She grows out her hair to become who she thinks she wants to be. Years pass, and still she strives to become that woman she saw in her dreams as a teen. She bears all her burdens with a contented smile, and not a word said in complaint. Every memory is written in her eyes and worn on her person so she doesn't forget who she is and what she's living for.
To be sure, it changes. She cannot wear it all at once, she chooses her burdens around her emotions. Sometimes it changes day to day, sometimes one memory will hold sway for longer than another. Her moods shift with the passing of hours, days, or sometimes the changing of mere minutes.
Pieces of the past wear her out even as she wears them. A love lost, a child unborn, a hundred potential lovers passed her by. Her closest friends, then and now; some remain, most do not. Every life she has touched is painted on her heart and soul until she is vivid with their mingled colors.
Until the day when that weight becomes too much for her to bear. The day she finds herself in no one else.
Silver of hair and heavy of heart, she sits at a vanity older even than she, and the reflection before her offers up a peaceful smile as she lifts her scissors in unadorned hands.
Her neck is bare of chains, wrists empty of decoration; her hair is loose around her shoulders, reaching past her seat as it cascades down her back. Her ears hold none of the simple hoops and elegant dangling gems of her normal life; all of her rings are neatly lined up in the jewelry box beside the mirror.
She smiles at her stark reflection as the silver scissors glint in one hand, her other smoothly gathering the long grey locks together.
The sound the scissors make as they slide through the long-tended strands is both a sound of freedom and a sound of sorrow, and blue eyes watch as the cut hair falls to the floor around her seat until nothing remains but a messy bob. The weight of it falling away is like her heaviest burden lifting from her shoulders, tumbling to the ground like a discarded cloak in the summer heat.
It isn't entirely sadness that brings the tears that begin flowing over her cheeks when she turns that ice-blue gaze to the mirror once more. It will be the last time she sees her own reflection, or much of anything at all.
But for the first time in years, she feels truly free.
~Fin~
