My mother, two sisters, and I lived in a small house, surrounded by nothing but vast, rolling fields and crystalline streams, with clear skies, and powdery, white clouds taking shape amongst this seemingly desolate place. We all felt as though we were the flesh of this land, bred into it, to be born here and disappear here, all the same. My world, magnificent and small, consumed me. I spent many of my days walking with my younger sister, through the fields; we did not talk much, but her hand intertwined in mine spoke for both of us.
We traversed through the fields together, finally coming upon a large mirror propped up against a tree, the only one for miles. This was our secret place. She would sit in front of the mirror, and I would stand behind her and braid her blonde hair. Her face would light up with every strand crossed, and I could tell she believed herself to be beautiful. It was noticeable in her eyes, but she was never vain aloud; she was quiet and modest, she always has been. She stood up with a smile stretched across her porcelain doll face, her eyes bright, and she danced around, admiring her beautiful golden locks, folded into intricate strands. I watched her and smiled, confidence always looked best on her.
I gasped. “Sister! She is coming!”
Her body stopped moving and her face grew red as she frantically struggled to release her hair and smoothen out the creases. “The mirror!” she cried. We did the best we could to conceal it amongst the tall grass, but Mother stood over us, furious, and she pulled my sister up by her shoulders. She saw her dancing. She found the mirror and smashed it into the ground. Shards of sharp glass coated the ground and reflections of my mother’s sharp, angered face struck me. I could see my sister, too, in the glass, with tears down her face, yet she still looked beautiful. My mother, on the other had, was the most hideous thing I had ever seen. Our magnificent world was broken in that instant along with our one and only mirror,
We walked home in silence, us three. We did not hold hands. My older sister stood beneath the clothing lines, pinning up our pure, white clothing, looking like white clouds clung to the earth by simple, wooden pins. The wind picked up and it seemed as though the clouds would be freed, to return to the sky, but they were restrained, just as we were, to our house that was mixed both with wonder and pain.
My older sister, like us, had a secret, She was the one my mother despised the most for her impure, red hair. A brilliant fire that raged wildly from her scalp and my mother found it horrendous. My sister lived a secret lifestyle, much more dangerous than ours, and I had discovered this the night before, I wandered out of the house during the night, awoken by a dull light in the distance. My curious mind pulled me towards it, and what I discovered was my sister, playing with fire as if the element was her own.
She spun the fire, blank faced, and beautiful. She saw me and said nothing but danced around, spinning this fire; it created bright rings around her. We made eye contact and she nodded at me; she trusted that I would not tell. Though her expression was blank, her lips clenched tight, I could see she was truly happy. She, like my young sister, wanted to feel beautiful and special, something that had been forbidden from us for all of our lives. I admired my sister more in this moment than I ever had before.
And, on this night, when my mother discovered the secret of mine, she also discovered the fiery secret of my older sister. My sister, that night, did not come home, and my mother, furious, sent us out to find her. What we found I could never have prepared for, my sister lying on the ground, unmoving, her fiery red hair filled with ash and burnt at the tips, a patch of grass completely burned and bare around her. A smile was stretched across her face.
She was happy, yet my younger sister and I found our worlds to crumble down. I could not get the image of that warm smile out of my head. Our world was broken and yet she was strong, alive and dead in the fire.