8+ Hour Immersive All-Night Medieval Bedtime Story

This is an immersive 8+ hour all-night sleep track, told gently and with minimal stimulation, designed to keep the mind lightly engaged while allowing the body to relax, fall asleep, and stay asleep throughout the entire night.

This immersive second-person bedtime story places you inside medieval life, not as an observer, but as the person living it. The first part gently explores the strange and unexpected ways people once entertained themselves, followed by a quiet transition into what it would feel like to wake up and move through an ordinary day in medieval times. Later, the story drifts into the surprising beauty standards of the medieval world and how people understood appearance and self-image.

A soft, steady fire crackles in the background, creating a warm and calming atmosphere throughout the night.

Told slowly and gently, this long-form bedtime story is designed to keep the mind lightly engaged while allowing the body to relax and drift into sleep.

Transcript

Hey guys.

Tonight we're wandering into one of the weirdest corners of medieval life.

The strange things people actually did for fun.

Spoiler alert.

There were no phones,

No Netflix,

And definitely no escape rooms.

So what did people do?

Well,

They raced pigs,

Wrestled for cheese,

And believed farting contests were a valid form of entertainment.

It was a world where boredom met creativity in the most unpredictable ways.

Now get comfortable,

Let the day melt away,

And we'll drift back together into the quiet corners of the past.

The sun rolled slowly over the hills like a lazy egg,

Spilling golden yolk across the damp rooftops of a village too old to remember its own name.

Smoke curled from crooked chimneys,

Not in any real hurry,

And the mud in the streets squelched with the sort of noise that made you question your life choices if your bare foot landed in it.

And somewhere in the distance,

The rooster didn't crow.

He was awake,

He just didn't feel like it.

Perhaps he had laryngitis,

Or an existential crisis.

Or maybe,

After watching the same people trip over the same bucket every morning for the past three years,

He decided to boycott the whole charade.

Whatever the reason,

The silence was noticeable,

Which made the sound of the baker's boy falling off the stool all the more dramatic.

A loud thud,

Followed by a string of words he'd absolutely deny saying in front of his mother,

Echoed through the bakery as he rubbed the side of his head and blamed the oven for existing.

The bakery itself was still warm from yesterday's coals,

And the air inside smelled like sleep and flour and someone's forgotten sock.

A lump of dough sat stubbornly on the counter,

Refusing to rise out of pure spite.

And the baker,

An old man with arms like tree trunks and a temper like a thundercloud,

Snored loudly behind the sacks of rye.

Outside,

The village stretched awake one joint at a time.

A dog scratched its ear against the side of a cart.

A pig sneezed.

A cow named Gertrude,

Still half-asleep,

Wandered into someone's laundry.

No one noticed.

Or if they did,

They decided it wasn't their business.

Two elderly women sat on a bench near the well,

Wrapped in shawls and opinions.

One of them had already commented that the sun was too bright and probably a bad omen.

The other was convinced the missing rooster crow meant someone had died,

Or would die,

Or had just forgotten to wind the sun properly.

She wasn't clear on the theology,

But she was certain it involved goats.

A boy with a mop of hair and a tunic,

Two sizes too big,

Tiptoed past the church,

Holding a bucket with one fish in it.

The fish looked judgmental.

The boy looked guilty.

He was supposed to deliver it to the reeve.

But he was thinking very seriously about eating it himself,

Scales and all.

He passed the tavern just as a bleary-eyed man stumbled out,

One boot missing,

A chicken under his arm,

And a daisy tucked behind one ear.

The chicken looked concerned.

Meanwhile,

The rooster,

Whose name no one remembered because no one had bothered to name him,

Stretched one wing,

Fluffed his feathers,

And stared down at the village from the thatch roof of the blacksmith's shed.

He watched the baker's boy burn his finger.

He watched a child fall into a puddle and not get up because he was pretty sure if he stayed there long enough someone might bring him a plum.

The blacksmith's forge hissed to life.

The hammering would start soon,

And with it the daily symphony of irritation.

But not yet.

For now,

The village was in that in-between moment.

Too late to be night.

Too early to be properly awake.

The liminal space of yawns and scratched heads and forgotten chores.

The cows were confused.

The chickens were muttering among themselves.

A goat chewed a boot and made eye contact with someone's grandmother.

She didn't blink.

Then came the cart.

The wheels squeaked in protest,

Pulled by a donkey that looked like it had seen things.

The driver,

An old man with three teeth and a contagious laugh,

Shouted good morning like it was a war cry.

No one responded.

Not out of rudeness,

But because most of them hadn't had their first mead or mushroom tea yet and were deeply suspicious of enthusiasm.

Finally,

With a grunt and a flap of wings,

The rooster let out a sound that could best be described as a sneeze trapped inside a yawn,

Followed by a suspicious silence and a deeply embarrassed shuffle on the roof tiles.

A woman hanging laundry looked up and muttered,

About time.

Before snapping her sheet so hard it could have doubled as a flag.

And just like that,

The village surrendered to the day.

Boots were pulled on,

Aprons tied,

Bread shoved into ovens,

Children were yelled at to stop licking fence posts.

Somewhere,

A bell rang.

Nobody knew why,

But everyone assumed it meant something.

The blacksmith began to curse rhythmically.

The priest practiced his sermon with a stick and a sheep.

The sheep disagreed with his theology.

By the time the sun was fully up,

The rooster had gone back to sleep.

His job,

As far as he was concerned,

Was done.

He'd made a noise.

People were moving.

The world,

However broken and ridiculous,

Was turning again.

And if no one had quite noticed the exact moment the day began,

That was fine.

It wasn't the sort of place where things started cleanly.

Here,

Mornings didn't arrive.

They shuffled in,

Lost a boot in the mud,

And hoped no one asked too many questions.

The first true scent of morning wasn't the bread.

It wasn't even the fire.

It was the warm,

Wet slap of old porridge hitting a wooden bowl and the unmistakable tang of someone's breath who had not,

By any stretch of the imagination,

Met a mint leaf in recent memory.

In the corner of a crooked cottage,

The hearth gave a grumble.

Flames licked lazily at damp logs,

Protesting their workload,

While a woman with one eyebrow and zero patience stirred a pot that looked suspiciously like it had never been emptied.

The porridge inside bubbled with a resentful plop,

Thick enough to stand a spoon in,

Thin enough to slide off when no one was looking.

Her husband,

Already shirtless and already sweating,

Sat hunched over a hunk of rye so dense it might qualify as a weapon in some kingdoms.

He took a bite and paused halfway through chewing,

Not out of delight but calculation.

Was this the same piece from yesterday,

Or had it been reincarnated from last week's loaf?

Either way,

It tasted like dust and commitment.

Next door,

A young girl was pouring reused ale into a cracked clay cup for her grandfather,

Who claimed it settled the stomach,

Despite strong evidence to the contrary.

The cup itself had a chip shaped exactly like the bishop's nose,

A fact the family mentioned often and laughed about never.

Outside,

More hearths began their morning chorus.

Wood snapped.

Metal clanged.

Somewhere,

Someone screamed,

Not again,

And a chicken was launched gently out of a window.

The rituals had begun.

Hygiene in the village was more of a suggestion,

A whisper,

An idea one might consider if time allowed,

And it usually didn't.

A man stood shirtless by a water barrel,

Splashing his face with such ferocity you'd think he was trying to erase it.

Another used the corner of a tunic that clearly belonged to someone else to wipe his nose.

A woman scrubbed her armpits with a handful of moss and muttered something that may have been a prayer or a curse.

Maybe both.

Tooth care was… creative.

Some chewed sticks.

Others rubbed ashes on their gums with their fingers.

One bold soul insisted on using sour milk,

Claiming it scared the rot away.

It also scared away conversation.

In one home,

A child with tangled hair attempted to tame it by licking his palm and smacking his curls into submission.

His mother watched and said nothing,

Mostly because she was too busy trying to remove a slug from her shoe without waking the baby balanced on her back.

The bread ovens,

At least,

Were a source of pride.

That is,

If your definition of pride included guessing whether today's crust would crack your teeth clean or just chip them slightly.

The dough was often mixed with whatever was available.

Oats,

Barley,

The last handful of seeds someone forgot to plant.

On a lucky day,

There might be a walnut.

On an unlucky day,

A pebble.

At the edge of the village,

A man known only as Cricket was lighting his stove with a smirk.

He claimed his bread rose better when he sang to it.

The bread disagreed,

But the singing continued.

His neighbors didn't complain.

They just made sure to be very loud about eating anyone else's loaf.

Sacred rituals dotted the morning like breadcrumbs no one wanted to follow.

A few families knelt by their doors,

Murmuring blessings with half-closed eyes and fully empty stomachs.

The priest's bell rang once,

Though no one was sure why,

As he was still asleep in the chapel with a candle melted into his hair.

One woman tied garlic to her baby's ankle to ward off demons.

Another spat over her left shoulder after feeding the dog,

Just in case.

A boy rubbed mud on his forehead for strength,

Then promptly tripped over a bucket and blamed the mud for not working fast enough.

There was something both chaotic and deeply comforting about these rhythms.

Everyone had a part to play,

Even if their part involved burning the stew,

Cursing the cat,

Or waking up with half a beet in their bed.

No one knew how these habits started.

They simply were.

Passed down,

Picked up,

Misunderstood,

Misused,

And stubbornly repeated.

By the time the sun climbed higher,

The air was thick with smoke,

Salt,

And hope that someone somewhere had a clean spoon.

The porridge had begun to solidify into something resembling glue.

The reused ale was already room temperature,

Which was not a compliment.

And the bread?

The bread was cooling on crooked shelves,

Daring anyone to complain.

Morning had arrived fully now,

Not because the rooster said so and not because the clock struck anything.

There were no clocks,

And the rooster was still offended.

No,

The day began when breath turned to chatter,

And smoke rose from hearths,

And people,

Despite everything,

Got on with the business of surviving.

One crust,

One cough,

And one sacredly strange ritual at a time.

They gathered like clockwork.

Not the loud kind of gathering with shouting and barrels and broken fiddles.

No,

This was quieter,

Sharper,

More dangerous.

A semi-circle of old women planted themselves near the well,

Just after sunrise,

Armed with strong shawls,

Strong tea,

And sharper tongues than most swords in the village.

Their backs were hunched,

But their hearing,

Impeccable.

Their knees ached,

But their memories,

Flawless.

Especially when it came to other people's worst moments.

The well itself had been there longer than any of them.

It sagged slightly to the left and creaked when the wind changed.

Like it,

Too,

Was trying to chime in on the gossip.

A wooden bucket swung lazily on its frayed rope,

Listening in as if it had ears.

Bertha was always first.

A widow since the flood of twenty-one.

Not the big one.

The smaller one,

That only knocked over the pigshed.

She arrived with her oat cakes,

Tucked in a cloth napkin,

And her lips already pursed.

Her gossip didn't warm up.

It came out hot,

Fast,

And slightly burned.

Did you see the baker's wife?

She asked no one in particular.

Wearing yellow.

At her age.

Bold.

Martha,

Who was once a midwife,

And now just a professional skeptic,

Sniffed.

Bold or desperate.

I heard,

Said Agnes,

The smallest and perhaps most dangerous of the trio,

That she's sweet on the cooper.

Always asking for barrels she don't need.

The well creaked in agreement.

Or maybe it just shifted.

Either way,

The mood thickened like stew left too long over fire.

Barrels she don't need,

Bertha repeated,

Tearing off a corner of her oat cake with more force than necessary.

That's what got her sister in trouble,

Too.

Always needing things she didn't need.

They all nodded.

The kind of nod that carries the weight of at least four decades of silently judging people who walk too fast,

Smiled too wide,

Or enjoyed anything too enthusiastically.

A fourth woman joined,

Limping slightly and dragging a stool she claimed belonged to her late husband but clearly hadn't unless he'd been child-sized.

This was Elspeth,

Who only spoke when she could no longer keep it in.

Which wasn't often.

She sat,

Unfolded a suspiciously dry apple,

And said,

I saw the priest leave the tavern last night with hay in his beard.

There was a silence so heavy,

Even the birds paused.

With hay?

Martha asked,

And a bruise on his forehead.

The oat cakes stopped mid-air.

Agnes blinked like she'd just received divine confirmation.

Well,

Said Bertha slowly.

He did give quite the sermon on temptation last week.

Said we must all be tested.

Maybe he meant himself,

Said Elspeth,

Biting her apple and chewing it like a statement.

A donkey passed behind them,

Braying loudly and dragging a cart full of nothing.

They didn't even look.

The donkey was not their concern today.

Today,

It was the priest,

The cooper,

The baker's wife,

And the woman from two cottages down who was seen planting something in the garden after midnight.

What sort of herb grows at that hour?

Martha asked with raised eyebrows.

The sort that gets your chickens to lay twice as fast,

Muttered Agnes.

The sort that gets your husband to speak less,

Added Bertha.

They all sighed,

Not wistfully,

Strategically.

A young girl approached the well with a bucket too large for her arms.

Her eyes were round with fear.

She greeted them with a quiet mourning and reached for the rope.

Careful,

Bertha warned,

That rope frays more every day.

And if it snaps,

Martha added,

You'll end up in the well and hear everything we said twice.

The girl nodded too quickly,

Nearly lost her grip on the crank,

And retreated the moment the bucket hit the edge.

She spilled half the water on her dress and didn't even look back.

Agnes watched her go.

That one's too quiet.

Quiet ones always marry wrong,

Elspeth grunted.

Quiet ones listen too much,

Just like us.

There was a rare moment of laughter,

Dry,

Dusty,

The kind that didn't shake shoulders but rustled shawls.

They rarely admitted it,

But there was affection buried under the layers of judgment and oat crumbs.

A kind of sisterhood formed not by love but by repetition,

Survival,

And the shared understanding that everyone,

Eventually,

Gave them something to talk about,

They moved on to pigs next.

The big one near the churchyard had gotten loose again and eaten half a salter before someone chased it off with a broom.

They debated whether that made the pig holy or blasphemous.

Elspeth suggested it was both and that some men in the village weren't so different.

More oat cakes were passed around,

Some dipped in tea.

Others simply gnawed on for something to do.

No one asked for recipes.

They were all made with the same three ingredients anyway,

Oats,

Heat,

And mild resentment.

By the time the sun was high enough to warm the edge of the bench,

The women had covered everything from who was limping too suddenly to who was smiling too often.

They weren't always right.

They weren't always fair.

But they were always,

Unfailingly,

Watching.

And tomorrow,

They'd be back,

Same time,

Same well,

Same oat cakes,

And someone new to talk about.

Inside the manor,

Where the walls leaned ever so slightly like they'd grown tired of holding secrets,

A young scribe sat hunched over a wooden desk,

Far too noble for his level of talent.

His name was Lionel,

Though some in the manor had taken to calling him Blot,

Not out of affection,

But because he'd once spilled an entire inkwell into the bishop's sleeve,

And no one had ever truly moved on.

At this moment,

Lionel was in his fifth hour of copying a legal charter so dull it could probably end wars just by being read aloud.

It was written in Latin,

A language that,

In Lionel's case,

Triggered a very specific response.

Sneezing,

Not metaphorically,

Actually sneezing.

Something about the parchment,

Or the ink,

Or maybe the overwhelming scent of obligation,

Set his sinuses ablaze.

He dipped the quill.

It dripped.

He wiped the excess on a cloth that had once been white,

And now looked like it had survived three plagues in a minor exorcism.

With the solemnity of a monk,

He began the next line.

Et universis presentibus.

Achoo.

The sneeze erupted mid-sentence,

Splattering a constellation of ink across the parchment.

His nose now bore the mark of a man who'd fought and lost a duel with a squid.

Oh,

For heavens,

He muttered,

Blotting the page so aggressively the ink spread like gossip.

The steward poked his head in.

Progress.

Lionel smiled like a man on the edge,

By all appearances.

Good.

That charter must be perfect.

His lordship is having it read aloud at supper tonight.

Lionel blinked.

Read aloud to people,

To the bishop,

The magistrate,

And three nobles who understand less Latin than you.

He disappeared before Lionel could object.

That was the thing.

No one would understand it.

Not the bishop,

Who mostly nodded at things and blessed whatever was closest.

Not the magistrate,

Who once mistook a recipe for a legal summons.

And certainly not Lord Redgrave himself,

Who had insisted the document include a clause about goose ownership rights,

Just in case.

Lionel sighed and began again.

Somewhere in the hallway,

A maid dropped a tray.

The crash startled him into flicking his quill like a wand,

Launching a stripe of ink across the floor and onto a cat that had been napping far too peacefully under his stool.

The cat woke up with a howl,

Launched itself onto the desk,

And streaked across the page,

Leaving pawprints like small declarations of war.

Lionel froze.

The cat froze.

Both considered the consequences.

I didn't see anything,

He whispered to it.

The cat blinked,

Unimpressed,

And left the room with the air of someone who had just ended a relationship.

He stared at the ruined page,

Then at the previous four,

All of them smudged,

Blotted,

Or mysteriously sticky.

One had a dead fly pressed between two lines like punctuation.

Another had a faint circle where he'd once set his tea without thinking.

It wasn't that Lionel was bad at his job.

He was just employed in a job that did not care for him.

He liked poetry.

He liked stories.

He once tried to sneak a haiku into a land deed just to see if anyone would notice.

They hadn't.

But now,

Every time the town crier announced that parcel's boundaries,

He accidentally recited a meditation on wind and wheat.

Still,

This charter had to be serious.

Apparently,

It concerned land use,

Taxation,

And some clause about cows that sounded vaguely threatening.

So Lionel tried again.

He sat straighter.

He wiped the ink from his nose.

He dipped carefully.

He breathed through his mouth as if that might stop the sneezes.

And he wrote,

A universus presentibus.

Bless you,

Came a voice from the hallway preemptively.

He didn't sneeze that time,

But he did spill tea on his foot.

Midway through the paragraph about grain levies,

He began to wonder if anyone in the manor actually read anything.

The steward only glanced at margins.

The lord looked for his name and any mention of ducks.

The bishop pretended to squint as if he'd left his glasses in heaven.

Maybe,

Lionel thought,

This wasn't about understanding.

Maybe it was about performance.

Authority in long sentences,

Power in curled letters and unnecessarily large wax seals.

He paused,

Wrote a new line,

Quibustam terminis obumbratis porcus regit silentium,

Which meant very roughly.

In certain shaded circumstances,

The pig rules the silence.

He stared at it,

Smiled,

Then reluctantly crossed it out.

Mostly.

By late afternoon,

His desk was surrounded by a graveyard of crumpled parchment,

A half-eaten oat biscuit,

And a mouse that may have been reading over his shoulder.

His nose was inked again.

His eyes were crossed.

But the charter?

Done.

Sort of.

Lionel wiped his hands on his tunic,

Stood,

And immediately knocked over the inkwell one final time.

He considered screaming.

Instead,

He whispered,

I shall blame the cat.

Then he rolled up the parchment,

Tied it with twine,

And left the room with the gait of a man who had lost a battle but would survive the war.

The charter would be read that night,

Mispronounced,

Misunderstood,

Forgotten by morning.

But somewhere,

Deep in its clauses,

A smudge shaped like a paw print would remain,

Proof that at least two beings had cared enough to ruin it completely.

The sun was barely up,

The mist still loitering in the fields like gossip with nowhere to be,

When Edwin was handed a bucket,

A rag,

And a mission that would haunt him for seasons to come.

Go milk Gertrude,

The stablemaster had said,

Wiping his hands on his apron like he'd just gifted Edwin a sacred right.

She's in a mood today.

Be gentle.

Gertrude was always in a mood.

Sometimes that mood was sleepy disdain.

Other times it was outright war.

She was the only cow in the village with her own nickname among the children,

The Throne of Doom.

And her stare had been known to make grown men reconsider their professions.

Still,

Edwin nodded like a fool and accepted the task,

Mostly because saying no would have meant scrubbing the latrines instead.

At 16,

He was an apprentice in everything and a master of nothing.

He had once tripped over his own shoe while standing still.

Today,

He was about to learn how to milk a cow.

He approached the barn with the reverence of a man entering battle.

Birds chirped overhead,

Unaware.

The rooster finally crowed as if to say,

This is going to be good.

Inside,

Gertrude stood like a statue carved from indignation and hay.

She did not look at Edwin.

She looked through him.

Her eyes narrowed.

Her tail flicked.

Morning,

Edwin said softly,

Trying to sound confident.

I'm here to,

You know,

The milking.

Gertrude didn't respond.

She shifted her weight slightly,

Which might have meant come closer or prepare to die.

It was hard to tell.

He placed the bucket gently beneath her,

Crouched on the stool that wobbled if you breathe too hard,

And reached out with trembling hands.

He had been told the technique,

Thumb and forefinger,

Then the rest of the fingers,

Like squeezing a pouch of mead.

But the utters felt like warm,

Twitchy balloons,

And just touching them made him flinch.

Sorry,

He whispered to Gertrude.

Gertrude sneezed directly onto his face.

Edwin wiped his eyes and tried again.

He gave one slow,

Cautious tug.

Nothing.

Another.

Still nothing.

He looked up and Gertrude was chewing slowly,

Staring at him with a smirk that shouldn't have been possible on a bovine.

Please,

He asked.

Somewhere in the distance,

Thunder rumbled.

Or maybe it was the baker's cart.

Either way,

It felt ominous.

He adjusted the bucket,

Tried a firmer grip,

Tugged once more.

A single,

Pathetic squirt of milk hit the side of the pail with a sound that mocked him.

Progress,

He whispered,

And then Gertrude moved.

With a twist of her body that defied physics and modesty,

She shifted her rear leg and delivered a precise,

Calculated kick that sent the bucket flying,

Knocked the stool sideways,

And deposited Edwin directly into a pile of straw that smelled distinctly of past regrets.

All right,

He gasped,

Sprawled out,

Staring at the beams above.

Not progress.

Gertrude turned her head,

Snorted,

Resumed chewing.

Edwin sat up,

Covered in milk,

Straw,

And shame.

His tunic clung to him in patches.

His hair looked like it had been licked by a confused ghost.

And the bucket,

Now dented,

Lay on its side like a fallen crown.

He retrieved it,

Dusted it off,

Returned to the stool with the determination of a martyr and the posture of a drowned rat.

Okay,

He muttered.

Again,

This time,

He tried humming,

A soft,

Nervous tune that sounded vaguely like a lullaby and a funeral march at once.

He gave a gentler pull,

Eyes closed,

Hoping that maybe Gertrude was the kind of cow who responded to music.

To his surprise,

She stayed still.

A thin stream of milk began to trickle into the bucket.

He didn't breathe,

Didn't blink,

Just milked,

Slowly,

Rhythmically,

Imagining applause in the distance.

Then the tale came.

It whipped like a whip designed by Satan himself,

Catching him across the cheek and mouth with a wet smack that tasted like manure and betrayal.

The bucket tipped.

Again,

The milk spilled like an offering to the gods of humiliation.

Gertrude let out a low,

Satisfied moo.

By the time the stablemaster returned,

Edwin was slumped against the barn door,

Defeated,

His hands sore,

His shirt stained,

And his expression one of quiet trauma.

Well,

The stablemaster asked,

Arms crossed.

Edwin looked up.

She gave me something,

Milk,

Mostly contempt.

The man chuckled,

Then glanced at the cow.

She only respects two people,

The priest and the old widow who feeds her honey oats on Thursdays.

Everyone else is just a target.

Gertrude snorted in agreement.

Edwin stood,

Handed over the dented bucket,

And wiped his hands on what was left of his dignity.

He wouldn't say he learned how to milk a cow that day,

But he did learn how not to,

Which,

In most villages,

Counted for something.

And Gertrude?

She stood regal and unbothered,

Queen of the barn,

Guardian of udders,

Watching the boy retreat with her tail swishing in slow,

Victorious arcs.

The sun hadn't climbed too far when the village children were released into the fields with what the adults generously referred to as important work,

Important in the sense that it kept them out of the bakery,

Away from the priest,

And preferably far from anything breakable.

They were told to gather weeds from the edge of the barley rows.

They were also told to not hit each other with shovels,

Not climb the scarecrow again,

And not pretend to die in front of travelers.

These requests were understood,

But not remembered.

A dozen or so children spilled into the fields like noisy birds,

Armed with small shovels,

Baskets,

And the kind of energy that made goats nervous.

Their clothes were patched,

Their shoes uneven,

And their priorities very clear.

Dig something up,

Throw it,

And if possible,

Fall down dramatically afterward.

Thomas,

Age nine,

And already missing two front teeth from unrelated incidents,

Declared himself commander of dirt and immediately appointed a council made up of whichever children hadn't run away when he started shouting.

His first decree was to form a shovel brigade.

You dig,

You duck,

And if you get hit,

You scream,

He said proudly,

Gripping his own shovel like a knight holding a very flat sword.

Marigold,

The oldest at nearly 12 and far too intelligent for her environment,

Rolled her eyes so hard it nearly counted as a full body exercise.

She was supposed to be supervising.

Instead,

She found herself ducking as a rotten turnip flew past her ear.

That was a warning shot,

Yelled a boy named Pip,

Who was never entirely sure what he was warning anyone about.

The battle began soon after.

It was not a battle for land or glory or honor.

It was a battle for boredom,

For attention,

For who could yell,

I've been struck.

With the most theatrical flair while crumpling to the earth like a wounded bard,

Turnips became ammunition,

Clumps of damp soil were grenades,

Sticks turned into staffs,

And someone fashioned a helmet out of a cracked bucket and half a bird's nest.

At one point,

A girl named Elsie lay face down in the grass,

Arms spread wide,

Murmuring,

Tell my goat I loved her,

As if she were breathing her final words into the wind.

No one questioned this.

A younger boy,

Barely five,

Wandered through the middle of the chaos with a dandelion crown on his head and no idea what was happening.

He was gently struck by a flying potato and sat down to contemplate his life.

Two boys engaged in what could only be described as a duel,

Flat shovels clanging together with the precision of a blacksmith and the wisdom of a brick.

One tripped,

The other declared victory and began chanting a victory song made entirely of made up words.

Everyone applauded,

Then booed,

Then applauded again.

A nearby farmer,

Hoe in hand,

Looked up once from his furrows,

Surveyed the chaos and returned to work.

He had seen worse.

Last spring,

They'd stolen a wheelbarrow and raced it downhill into the river.

One of them had emerged riding a goose like a chariot.

He didn't ask questions anymore.

Meanwhile,

The weed baskets remained mostly empty.

The shovels,

Though intended for gentle tilling,

Were now covered in dents,

Mud and possibly one regrettable snail.

No one had gathered anything remotely useful except for a curious clump of moss that someone insisted was magical and kept in their pocket for luck.

Marigold eventually gave up shouting instructions and began building a tower of rocks in silent protest.

It was at least productive.

For a while,

It reached an impressive height before someone mistook it for an enemy fortress and demolished it with a well-aimed parsnip.

There was one brief moment of truce when someone announced they'd found a rabbit hole.

Everyone gathered,

Wide-eyed and reverent,

Hoping to see ears.

The rabbit did not appear.

Instead,

They argued over what to name it.

Suggestions included Sir Flop,

Mud King and Dirt Jesus.

No decision was made.

The sun climbed higher,

Casting long shadows over the field where children lay sprawled like fallen soldiers,

Clutching their sides and laughing.

They were stained with grass,

Dust and several substances best left unidentified.

Their hands were blistered,

Their hair full of burrs and their faces glowing with the satisfaction of a good,

Pointless fight.

A bell rang faintly from the village square.

To lunchtime.

There was a collective groan.

Not because they weren't hungry,

But because the war had been just getting good.

Still,

They rose,

Shaking off dirt and honor and made their slow retreat back through the fields.

Thomas walked with a limp he absolutely did not have 10 minutes earlier.

Marigold carried a single weed in her basket,

Symbolic more than useful.

Pip clutched a lump of turnip like a trophy.

Gertrude the cow watched them pass with deep bovine judgment.

Back in the fields,

The overturned soil bore the marks of a morning well wasted.

Small footprints,

Broken roots,

The scattered remains of vegetables pressed into service as weapons.

The weeds still stood tall,

But so did the stories.

Midday in the village didn't arrive with a bell or a whistle or even much certainty.

It arrived in stomachs.

Grumbling ones,

Growling ones,

Small ones that echoed like a cave when poked.

It arrived in the way a man wiped sweat from his brow and looked toward the sun,

Hoping it was late enough to justify chewing something,

Anything,

Even if it had bark in it.

Lunch,

As a concept,

Was more of a hope than a plan.

Some families prepared for it like a ritual.

Others stumbled into it like a trap.

And many,

Especially the children,

Simply accepted that it would be whatever you could catch,

Steal,

Find,

Or chew fast enough that no one could question it.

In the bakery,

What little bread remained from the morning was crusted,

Hard,

And slightly warm if you held it under your armpit long enough.

The baker's apprentice gnawed on a slice while pretending to sweep.

It tasted like flour,

Smoke,

And apology.

Out in the pasture,

Three boys argued over the last scoop of stew in a wooden bowl.

The stew was gray,

Suspiciously gray.

No one could recall what had gone into it,

But one swore it had been turnip,

Another insisted beetroot,

And the third just muttered,

Bones,

And refused to elaborate.

They decided the only fair way to settle it was a race to the nearest tree and back.

The winner choked it down while the others watched in a mix of envy and concern.

By the well,

An old woman unwrapped a cloth and revealed a hunk of cheese so aged it had developed a personality.

It smelled like foot and defiance.

She cut it with a knife that had seen better centuries,

Popped a piece in her mouth,

And declared it tangy,

Which was generous.

A dog sat nearby,

Hopeful.

She offered it a crumb.

The dog sniffed it,

Then left.

A little girl with dirt on her chin and daisies in her hair tugged a radish from someone else's garden.

She looked both ways,

Then bit it in half.

It was peppery,

Sharp,

And deliciously forbidden.

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve,

Stashed the other half in her pocket for later,

And skipped away like a criminal with no regrets.

The tavern naturally had food,

If you could pay,

Which most couldn't.

But the tavern keeper's son had a soft spot for sob stories and wide eyes.

He slipped two boiled eggs and a piece of stale pie to a passing widow who claimed she hadn't eaten since Tuesday.

It was Thursday.

She winked as she walked away.

Some meals were more creative.

A boy named Lyle carried a squirrel he claimed he found already like that.

His plan to roast it was interrupted by his mother,

Who confiscated it and buried it under the herb patch,

Muttering something about curses.

He made do with a clump of sorrel and an apple he dropped twice.

Near the church steps,

Two girls took turns licking honey off a twig.

They'd found it near the beekeeper's fence and claimed it had just fallen off.

It hadn't,

But they were fast,

And the beekeeper was old,

And so the honey belonged to fate now.

They giggled between licks,

Sticking their fingers into the jar they had not stolen,

Just adopted.

An apprentice blacksmith,

Covered in soot and pride,

Munched on a roasted onion like it was a prize.

No bread,

No salt,

Just onion.

His breath cleared a six-foot radius around him,

And he liked it that way.

He called it warrior seasoning.

Out by the edge of the woods,

An old man cooked something in a pot over a low fire.

No one knew what.

He never said.

Sometimes he whistled while stirring.

Sometimes he just stared into the pot like it was whispering secrets.

Once,

Someone peeked in and saw a bird foot and what might have been a pear.

No one asked twice.

Not all meals were found on the ground or stolen or questionable.

In one cottage,

A mother handed out slices of oat cake and boiled carrots,

Calling each child by name like they were noble guests.

The food wasn't much,

But the children beamed like royalty.

One boy even bowed before biting his carrot.

She curtsied in return.

By mid-meal,

The air was filled with the sounds of chewing,

Slurping,

Spitting,

And one faint argument over who had licked which cheese first.

It was not elegant.

It was not clean.

But it was lunch.

A man on the road stopped for a handful of roasted barley from a pouch on his belt.

It tasted like burnt earth,

But he didn't complain.

Another traveler gnawed on a heel of bread he'd been saving since the last village.

He offered a bite to his mule,

Who declined.

The children who had nothing played a game with a walnut shell and two pebbles,

Pretending it was a feast.

One of them mimed drinking soup.

Another declared her rock was too spicy.

They all agreed it was the best lunch they'd never had.

Eventually,

Bellies quieted.

Crumbs settled in corners.

Lips were wiped.

Teeth were picked.

And across the village,

People returned to their tasks with the slow satisfaction of survival.

Because in the end,

It didn't matter what it was or where it came from.

If you could catch it,

Chew it,

Or bluff your way through eating it,

Then it was lunch,

And that was enough.

The shoemaker's cottage sat crooked near the edge of the square,

A squat little place with one shutter permanently askew and a front step that creaked in protest whenever anyone walked on it,

Especially the shoemaker himself,

Who was known for having the heaviest,

Slowest footsteps in the entire village.

Some said it was because he walked on purpose.

Some said it was the shoes.

And others said it was simply the weight of a man carrying years of quiet rebellion in his arches.

Inside,

The air smelled of leather,

Dust,

And secrets.

Sunlight filtered through a cracked window,

Spotlighting moats that danced lazily above a cluttered workbench littered with scraps,

Thread,

And half-finished boots.

It was a place of industry,

Of craftsmanship,

Of whispered snores that,

If you listened closely,

Didn't quite belong to a busy man because the cobbler was not stitching or hammering or measuring,

At least not in any way that produced footwear.

He was curled under the bench.

Shoes surrounded him like tiny mismatched guards,

A boot with a hole in the heel,

A slipper missing its twin,

A sandal with a buckle so rusted it had become a philosophical question.

The cobbler lay on his side,

Hat tipped low,

Mouth slightly open,

One hand tucked under his cheek as if he'd slipped into childhood mid-task.

His chest rose and fell in the kind of slow,

Deliberate rhythm that suggested a man very much not awake and very much not bothered about it.

If you asked him,

If you knocked or coughed or stepped inside loudly enough to wake the floorboards,

He would insist he was measuring souls.

Sometimes,

If he was feeling poetic,

He'd say he was conversing with the leather.

Once,

After a particularly long doze,

He claimed he'd been meditating on arches.

Everyone let him have that one.

The truth was far simpler.

He was tired,

And the bench,

Cramped as it was,

Had become a kind of sanctuary.

In his dreams,

He was always eating.

Mutton pies,

Mostly.

Thick,

Hot ones with flaky crusts and gravy that defied logic.

Sometimes there were potatoes.

Sometimes,

A flagon of ale that refilled itself as if the dream knew just how much he'd need.

No one ever interrupted him in these dreams.

No one asked for new heels or to tighten the instep or if he could fix the buckle before Sunday.

Just pie and quiet and the soft hum of a world where everything fit perfectly.

Above him,

Life carried on.

A young man stepped into the shop,

Looked around,

And called out.

Master Cobbler?

No answer.

He frowned,

Leaned over the counter,

And caught sight of a boot twitching ever so slightly under the bench.

A faint snore confirmed his suspicion.

He waited a respectful moment,

Then tiptoed out,

Deciding the shoe could wait another day.

No one wanted to be the one who woke the cobbler.

Not because he was angry.

He wasn't.

He was just slow to return.

His eyes took a while to focus.

His words came out like soup that hadn't quite boiled.

And once he mistook a broom for a customer and tried to sell it a pair of sandals.

Back in the shadow of the bench,

The cobbler smacked his lips and smiled in his sleep.

The mutton pie was particularly good today.

Outside,

The village buzzed.

The blacksmith's hammer rang out like church bells.

Children shouted over a game of chase the chicken.

The miller cursed about something that was probably his own fault.

And in the midst of it all,

The shoemaker napped on,

Undisturbed,

Wrapped in the scent of tanned hide and baked fantasy.

His apprentice,

A lanky boy named Joss,

Eventually poked his head in.

He spotted the boots in progress,

The scattered tools,

The lack of movement,

And sighed like a man twice his age.

Again,

He muttered.

He walked behind the bench,

Crouched,

And gently slid a rolled-up piece of felt under the cobbler's neck.

The old man shifted slightly,

Murmured something about gravy,

And settled deeper into sleep.

Joss didn't mind.

He liked the quiet.

He liked the way the shop felt like a secret between them.

He even liked that his master sometimes dreamed instead of worked.

It made the shoes he did finish feel a little more magical,

Like they'd come out of a place not quite in this world.

Back under the bench,

The cobbler's fingers twitched.

Maybe he was tying an imaginary shoelace.

Maybe he was reaching for another bite of pie.

No one would know.

A spider wandered across his boot,

Paused,

And thought better of it.

The snoring grew softer.

The light shifted.

Time passed the way it always did in the village,

Unhurried,

Full of corners.

Eventually,

He'd wake up.

He'd stretch,

Smack his lips,

Pretend he'd been checking a seam.

He might even say,

Ah,

Yes,

It's nearly ready,

As if the shoe beneath his bench had been ripening like cheese.

But for now,

The cobbler slept,

Shoes all around him,

Dreaming of pie,

And not a single soul dared wake him.

The bell tolled softly over the village,

A gentle reminder that evening vespers were drawing near.

Chickens squawked in distant corners.

Dogs barked like they were defending the faith itself.

And the air began to settle with that odd,

Glowing hush that made every shadow look just a little longer than it should.

In the chapel,

Father Aldrich stood still as a statue,

Which would have been noble had it not been for the sheer panic creeping across his face.

He had,

At that moment,

Forgotten everything.

Not his name.

He remembered that.

And not his purpose.

He was fairly certain he was still a priest.

But the sermon,

The scroll,

The passage from Luke that he'd been muttering all morning while feeding the geese,

Gone.

Completely,

Absolutely,

Gloriously vanished from his mind like smoke through a sieve.

He glanced around the sacristy,

Which resembled less a holy preparation room and more the inside of a cupboard that had given up.

Robes were slung over chairs.

Candles leaned like drunks against the walls.

A chalice rested upside down on a stack of hymnals that had been propping up a crooked stool for three months.

Somewhere,

A mouse scurried with the kind of confidence only divine proximity could afford.

All right,

Father Aldrich muttered to himself,

Lifting papers,

Lifting books,

Lifting a crust of bread that had somehow turned into a theological hazard.

Where did I?

I had it this morning.

He checked under the table,

Behind the altar,

In the cabinet where he once accidentally locked a vestment for Lent and didn't remember until Pentecost.

The scripture was not there.

Then he noticed something else.

Something colder.

He looked down.

No shoes.

His feet,

Pale and slightly alarmed by the stone floor,

Blinked back at him as if to say,

Good sir,

Why are we naked in God's house?

Oh,

Not again,

Aldrich whispered,

Shuffling toward the far corner where he kept what he called emergency shoes,

A mismatched pair once worn by a monk with one leg slightly longer than the other.

He slid them on with the resignation of a man who knew both fashion and symmetry were sacrifices made long ago in service to a higher calling.

Outside,

The village was already gathering.

The baker's wife stood chatting with the apothecary,

Likely about yeast or sin.

A handful of children were throwing pebbles at the chapel door in what they claimed was a game and not low-grade heresy.

And somewhere near the steps,

Old man Trigg had fallen asleep against a barrel and would probably stay there until someone tripped over him in the dark.

Father Aldrich wiped his forehead.

Vespers,

He muttered.

Evening vespers.

That means light,

Hope,

Repentance,

Shoes.

He blinked.

No,

He had shoes now.

Wrong thread.

He grabbed the nearest Bible,

Flipped through it like he was looking for a recipe,

And landed on something vaguely familiar.

Loaves,

Fishes.

Yes,

He'd make it about abundance,

About trusting the process,

About how even when things seem lost,

Something greater finds its way.

Perfect,

He thought.

Symbolic,

Relevant,

Vaguely edible.

As he straightened his robe and tucked the candle wax stains into a fold no one would see,

He muttered a short prayer,

Not to remember the sermon,

But to survive it.

His memory had never been strong.

Once,

He'd accidentally read a marriage blessing over a baptism.

The baby didn't mind.

The couple left confused but oddly hopeful.

He stepped out of the sacristy and into the soft amber light of the chapel.

The villagers turned,

Their faces sleepy and warm and expectant.

He smiled at them.

The way a man smiles when he's just remembered his fly is down and there's nothing to be done about it now.

Good evening,

He said,

Voice echoing just slightly more than intended.

Tonight's reading is about trust.

He held up the Bible like a shield.

No one could see the page.

He wasn't even sure it was right side up.

There are times,

He began,

When we are sure we've prepared,

We've done all we're meant to do,

And yet we find ourselves standing barefoot in the house of God.

A pause,

A breath,

A knowing glance down at his mismatched shoes,

A chuckle rolled through the room.

He pressed on.

We forget things,

Small things.

Where we left the bread,

Where we left our temper,

Where we left a scroll with our entire sermon for the evening.

But God,

God remembers,

Even when we don't.

A murmur of approval.

Someone in the back whispered,

That's true,

And someone else shushed them with a loving elbow.

Father Aldrich smiled,

More genuine now.

The panic had softened into rhythm,

Into improvisation.

He found the parable tucked in the folds of memory,

After all,

Not word for word,

But heart for heart.

And so we gather,

He said,

Not to be perfect,

But to be present.

By the end,

No one knew he hadn't planned a word of it.

They left lighter,

If not holier.

The children stopped throwing pebbles.

Even old man Trigg stirred once,

Belched and muttered,

Amen.

Back in the sacristy,

Aldrich sat down heavily,

Kicked off the uneven shoes,

And exhaled into his hands.

He had no idea where he left the original sermon.

But as he leaned back and closed his eyes,

A dream of mutton pies floated through his thoughts.

And for just a moment,

He didn't mind forgetting.

In the beet field just beyond the village,

Where the soil clung to your boots like it had abandonment issues,

Love,

Or something wobbling in that direction,

Was happening.

Her name was Anwen.

His name was Tom.

They were both 17 and bad at everything except pretending not to like each other.

The sun was high,

The beets were stubborn,

And the silence between them was thick enough to cut with a scythe.

Tom was supposed to be working.

So was Anwen.

The village had declared this part of the field communal,

Which meant everyone took turns pretending to care about beet harvesting while mostly chatting and arguing over who got the biggest roots.

Today,

Tom and Anwen had been paired together by the gods,

Or more likely by Marigold,

Who knew exactly what she was doing.

They worked side by side,

Quietly,

Sort of.

Tom cleared his throat.

Some of these beets are quite round today,

He said.

Anwen looked up,

Beet in hand,

Dirt on her nose.

Yes,

Very beet-like,

He nodded.

This one looks like my uncle's head.

Is that a compliment?

No.

She smiled anyway.

A bird chirped in the distance,

Possibly laughing.

Tom wiped his hands on his tunic,

Which only made them more stained.

He tried again.

I saved you a good one,

He said,

Holding up a beet with a lopsided grin carved faintly into its skin.

Looks like it's smiling.

Anwen took it,

Held it,

Gave it a serious look.

It does,

But in a slightly evil way.

Like your sister,

Anwen gasped.

Take that back.

I won't.

She tossed a clump of soil at his boot.

He dramatically fell backward into the soft earth.

Arms spread like he'd been struck by a lightning beat.

She laughed too loudly.

He stayed down a little longer than necessary.

I was only joking,

He said from the ground.

I know.

A pause.

Do you think,

He ventured carefully,

That if you were a beet,

Just hear me out,

You'd be a very fancy one.

Fancy?

You know,

Regal,

The kind they only serve on feast days.

Anwen sat back on her heels,

And you'd be the one with the wormhole,

Charming.

A cart rattled by on the nearby road.

Neither of them noticed.

She plucked a leaf from a nearby plant and twirled it.

My mother says I shouldn't talk to boys in the field.

My mother says I shouldn't talk at all.

And yet,

Here we are.

Do you talk to other boys?

He asked too quickly.

Anwen raised an eyebrow.

Do you ask that of every girl who throws dirt at you?

No,

Just the ones who catch my eye while elbow,

Deep in tubers.

She flushed,

Not visibly,

But in the way she blinked a little slower and looked away like she suddenly remembered how interesting dirt could be.

I don't talk to many boys,

She said after a moment.

Most of them don't say anything worth hearing.

Tom tried not to smile so big it scared the birds.

I once wrote a poem,

He offered,

About turnips.

Anwen lit up.

Recite it.

It's terrible.

All the best ones are.

He sat up,

Wiped his hands,

And with all the dignity of a farmer knight,

He cleared his throat.

Oh,

Turnip stout and pale and round.

Thy leaves like hats upon the ground.

Thy flesh is firm.

Thy spirit true.

But still,

I'd rather look at you.

He looked at her.

She blinked,

Then snorted,

Then laughed,

Until she had to hide her face in her apron.

You're an idiot,

She said between giggles.

You liked it.

I loved it.

But if you ever say it out loud again,

I'll bury you in beets.

Romantic.

They sat there for a moment,

Not touching,

Not moving,

Just a shared silence filled with beat breath and awkward potential.

In the distance,

A goat bleated.

I like goats,

Tom said.

Anwen tilted her head.

That was smooth.

I'm warming up.

My father would kill you.

I'm very fast.

He's got a crossbow.

I'm not that fast.

They grinned at each other,

And it was the kind of grin that made the rest of the world slightly blurry for a few seconds.

Do you want to walk back together?

She asked softly now.

Even if I didn't,

I'd say yes.

I figured.

She stood,

Brushing soil from her skirt.

He scrambled to stand beside her,

And for a moment they stood awkwardly,

Shoulder to shoulder,

Pretending the wind was more interesting than it was.

She handed him the smiling beat.

For your poem collection.

He took it like it was a relic.

I'll treasure it.

They started walking.

Slowly,

Together,

One step apart,

Then half.

He reached for her hand,

Then pulled back.

She noticed,

Didn't say anything.

Just let the silence stretch kindly between them.

Behind them,

The field was full of crooked rows and half-filled baskets,

And the echoes of laughter that still hadn't entirely died down.

Love,

In the beet field,

Was clumsy.

It was chaste.

It was a disaster made of blushing cheeks and shared vegetables.

But for Tom and Anwen,

It was everything.

At the edge of the monastery grounds,

Past the herb garden,

And behind the crumbling stone wall,

Where no one bothered to weed,

Lived Brother Cuthbert.

He had a cell of his own,

Technically,

Though he was rarely in it.

He preferred the woods,

Or the pond,

Or crouched behind the chapel,

Whispering to slugs,

Depending on the day.

Cuthbert was not like the other monks.

For one,

He collected owl feathers,

Not quills,

Not relics,

Feathers,

Hundreds of them,

Sorted by length,

Hue,

And what he called emotional aura.

He kept them tucked into his robe sleeves like bookmarks for thoughts he hadn't finished thinking.

Sometimes they'd fall out mid-conversation,

And he'd chase them with the urgency of a man rescuing Holy Scripture.

He also talked to trees,

Not metaphorically,

Not in the literary poetic way,

Literally,

With pauses,

With questions,

With nods of serious understanding.

He referred to the oak near the well as Father Elric,

And often told the novices that the maple by the brook wept sap for sinners.

Some people hear angels,

He once said.

I hear bark,

And then there were the spoons.

Brother Cuthbert carved spoons with a skill that could only be described as unsettling.

No one had taught him.

One day,

He picked up a crooked twig,

Muttered something about hidden shape,

And by sunset had produced a ladle so elegant the abbot refused to use it for fear of spiritual offense.

Every spoon was different.

Some had handles shaped like spirals,

Others like bird beaks.

One had the faint face of a woman etched into its bowl,

And no one could look at it too long without feeling like they owed her an apology.

The kitchen had dozens,

Yet the cook insisted on using only one.

The rest were for show,

Or possibly for defense,

Depending on her mood.

No one really knew where Cuthbert had come from.

He arrived one misty morning with a satchel of moss,

Three acorns,

And a carved badger he claimed could smell sin.

The abbot,

Having once spent six hours chasing a goose through the cloister,

Decided he had no grounds to turn anyone away and welcomed him.

Since then,

Cuthbert had become both a curiosity and a legend.

Novices whispered that he once healed a pigeon with just his breath.

Others said he'd been struck by lightning twice and thanked the sky both times.

A few insisted he kept a journal written entirely in bird footprints.

When asked,

He only smiled and said,

Some truths are feathered.

The villagers regarded him with a blend of reverence and alarm.

Children left him offerings of dandelions and buttons.

Old women crossed themselves when he passed,

But asked for talismans just in case.

Young men dared each other to ask him questions like,

What do you dream about?

And then fled when he actually answered,

Mostly echoes,

He once said.

Sometimes,

Jam.

One day,

The abbot tried to assign him a formal duty,

Script copying.

Cuthbert agreed and promptly filled a parchment with drawings of frogs in various hats.

When asked what gospel this was,

He replied,

Mark,

Probably,

If he'd had more frogs.

They moved him to gardening.

He planted in spirals.

The cabbage sprouted in a circle that seemed to repel snails.

The lettuce grew in the shape of a fish,

Accidentally honoring an obscure saint.

No one argued.

The produce was excellent.

And yet,

For all his oddness,

Cuthbert was beloved.

He never missed morning prayers,

Even if he arrived wearing a crown of thistles or dripping wet from some silent encounter with the stream.

He listened better than anyone.

When Brother Alwin's mother died,

Cuthbert sat with him all night,

Saying nothing,

Just whittling a spoon shaped like a weeping willow.

He once scared off a bandit with a long stare and a handful of dried mushrooms.

The bandit returned a week later to return a borrowed staff and ask if Cuthbert could bless his goat.

The spoon carver did,

Solemnly,

With three owl feathers and a chant that may or may not have been improvised.

The goat was never the same,

In a good way.

At meals,

He rarely spoke.

But when he did,

It was always something no one expected.

The moon is a borrowed tooth,

He said once,

Mid-pottage.

No one asked what he meant.

They just nodded.

It felt true.

Sometimes,

In the dead of night,

He could be seen dancing barefoot behind the chapel.

Slowly,

Gracefully,

Arms outstretched like he was listening to a hymn only the dirt could sing.

No one stopped him.

In fact,

A few of the younger monks started joining him,

Though clumsily and always in silence.

Was he mad?

Maybe.

Was he wise?

Possibly more than any of them.

But most agreed he was something else entirely,

A question the monastery had been lucky enough to receive without needing an answer.

So he whittled.

He wandered.

He whispered to the trees.

And the trees,

If you listened closely,

If you really listened,

Sometimes whispered back.

Down by the river,

Where the reeds swayed like nosy old men and the water moved slow enough to hear secrets,

The women gathered with baskets of laundry and mouths already half open.

The sun was still stretching its arms above the hills,

But the gossip had already begun.

Laundry day was never really about laundry.

It was about the rhythm of scrubbing and speaking,

About pounding stains out of tunics while casually destroying reputations.

The soap was made of ash and lard,

Rough as sand and just as unforgiving.

Clothes got clean,

Sure,

But what really sparkled was the conversation.

The older women arrived first,

Wrinkled hands,

Sharp eyes,

Tongues oiled and ready.

They laid out their linens like battle plans,

Rolled up their sleeves,

And set to work with the precision of executioners.

Each slap of a wet garment against the stone was punctuation.

Did you hear what Maud's boy did with that hedge girl?

One of them asked,

Tossing a shirt down with flair.

No,

Said another,

Lathering a sock that had seen things,

But I hope you're about to tell me.

And so the tale began.

Half true,

Half invented,

All delicious.

Younger women trickled in next,

Laughing,

Yawning,

Clutching damp bundles.

They greeted their elders with respectful nods and took their places along the shore,

Feigning modesty.

But their ears were wide open,

Their hands scrubbing absentmindedly,

Their minds already stitching together what they'd heard last week with what they'd overheard today.

Somewhere down the line,

A girl named Brenna dropped a tunic into the river by accident.

She shrieked and ran after it,

Splashing wildly,

Only to be met with cheers and applause from the rest.

When she returned,

Dripping and defeated,

An older woman handed her a cloth and said,

That tunic floated better than your chances with the butcher's son.

Laughter.

It wasn't all cruelty.

There was warmth in the teasing,

A kind of rough affection wrapped in sarcasm.

They picked at each other like birds,

But if anyone else tried it,

They'd defend each other with fists and soap bars.

Midway down the bank,

Two sisters,

Ida and Ro,

Worked side by side,

Elbowing each other as they scrubbed.

Ida was quiet,

Which made her a favorite target.

So,

Ro said,

Eyes forward,

Voice casual.

You and Willem the miller's apprentice were walking awful close last market day.

Ida didn't respond,

Just wrung out a tunic with more force than was strictly necessary.

You were smiling.

He said something funny.

He's never said anything funny in his life.

A pause.

Then Ida,

Voice just above a whisper,

Replied.

He said he likes my laugh.

Ro blinked.

Oh,

There it was,

An accidental confession,

Not meant to be shared,

Already too late.

Ro grinned like a cat.

That's gonna cost you three weeks of firewood chores if you want me to keep that quiet.

Two,

Done.

At the far end,

Near a cluster of trees,

A woman named Elfrida hummed while beating a tunic that clearly belonged to her husband.

With every slap,

Her hum grew louder.

No one asked questions.

Eventually,

The confessions started slipping out like they always did,

Half laughing,

Half daring.

That's the thing about repetitive work.

It loosens the tongue.

The arms move on instinct,

And the mouth forgets to be careful.

I never liked the midwife,

Someone said,

Scrubbing hard.

She smells like sour milk and makes too many comments about hips.

I kissed my cousin once,

Another offered,

And then,

But it was dark,

And I didn't know until afterward.

I put nettles in my mother-in-law's bedding,

Gasps,

Cackles.

I think my husband's having dreams about that tavern girl.

You think?

Mine moans her name in his sleep.

They howled.

One woman laughed so hard,

She dropped her lye bucket into the river and had to wade in after it while muttering prayers that were only technically in Latin.

A soft breeze rustled the trees overhead.

Birds chirped,

Oblivious.

A frog plopped into the shallows and instantly regretted it.

By late morning,

The riverbank was a patchwork of drying cloth,

Damp skirts,

And freshly released secrets.

Some of the women lay back on the grass,

Catching their breath.

Others kept scrubbing,

Not because the clothes needed it,

But because it gave their hands something to do while their minds untangled new rumors.

A girl who'd barely spoken all morning suddenly said,

I think I wanna marry someone who doesn't live here.

Silence.

Then a quiet voice replied,

Good luck finding one who wants to live with you.

More laughter.

Eventually,

The sun climbed too high and the work began to slow.

Baskets were refilled,

Tunics folded.

The river,

Now cloudy from soap and sins,

Gurgled softly as if promising to hold their secrets,

At least until tomorrow.

As they trudged back to the village,

Arms full and mouth still moving,

One thing was certain.

Before the next bell rang,

Every one of those confessions would echo off someone else's kitchen wall.

The clothes would be clean,

But the stories,

Never.

He arrived with a lute slung over his back and the swagger of someone who mistook mild applause for prophecy.

The villagers welcomed him,

Of course.

That's what you did when a minstrel came through.

Offer him a bowl of soup,

A spot near the fire,

Maybe a place in the barn if he didn't smell too badly.

He'd play a few songs,

Tell a tale or two,

Then vanish with the next cart of turnips.

But this one stayed.

At first,

It was charming.

His name,

He insisted,

Was Sir Eldrick of the Seven Strings,

Though no one could confirm whether that referred to his lute or something more anatomical.

He wore a hat with an absurd feather and spoke in poetic riddles even when asking for directions to the outhouse.

In the year of our lord,

May I inquire where yon latrine doth reside,

He once asked old Murda,

Who simply pointed and muttered.

Over there,

And don't yon me.

He performed in the square every evening without fail.

The first night,

The children danced.

The second,

The butcher's wife,

Clapped along.

By the fifth,

Most people found urgent reasons to be elsewhere,

Like checking on non-existent goats or rearranging firewood.

The problem wasn't just that he stayed.

It was that he only knew three songs,

Exactly three.

One about a brave knight who loved a swan,

Which grew less romantic the more you thought about it.

One about a miller's daughter and some deeply questionable metaphors.

And one called,

The wind doth moan for thee,

Which involved a lot of moaning,

Literal moaning.

He hit the same note at least 17 times.

When asked if he knew anything else,

He'd smile like he'd been mistaken for royalty and reply,

Ah,

But these are sacred tales crafted under moonlight and muse.

And overcooked,

Muttered the baker's son.

It wasn't just the songs though.

It was how every tale began.

In the year of our Lord,

Didn't matter what he was talking about.

A dragon?

In the year of our Lord,

A beast of flame,

A stolen pie.

In the year of our Lord,

A most wicked pastry vanished.

Once,

He tried to explain the rules of a dice game to the blacksmith using the same opening.

The blacksmith nodded politely,

Then threw the dice into the fire.

He lingered at the inn,

Strumming softly,

Waiting for someone to ask for a tune.

No one did.

He wandered into the chapel,

Claiming the acoustics helped him commune with the divine,

Though the priest gently asked him to stop turning psalms into limericks.

He wandered the fields,

Serenading cows.

They're more forgiving than people,

He said one afternoon,

Sighing beside Gertrude,

The largest and least impressed of the herd.

By the second week,

He began inserting himself into conversations.

You know,

In the year of our Lord,

Don't,

Someone would say,

But he would.

The children began avoiding him,

Fearing another rendition of the swan song.

The apothecary swore her sleeping drafts were selling better than ever.

The innkeeper,

Who had initially offered a straw pallet out of courtesy,

Started hinting that the weather was fine enough to sleep under the stars.

Eldrick took this as a compliment to his endurance.

He wasn't entirely useless.

He helped carry baskets.

He once patched a hole in the tavern roof,

Though he sang while doing it.

He was polite,

Clean,

Somehow,

And never stole a thing.

But his presence clung like flower dust.

Everywhere,

Impossible to remove,

Slightly sweet,

But mostly annoying.

A secret meeting was held behind the granary.

What if we tell him there's a music contest in the next town?

He'll come back with a trophy.

Can we bribe him?

With what?

Our remaining patients?

Someone suggested sending him into the forest to serenade bears.

Another floated the idea of marriage.

Surely someone in a far-off village would take him.

Eventually.

But no one had the heart to be cruel.

He meant well.

He smiled like a dog that didn't know it had tracked mud into the chapel.

And he was trying.

Always trying.

One evening,

The village gathered around the well.

A cool breeze stirred the lanterns.

Eldrick appeared,

Lute in hand,

Eyes shining.

Friends,

He began.

In the year of our Lord.

Groans.

Audible groans.

I shall perform a new piece.

Head snapped up.

New.

He cleared his throat.

Strummed once.

Then,

Silence.

I forgot the second verse,

He said sheepishly.

But I remember the chorus.

It was,

Unfortunately,

The moaning part.

Still,

He sang it.

People laughed.

Not at the song,

But at the spectacle.

Someone handed him a crust of bread.

A child danced,

Badly.

And for a moment,

The irritation faded.

He was still terrible.

But he was theirs now.

Every morning,

Just after the sun spilled across the thatched rooftops,

And long before anyone truly wanted to be awake,

The village reeve began his round.

He walked with the ceremonial authority of someone who'd been given a job no one else wanted,

But everyone was happy to let him keep.

His name was Edron,

And he took boredom more seriously than most men took their vows.

He wore the same brown cloak every day,

Which somehow managed to look both stiff and sagging,

Like it had opinions but lacked the courage to share them.

A small wooden badge hung around his neck to prove his office,

Though most villagers assumed it was a token from a failed romance.

He walked slowly,

As if each step had been pre-approved by a committee.

And in a way,

It had.

The job of reeve,

After all,

Was mostly about appearances.

He began at the east fence,

Where the slats had been half-missing since Candlemas.

He squinted at the damage,

Rubbed his chin thoughtfully,

And moved on without comment.

That was the ritual.

Check the fences.

Don't fix the fences.

Pretend you're making a list of the fences.

Morning,

Reeve,

Called a voice from the cowpen.

Edron nodded.

A fair morning to you,

Hilda.

Fence is down again.

Yes,

He said,

With the gravity of a man reporting on war.

I've noticed.

He did not stop.

If he stopped,

Someone might ask him to do something.

So he walked.

Past the broken fence,

Past the one held together with a belt,

Past the one that had been replaced entirely with bundles of dried reeds and wishful thinking.

The next stop was the grain store.

He checked the lock,

Which wasn't locked.

He checked the hinges,

Which were mostly rust and prayer.

He tapped the wood twice,

His version of an inspection,

And moved on.

Inside,

A mouse stared at him with the confident gaze of someone who paid no taxes.

He walked the perimeter of the pasture where the sheep sometimes remembered to stay.

A few stared at him,

Unimpressed.

One followed briefly,

Then got bored.

Edron stopped to inspect a gate that was technically attached but mostly leaning.

He placed one hand on it,

Sighed deeply,

Then stepped back and gave it a nod,

As if to say,

You're doing your best.

By mid-morning,

He reached the manor's outer wall.

It was solid,

Imposing,

And entirely outside his jurisdiction.

He stared at it anyway,

Just to feel included.

A servant passed,

Carrying a basket of apples.

"'Reeve,

' she said with a small curtsy.

"'Walls seem sturdy,

' he noted,

Gesturing vaguely.

She looked at the wall,

Then at him,

Then kept walking.

At the well,

He paused to inspect the bucket rope for fraying.

It had frayed last spring and frayed further every week since,

But so long as the water still came up and no one drowned,

It remained a future problem.

Edron tugged it once.

The bucket creaked.

Satisfied,

He moved on.

His notebook was mostly blank.

He sometimes pretended to write things down,

But the quill was dry and he'd forgotten the ink three years ago.

Still,

People respected the performance.

That was the key.

The villagers didn't want a Reeve who solved problems.

They wanted one who noticed them,

Made a serious face,

And then moved along like a man burdened with invisible calculations.

He made his way to the pigsty,

Which wasn't part of his official round,

But had become a personal ritual.

The pigs liked him.

He didn't know why.

Maybe it was his pace.

Maybe it was because he never asked anything of them.

He leaned on the gate,

Watching as one snorted and rolled in the mud with theatrical joy.

"'Must be nice,

' he muttered.

Back through the main path,

He passed the blacksmith,

Who was hammering something too hot and too loud to be polite.

Edron raised a hand.

"'Fences holding up?

' the blacksmith grunted.

"'It might have been yes.

"'It might have been go away.

' By the time he reached the final corner of the village,

The place where the old millstone had been turned into a bench,

The sun was high,

And his job was technically done.

He sat,

Exhaled,

And removed his badge,

Setting it on his lap like a paperweight of responsibility.

He'd accomplished little.

Nothing had been fixed.

No scrolls had been written.

But every eye that had seen him knew the reeve had made his round.

That was enough.

A boy ran past with a broken bucket,

Trailed by a trail of drips and laughter.

Edron watched him go,

Leaned back on the stone bench,

And gazed out across the village.

It was all still standing.

Mostly.

The fences could wait.

The mice weren't unionized.

And if the sky didn't fall before supper,

He'd call it another successful day.

Boredom.

Nobly endured.

That was the real job.

It began,

As most disasters masquerading as joy do,

With a bell.

A single,

Sharp clang rang out from the center of the village square just after dawn.

No one was scheduled to ring it.

It wasn't a feast day.

No saint was being honored.

The crops hadn't done anything worth celebrating.

And yet,

The bell tolled,

Echoing through morning mist like a question no one wanted to answer.

Then came the shouting.

Festival day,

Someone cried.

No one could say who.

The words leapt from mouth to mouth like sparks in a dry barn.

By the time the sun cleared the trees,

It was already being repeated as fact.

It's festival day.

Of course it is.

Long live the festival.

What are we celebrating?

Doesn't matter.

Pies involved.

And that was enough.

The baker,

Still in his nightshirt,

Stumbled outside to find three women banging on his shutters.

We need 20 pies,

They declared.

I haven't made dough,

He replied.

Then make some,

They said,

Or the festival gods will be angry.

He blinked.

We have festival gods?

Today we do.

The blacksmith's apprentice began tying ribbons to a fence post.

The fence post collapsed.

He tied them to a goat instead.

The goat,

Named Oswald,

And already known for questionable decision-making,

Took this as a sign of political ascension and began head-butting barrels with imperial pride.

By mid-morning,

The square was unrecognizable.

Someone had dragged out a fiddle.

Someone else,

Who had never played the flute before but claimed a strong family resemblance to those who had attempted to join in.

The result was music,

If music could be defined broadly enough to include wailing cats and stepped-on ducks.

The butcher declared he'd host a competition.

Guess what's in this pie?

Entry was free.

Regret was not.

A group of children reenacted a heroic tale of Sir Turnip and the Dragon of Dirt,

Which involved one boy wearing a bucket and another pretending to breathe fire with the help of an unfortunate chili pepper.

An old woman blessed them both.

No one knew if she was an actual healer or just enjoying the moment.

At the edge of the crowd,

The priest stood squinting in confusion.

Who sanctioned this?

You did,

Father.

Someone lied.

Oh,

He said.

Well,

Let us give thanks.

He raised his hands.

A cheer went up.

The cheer had nothing to do with him.

It was because the goat had just stolen someone's hat and was wearing it with undeniable style.

Banners appeared,

Though no one could recall owning banners.

One was clearly a bed sheet.

Another had suspiciously familiar embroidery from someone's Sunday tunic.

But hung high and flapping in the breeze,

They looked official enough to convince even the skeptics.

There was dancing.

There was tripping disguised as dancing.

There was something that could only be described as enthusiastic flailing from the reeve,

Who insisted he was performing a traditional harvest jig from his youth.

The crowd politely avoided eye contact while giving him space.

The pies,

When they emerged,

Were diverse in both content and structural integrity.

One was definitely just mashed beans inside a bread bowl.

Another may have contained fish or soap.

It was hard to tell.

Everyone agreed to smile while chewing.

The ale flowed early,

Too early.

By noon,

The blacksmith was serenading a pig.

The pig,

To its credit,

Seemed charmed.

By one o'clock,

Two arguments had broken out over whether this was a real holiday or just an elaborate prank.

By two,

Both parties were drunk enough to agree that it didn't matter.

"'Should we do this every year?

' someone shouted.

"'Yes,

' someone else replied.

"'Especially the pies.

' "'No,

Not the pies,

' shouted a third,

"'mouth still full.

' Children raced in circles.

A man juggled three onions and then sneezed himself into unconsciousness.

The goat climbed the hay cart and attempted a speech.

No one understood it,

But the applause was thunderous.

As afternoon settled into its lazier phase,

The square became a sea of napping bodies and crumpled paper crowns.

The fiddler had broken two strings.

The flute had been lost in a barrel.

Someone passed around honey cakes that were mostly just honey with regrets.

The priest eventually sat beside the baker,

Both men sipping from the same jug.

"'What are we celebrating again?

' the baker asked.

"'Unity,

' said the priest,

Squinting into the sun.

"'Or chaos.

' "'Maybe both.

"'It's not a real holiday,

Is it?

"'Is any of them?

' the priest shrugged.

"'People remember joy.

"'That seems worth ringing a bell over.

' "'They clinked cups.

"'Somewhere,

The goat fell off the hay cart.

"'By nightfall,

Torches flickered,

Songs stumbled,

"'and the air grew thick with contented confusion.

"'No one remembered who rang the bell.

"'No one knew if it would happen again.

"'But for one odd,

Inexplicable day,

"'the village had celebrated something no one could name,

"'and that,

Somehow,

Felt sacred.

"'The village was asleep,

Or at least pretending to be.

"'The hearths had burned low.

"'The bread had hardened.

"'The last dog had given up barking at shadows.

"'But out in the meadow beyond the last fence post,

"'the one that leaned like it had given up trying,

"'something was happening.

"'It always started the same.

"'A whisper passed from mouth to mouth after supper,

"'slipped between bites of stew and sips of weak ale.

"'They're going to the meadow tonight.

"'No one said who.

"'No one needed to.

"'The meadow,

Flat and moon-soaked,

"'was where young villagers went "'when they had things to say "'that couldn't survive the daylight.

"'Things like,

I think I love you,

"'or we shouldn't have done that,

"'or what if we just ran away and became candle merchants?

"'The moon tonight was full and nosy,

"'hanging fat over the treetops "'like it wanted a front-row seat.

"'Crickets chirped with gossiping rhythm.

"'The air smelled of grass,

Wood-smoke,

And nerves.

"'Marigold was the first to arrive.

"'Her hair braided so tightly "'it gave away how long she'd spent preparing.

"'She stood near the old oak,

"'pretending to admire the view while counting her breaths.

"'Beside her,

Tucked under her sleeve,

"'was a wilted posy,

Not fresh,

But intentional.

"'A token,

A maybe.

"'Soon came Tom,

Boots muddy,

Shirt clean,

Unusual,

"'which meant something was afoot.

"'He paced three steps to the left,

"'then two to the right,

Then started over.

"'The moon watched him.

"'So did Marigold,

Though she didn't say a word.

"'Elsewhere,

Behind the blackberry bushes,

"'Elsie and Marta whispered "'like they were planning a heist.

"'He's going to ask her tonight.

"'No,

He's not,

' he told Joran.

"'Joran lies.

"'He was crying when he said it.

"'Could be allergies.

' "'The two girls paused "'to watch a pair stumbling over the hilltop,

"'hands clasped awkwardly like they hadn't decided "'if it was romantic or a negotiation.

"'Down by the riverbank,

Someone was singing,

Badly.

"'Someone else hushed them.

"'A third person started clapping to the beat.

"'The village knight was alive with potential disasters.

"'Then came the first proposal.

"'It wasn't dramatic,

Just a boy kneeling in a puddle,

"'offering a bent ring in a shaky sentence.

"'I know I've got nothing,

"'but maybe we could have nothing together.

' "'The girl blinked,

Said nothing,

"'then kissed him hard enough to startle a nearby owl.

"'He forgot how to stand.

"'She forgot how to breathe.

"'Not far off,

Someone else tried the same,

But fumbled.

"'Will you?

"'Do you want to?

"'If I built a hut,

Would-' "'She stared at him.

"'That's your pitch?

' "'He wilted.

"'There'd be goats.

"'I'm allergic to goats.

' "'The moon did not blink,

It merely listened.

"'Under its watch,

A dozen almost lovers "'stumbled through half-confessions,

"'whispered dreams,

And impulsive handholds.

"'Someone sang again,

Louder this time.

"'Someone sobbed beside a log.

"'Another person offered a bracelet "'made of twine and regret.

"'At least two proposals were accepted.

"'One was sealed with a promise to "'not be as annoying next year.

"'The other was sealed with a pinky swear "'and a spit handshake.

"'But not everyone left glowing.

"'Lena waited an hour under the hawthorn tree,

"'clutching a note in her sleeve.

"'He never came.

"'She burned the note with a flint "'and walked home barefoot,

Wiping her eyes "'like they were just adjusting to the moonlight.

"'Gareth proposed to the wrong girl by mistake.

"'In the dark,

Cloaks look awfully similar.

"'She laughed until she cried.

"'He cried until he laughed.

"'They both agreed to pretend it never happened.

"'Two boys stood side by side in silence for 20 minutes.

"'One eventually said,

Well,

Good night.

"'The other nodded.

"'Both stayed five more minutes,

Just in case.

"'The priest's daughter,

Who wasn't supposed "'to be there at all,

Kissed someone "'behind the old millstone and immediately whispered,

"'I think I've made a terrible mistake.

' "'He replied,

I think I've made a great one.

"'The goat was there too,

Somehow,

"'wearing a garland,

Possibly betrothed.

"'By the time the stars began to fade "'and the horizon hinted at gray,

"'the meadow looked like the aftermath "'of a very emotional harvest.

"'Bits of ribbon,

Forgotten shoes,

"'a crushed flower crown.

"'The kind of mess you only get "'when too many hearts are left slightly open.

"'One couple walked home in silence,

"'fingers brushing occasionally,

"'not quite ready to hold hands "'but too hopeful not to try again tomorrow.

"'One boy ran,

Just ran.

"'For no reason except that he'd said something stupid "'and the only way to outpace shame was with feet.

"'And somewhere,

Alone beneath the tree,

"'Marigold still stood.

"'Tom had never come over.

"'She waited until the sky turned pale,

"'then dropped the posy,

"'turned around and walked home "'with a dignity that cracked only once "'when she tripped on a root.

"'By morning,

No one would speak of it,

"'not directly,

But glances would linger,

"'smiles would mean more,

"'and two people would avoid each other "'until next week when the awkwardness wore off "'or blossomed into something worse.

"'Midnight had been kind to some,

"'cruel to others,

"'but it had been honest.

"'And in the year of our Lord,

"'honesty under the moon was as close to magic "'as most villagers ever got.

"'Evening vespers had just begun "'and the chapel smelled like wax and wet wool.

"'The priest had cleared his throat precisely twice.

"'The exact number needed to signal divine readiness.

"'And the villagers had settled into their usual formation,

"'solemn,

Mildly damp,

"'and trying not to sneeze.

"'Candles flickered like they,

Too,

"'were trying to stay awake.

"'Rain tapped gently on the chapel roof "'and the choirboys were humming the pre-hymn hum,

"'which was not official but had become a tradition "'in the way that all things done repeatedly "'tend to become sacred.

"'Then came the chicken.

"'It entered like a ghost,

"'with no fanfare and no apology,

"'slipping through the open side door "'left ajar by a latecomer named Ellis,

"'who would later deny everything.

"'At first,

No one noticed.

"'The chicken moved with the kind of stealth "'usually reserved for sinners and tax collectors.

"'It was a modest chicken,

"'brown-feathered,

Beady-eyed,

Possibly sentient.

"'It strutted halfway down the aisle "'before anyone made a sound.

"'It was the blacksmith's daughter who saw it first.

"'There's a chicken,

' she whispered.

"'Her brother shushed her.

"'No,

Look,

It's under the third bench.

' "'The priest paused mid-sentence.

"'He who sows in sorrow shall reap in.

"'Cluck!

' "'The sound echoed louder than it should have.

"'The villagers,

Trained in the sacred art "'of ignoring awkward things in sacred places,

"'remained frozen.

"'Except the chicken,

"'who had now perched itself near the altar "'and was pecking curiously at a discarded bit of wax.

"'The priest closed his book.

"'Did anyone bring that?

' "'The silence said no.

"'The silence also said,

"'Let's all agree to pretend it's not happening.

' "'Then the chicken flapped.

"'One mighty burst of feathers and indignation.

"'And suddenly it was in the air,

Briefly,

"'before landing squarely in the lap of old Hilda,

"'who had not been sat on by a living creature "'in over three decades.

"'She let out a yelp that turned into a cough,

"'that turned into a blasphemous mutter,

"'which was enough to wake even the snorers in the back pew.

"'Chaos bloomed.

"'Children shrieked.

"'Grown men ducked.

"'Someone threw a hymnal,

Not at the chicken,

"'but in its general direction,

"'as if the spirit of psalmody might banish poultry.

"'The priest attempted a prayer,

"'but what came out was,

"'Lord,

Deliver us from,

Cluck.

' "'The chicken leapt again,

"'landed on the pulpit,

"'and stared at the congregation "'like a visiting dignitary "'from the realm of farmyard heresy.

"'Then it began to preen.

"'That is not a holy bird,

' "'muttered the apothecary.

"'The priest,

Sweating now,

"'raised his arms as if to summon angels.

"'This is the work of the devil.

"'The devil's name is Margaret,

' "'shouted one of the children,

Pointing with glee.

"'And just like that,

"'the chicken had a name.

"'Margaret.

' "'Strutted to the edge of the pulpit,

"'clucked once,

"'then hopped down "'and made for the baptismal font.

"'She's going for the water,

' "'someone cried.

"'She seeks redemption,

' "'someone else offered.

"'At this point,

"'the chapel was split into three factions,

"'those trying to catch Margaret,

"'those trying not to laugh,

"'and those who had accepted this "'as part of the liturgy "'and were humming softly to themselves.

"'The priest was not among the amused.

"'He chased Margaret with a ceremonial candle,

"'shouting something about unclean spirits "'and poultry in sacred spaces.

"'The candle went out.

"'Margaret escaped.

"'The children cheered.

"'The baker's wife tried to trap her using her shawl.

"'The shawl got torn.

"'Margaret escaped again.

"'Eventually,

It was the youngest choir boy,

"'small,

Quiet,

"'and mostly ignored,

"'who simply crouched "'and held out a piece of bread.

"'Margaret approached,

"'slowly,

"'suspiciously,

"'then took the bread.

"'He scooped her up,

"'arms full of feathers and triumph,

"'and held her like a relic.

"'The congregation applauded.

"'The priest tried to restore order.

"'A-hum.

"'Let us return to prayer,

' "'he said,

"'adjusting his robes in pride.

"'Margaret was carried out with great ceremony "'as if she were a visiting saint "'being respectfully exiled.

"'Evening prayers resumed,

"'shakier than before.

"'Every few minutes,

Someone would stifle a giggle.

"'The blacksmith's wife wiped tears from her cheeks.

"'The reeve swore he'd seen a sign.

"'The priest pretended not to see the feather "'still floating gently near the altar.

"'After the final amen,

"'people filed out quietly "'as if nothing unusual had occurred,

"'except for the children.

"'They clustered near the steps,

"'whispering to each other,

"'She's our chicken now,

' "'one declared.

"'She's chosen.

"'Margaret the holy,

"'Margaret the terrible.

"'They couldn't agree on her title,

"'but they did agree she should live in the shed "'behind the chapel and be fed every Wednesday.

"'No one asked the priest's permission.

"'That night,

"'the village slept with the vague,

"'amused satisfaction of people "'who had witnessed something both ridiculous "'and vaguely divine.

"'The stars above twinkled like candlelight,

"'and somewhere behind the chapel,

"'Margaret nestled into a pile of straw,

"'unaware that she had achieved accidental sainthood.

"'And in the village's collective memory,

"'long after the candles had burned out "'and the hymnals had been repaired,

"'this night would be known simply "'as the time Margaret invaded the chapel,

"'and everything got just a little more holy.

"'By the time the last chores were done "'and the wind had curled its fingers "'through the thatched rooftops,

"'the villagers began to gather,

"'not by invitation,

"'never that formal,

"'but by instinct,

"'as if the crackling hearth "'sent out a silent summons "'to all souls within earshot.

"'One by one,

"'they slipped inside the great hall "'beside the tavern,

"'where the fire burned steady,

"'and the benches were just soft enough "'to tolerate for an hour or two.

"'The flames danced against soot-darkened stone,

"'painting shadows on the walls "'that looked like giants one moment "'and chickens the next.

"'The room smelled of smoke,

"'damp wool,

"'old onions,

"'and the faintest trace of mead.

"'A pot hung over the fire,

"'bubbling something that claimed to be soup,

"'though it was mostly memories "'and a single carrot floating like a survivor.

"'Children curled in corners,

"'chewing bread crusts,

"'and pretending not to fall asleep.

"'Elders leaned on elbows.

"'Middle-aged men stretched out their legs "'in exaggerated comfort,

"'even as they quietly rubbed their knees.

"'Women passed around a cloth of boiled chestnuts "'and made quiet bets about how long it would take "'before someone mentioned dragons.

"'Then came the stories.

"'It always started with Tolan,

"'the miller's cousin.

"'No one knew what exactly he did.

"'Somewhere between brewing,

"'borrowing,

"'and bothering.

"'But he had a voice like gravel "'and a gift for exaggeration.

"'Did I ever tell you about the time "'I met the ghost in the barley fields?

"'A chorus of groans,

"'a few grins.

"'Yes,

' "'shouted the children.

"'No,

' "'shouted Tolan,

Ignoring them.

"'That was his brother.

"'This was the older ghost,

"'meaner,

Drunker,

"'smelled like turnips.

"'The story spiraled quickly.

"'Barley that whispered,

"'a ghost with one boot,

"'and a fondness for whistling at sheep.

"'A chase that ended with Tolan "'locked in a grain bin overnight.

"'You just passed out in there,

' "'muttered someone.

"'Semantics,

' "'he replied.

"'Next came Maud,

"'who claimed she once knew a man "'who wrestled a bear for romantic reasons.

"'No one believed her,

"'especially since the bear was later revealed "'to be a very large dog,

"'and the romance ended in a splintered fence "'and two missing teeth.

"'Still,

She told it well,

"'and her voice rose and fell like a fiddle tune,

"'making even the nonsense feel noble.

"'Then there was Wilfred,

"'who always told the same story,

"'about a chicken that laid an egg "'shaped like a perfect cube.

"'Every time,

"'the details changed slightly.

"'Tonight,

"'the chicken's name was Judith,

"'and the egg was mistaken for a dice "'and used in a game that ended a marriage.

"'Between stories,

"'mugs clinked,

"'logs shifted,

"'and someone threw another stick on the fire.

"'Sparks jumped like they had somewhere to be.

"'A hush fell when old Bram spoke up.

"'He rarely did.

"'He was missing two fingers "'and all of his patience,

"'but he told stories like he'd bottled time.

"'This one's true,

' he said,

"'which was how you knew it absolutely wasn't.

"'He told of a knight,

"'who had no horse,

"'only a very determined goat named Cyril.

"'The knight rode Cyril into battle,

"'or tried to,

"'and the goat responded by eating part of his armor.

"'They never made it past the village gate.

"'But somehow,

"'Bram spun it into a tale of destiny,

"'betrayal,

"'and goat-based prophecy.

"'By the end,

"'people were wiping tears from their eyes,

"'some from laughter,

"'others from sheer confusion.

"'The fire snapped louder,

"'as if laughing,

Too.

"'Children now dozed,

"'heads on laps,

"'breaths slow and deep.

"'One boy dreamed with his eyes open,

"'staring into the flames "'like they might tell a story back.

"'Outside,

"'the wind howled just once,

"'a reminder that the world beyond the hearth "'was wide and cold and uncaring.

"'But in here,

"'the walls held steady,

"'the laughter held longer.

"'Rilla told a tale of a man who sneezed so hard,

"'it dislodged a tooth "'and changed the outcome of a local election.

"'Someone else added a bit about a woman "'who claimed to hear bees in her bread,

"'which turned out to be true,

"'and the bread had to be exercised.

"'I once saw a duck walk into the tavern,

"'quack three times,

"'and leave.

"'Was it a real duck?

"'Define real.

"'The stories blurred into one another,

"'like watercolors left in the rain.

"'Impossible to separate truth from jest "'or memory from invention.

"'And that was the point.

"'Stories weren't for record-keeping.

"'They were for warmth,

"'for distraction,

"'for stretching a single evening "'into something that felt longer,

"'fuller,

"'and less ordinary.

"'Eventually,

"'the yawns came in waves,

"'boots scraped the floor,

"'cloaks were pulled tight.

"'One by one,

"'the villagers stood,

"'nodded goodnights,

"'and slipped back into the night.

"'Only the fire remained awake,

"'low and glowing,

"'whispering to the last embers "'about goats and ghosts "'and the strange things people believe "'when the stars are out "'and the stew's been shared.

"'Tomorrow,

"'there would be fences to mend,

"'cows to milk,

"'pies to burn.

"'But tonight,

"'there had been dragons "'and square eggs,

"'and the memory of laughter "'echoing in the smoke.

"'Night fell slowly,

"'as if it,

Too,

"'was reluctant to lie down "'in this particular village.

"'The last embers of daylight "'slipped behind the hills,

"'and one by one,

"'candles were snuffed out,

"'shutters creaked closed,

"'and people climbed into beds "'that could generously be described "'as wooden excuses for comfort.

"'Inside the cottages,

"'the world narrowed.

"'The clatter and chatter of day "'faded into the soft rustle "'of blankets stuffed with straw,

"'the occasional clink of a chamber pot lid,

"'and the heavy sighs of bodies "'surrendering to sleep,

"'or trying to.

"'It was not a peaceful process.

"'Snoring began,

"'almost immediately.

"'Not a soft,

Dignified snore,

"'but a full-throated,

"'furniture-rattling declaration "'of unconsciousness,

"'the sort of sound "'that suggested the sleeper "'was in a wrestling match "'with his own throat "'and winning decisively.

"'It started in the blacksmith's hut,

"'always him,

"'and then,

As if in reply,

"'another snore erupted "'from three doors down,

"'slightly higher in pitch,

"'like a duet no one had asked for.

"'A dog whimpered in its sleep.

"'A baby coughed once,

"'and then decided against waking.

"'The wind tapped a loose shudder.

"'Somewhere,

Someone muttered,

"'Turn over,

You old donkey,

"'and received a grunt in response,

"'followed by a loud,

"'wet-sounding fart.

"'That,

Too,

Was the nightly symphony.

"'Flatulence had no shame in this village.

"'It was considered a sign of health,

"'vigor,

"'and occasionally,

Victory.

"'The baker's wife had once claimed "'her husband farted so loudly,

"'it scared the rats out of the grain store.

"'Whether this was true or not,

"'the rats were gone,

"'and the baker was proud.

"'Tonight,

"'the gas was especially sociable.

"'A rhythmic series echoed from the tailor's cottage,

"'followed by laughter.

"'He and his wife made a game of guessing "'what animal each one sounded like.

"'That was definitely a goose,

' she whispered.

"'In another hut,

"'two teenage boys lay on opposite ends "'of a lumpy mattress,

"'giggling like fools.

"'Did you hear that?

"'No.

"'That was you.

"'Was not.

"'Felt the draft.

"'They dissolved into giggles again,

"'muffling the sound with pillows "'that had once been sacks of grain.

"'And through it all,

"'the fleas partied.

"'They were the true insomniacs of the village,

"'tiny tyrants of the mattress realm.

"'As soon as human skin made contact with straw,

"'the fleas leapt into action "'like it was opening night at the theater.

"'Bites were delivered with precision.

"'Itches bloomed like unwanted flowers.

"'People scratched in their sleep.

"'Some moaned softly.

"'One woman,

Half-awake,

"'slapped her leg and whispered,

"'Got you,

You little demon,

' "'before rolling over triumphantly.

"'The apothecary claimed to have a flea-repelling salve "'made of garlic,

Mint,

And hopeless optimism.

"'It worked for exactly one night.

"'Then the fleas came back with reinforcements.

"'Dreams stirred,

"'strange and slippery.

"'The blacksmith dreamt of a dancing cow "'that judged him harshly.

"'A young girl imagined her chicken could talk "'and accused her of theft.

"'The reeve,

Noble even in slumber,

"'muttered official-sounding things "'about fences and cabbage law.

"'He would deny it all come morning.

"'In the manor house,

"'the steward snored so rhythmically "'it was mistaken for drumming.

"'The housemaid dreamt of a feast "'where all the spoons had legs "'and ran away just before the soup was served.

"'In one cottage,

"'a widow dreamed of her husband.

"'Not how he was,

"'but how she wished he had been.

"'He didn't snore in the dream.

"'He smelled of rosemary "'and knew how to dance.

"'Down in the common house,

"'the last fire sputtered in the hearth.

"'One man sat upright in his sleep.

"'Eyes fluttering,

Muttering about taxes and trousers.

"'His bunkmate nudged him flat again.

"'Even the animals had joined the chorus.

"'A pig snorted in its pen,

"'chasing something in its sleep,

"'perhaps a runaway apple,

"'perhaps a grudge.

"'The goats murmured softly "'and one sneezed with such force "'it scared the other into tipping over a bucket.

"'The night deepened.

"'The stars blinked,

"'distant and unimpressed.

"'The moon crept across the sky,

"'peering through thin windows,

"'lighting up crooked noses and open mouths,

"'tattered quilts and dangling feet.

"'Outside,

The wind sang its own lullaby "'through the trees.

"'A barn door creaked.

"'A frog chirped once,

Decided against it "'and went back to doing nothing.

"'And in the village,

"'sleep held most in its arms.

"'Not tenderly,

"'not gently,

"'but effectively.

"'Despite the snores and farts,

"'the scratching and muttering,

"'the dreams and itches,

"'the people slept.

"'Because this was life,

"'loud,

"'itchy,

"'slightly embarrassing.

"'And tomorrow would come soon,

"'with roosters,

"'burnt porridge,

"'and someone pretending they hadn't talked "'in their sleep about marrying a goat.

"'But for now,

"'the village breathed,

"'huffed,

Snored,

"'and shuffled under the patchy quilt of night.

"'And in the darkness,

"'a single flea paused,

"'wiped its tiny face,

"'and got back to work.

"'The fire had gone out in most homes now.

"'Just a thin ribbon of smoke "'trailed from a few chimneys,

"'curling up into the star-choked sky "'like a final sigh.

"'The village had quieted,

"'not silenced,

"'never that,

"'but hushed,

"'as if the earth itself had pulled up "'a woolen blanket and settled in.

"'But there was always one last task.

"'Tomlin pulled on his boots by feel,

"'not sight.

"'They were still damp from the stream,

"'and one had a bit of straw lodged inside,

"'but he didn't complain.

"'He was used to it.

"'He lifted the lantern with a grunt,

"'its light dim but warm,

"'and stepped out into the cool breath of night.

"'His wife mumbled something from the bed.

"'Probably,

"'don't forget the latch,

"'or maybe just turnip soup.

"'But he nodded anyway.

"'Out in the yard,

"'the ground was soft and forgiving,

"'still holding the day's warmth in its belly.

"'He made his way past the lean-to,

"'past the rain barrel,

"'past the patch of stubborn weeds "'that had resisted three seasons of insults.

"'The barn loomed ahead,

"'more shadow than structure now,

"'its roof sagging slightly "'like an old man bowing to the moon.

"'He pushed the door open with a creak "'that felt louder than it should have,

"'as if the wood were complaining "'about being disturbed so late.

"'Inside,

"'the barn was alive "'in the way nighttime barns always are.

"'A soft rustle here,

"'a gentle snort there,

"'straw shifting like it had secrets.

"'The smell hit him,

"'familiar and oddly comforting,

"'a mixture of hay,

Manure,

Damp wood,

"'and the unexplainable scent "'that only animals seem to make.

"'All right,

' Tomlin whispered.

"'Just one last look.

"'He walked past the chickens first.

"'Most were huddled in clumps,

"'dreaming of worms and dominance.

"'One lifted its head,

"'blinked at him with reptilian judgment,

"'and tucked itself back into feathered sleep.

"'The goat pen came next.

"'The twins,

"'Mumble and Crick,

"'were tangled together "'in a way that defied logic and physics.

"'One of them chewed something in its sleep.

"'Tomlin didn't ask what.

"'Then came the main event,

"'Gertrude.

"'She was the largest animal in the village,

"'possibly the oldest,

"'definitely the loudest.

"'She had opinions about everything "'and wasn't shy about expressing them.

"'If the world wasn't to her liking,

"'she'd let you know,

"'with a kick,

"'a bellow,

"'or a long pointed stare "'that seemed to pass judgment "'on your entire lineage.

"'But tonight,

"'Gertrude was quiet.

"'She lay curled in the straw "'like a great hairy boulder.

"'Her breathing was slow and steady.

"'Her eyes,

"'half-lidded,

"'tracked Tomlin's approach "'with the weary tolerance "'of someone who has lived too long "'to be surprised by anything anymore.

"'He knelt beside her.

"'You all right,

Girl?

' "'He asked softly.

"'She blinked once,

"'then closed her eyes.

"'That's what I thought.

"'He reached out "'and gently scratched the patch "'behind her ear she liked,

"'the one that made her twitch her nose "'and groan like a spoiled baroness.

"'She didn't twitch tonight.

"'Just a long exhale,

"'warm and damp,

"'and the faintest shuffle "'of hooves against straw.

"'Tomlin stayed there for a while,

"'not doing anything,

"'not thinking about anything either,

"'just breathing with her,

"'listening to the creaks of the barn,

"'feeling the weight of the day loosen its grip.

"'In the loft above,

"'a mouse rustled.

"'Probably the same one "'that had been stealing "'from the grain sack all week.

"'Tomlin didn't care tonight.

"'Let it have its crumbs.

"'He stood,

"'bones creaking louder "'than the barn door.

"'Good night,

Gertrude,

' he whispered.

"'She didn't reply.

"'Outside,

The stars were still watching,

"'thousands of them,

"'scattered across the sky "'like forgotten seeds,

"'some bright,

"'some faint,

"'all ancient.

"'He paused "'and looked up,

"'just for a second.

"'No prayers,

"'no thoughts,

"'just a glance,

"'just enough to feel small in the right way.

"'Back inside,

"'the village was deep in its dreams.

"'The baker rolled over "'and muttered about burnt crusts.

"'The priest mumbled an unfinished sermon.

"'A child somewhere whispered dragon,

"'then snored like one.

"'Even the dogs were still,

"'their tails twitching at memories "'of rabbits that had gotten away.

"'Tomlin slipped back into the house,

"'careful not to let the door squeal.

"'He set the lantern down,

"'pulled off his boots,

"'slid beneath the blanket beside his wife,

"'who reached out without waking "'and placed a hand on his chest "'like she was counting the beats.

"'Outside,

"'the barn stood watch.

"'Inside,

"'Gertrude sighed,

"'rolled once,

"'and finally settled.

"'And above it all,

"'the stars blinked slow and silent,

"'keeping secrets only the night could understand.

'" Hey,

Guys.

Tonight's story starts with a strange itch,

A colder-than-usual floor,

And a rooster that clearly has a personal vendetta.

You've just woken up somewhere unfamiliar,

A wooden cottage,

No electricity,

And the smell of cabbage hanging in the air like it pays rent.

There's no phone,

No coffee,

No explanation,

Just a grunt from a man who hands you a piece of bread and walks away like you're the weird one.

And somehow,

This is your life now.

Now get comfortable,

Let the day melt away,

And we'll drift back together into the quiet corners of the past.

You wake up with your face in straw,

Not a soft golden storybook kind of straw,

Real straw,

Sharp,

Itchy,

Poking-you-in-the-eye kind of straw.

It smells like old hay,

Sweat,

And possibly goat.

The light slanting through the cracks in the wall is soft and gray like early-morning fog.

There's a low rumble near your head.

It's rhythmic,

Wet,

A snore.

You turn your head and come eye-to-eye with a dog,

Or maybe a wolf.

No,

Just a very hairy dog.

He stares at you for a moment,

Unimpressed,

Then goes back to sleeping like it's none of his business that a stranger is face down in his bed.

You sit up and immediately regret it.

Your back feels like it's been twisted into a question mark.

The mattress,

If you can call it that,

Is just a loosely woven sack of straw on a board of splintery wood.

No pillows,

No blankets,

Just you and the distant smell of smoke,

Like someone's burning toast four centuries too early.

You blink,

Once,

Twice.

This isn't your room.

This isn't even your time zone.

The walls are wooden planks,

Uneven and knotted,

With no paint,

No photos,

No insulation.

There's a window the size of a cereal box,

Covered in something that might be pig intestines stretched tight.

Light leaks through,

But barely.

You reach for your phone out of habit.

Your fingers find nothing but rough wool.

You're wearing a tunic,

A real one,

Scratchy,

Oversized,

And definitely not from your closet.

There's no hum,

No buzz,

No distant traffic or refrigerator drone,

Just chickens outside,

Flapping and squawking like they're having a heated argument.

Somewhere in the distance,

A bell rings once,

Then silence.

You swing your legs off the bed and your feet touch stone,

Cold,

Uneven stone.

There's a draft,

A real one.

It whistles through the walls like the house is sighing.

You stand.

The room spins.

There's a table,

More of a stump with legs,

And a single wooden bowl.

Inside is something thick and gray,

Porridge,

Maybe wallpaper paste.

You look around.

One door,

No lock,

No light switch,

No plumbing.

You shuffle to the door and open it slowly.

The hinges groan like they haven't moved since the plague.

Outside,

You're not sure what to expect.

A parking lot?

A hidden camera crew?

Instead,

You're hit with a gust of damp air and the sharp smell of animals and people.

Lots of people.

You're in a village,

Not a quaint one with souvenir shops and guided tours.

A real one.

Mud paths,

Thatched roofs,

And a group of people all staring at you like you just landed from the moon.

Which,

In a way,

You did.

Someone shouts something in English,

But it's old,

Twisted.

Get on with you,

New boy.

You blink again.

Who are they talking to?

You?

A woman with a basket walks past,

Gives you a look,

And mutters something about sleeping through cock crow.

A child throws a turnip at a pig.

The pig doesn't flinch.

It's seen worse.

You close the door slowly.

Turn around.

The dog is still asleep.

You sit back down on the straw,

Scratch your ankle,

And a small puff of dust rises.

You look at your hands.

They're already dirty.

You haven't done anything,

But the dirt has found you anyway.

A scratching at the door.

Then it opens.

A man enters.

Grizzled.

Worn leather tunic.

Hands like tree bark.

He glances at you and grunts.

Throws a wool sack at your chest.

Boots.

That's all he says.

Then he leaves.

The boots smell like damp socks and despair.

But you put them on anyway.

They don't fit.

Of course they don't.

You hear a clang.

Something metal.

Something being beaten.

You step outside again,

And this time no one looks.

You've already been cataloged.

You're the new one.

The strange one.

The one who asked if there was Wi-Fi.

A boy walks by carrying a goose under one arm like a briefcase.

A man pees against a wall like it's just part of the morning routine.

You notice a well.

A real rope and bucket well.

A woman hauls water from it with biceps that could split logs.

She nods at you.

It's the friendliest thing you've seen all morning.

You nod back.

Because what else is there to do?

You're not dreaming.

You're not dead.

You're just here.

In this place where floors are stone,

Beds are straw,

And your spine may never forgive you.

And for some reason,

You're not panicking.

Not yet.

Just watching.

Breathing.

Wondering what comes next.

You wake up again to the dog sneezing directly into your face.

There's no alarm clock.

Just phlegm and fur.

Outside,

The sky is the same dull pewter shade it was when you fell asleep.

Time seems to smear here.

You're not sure if it's six in the morning or six in the never.

The air bites a little sharper today.

Your spine still resents you.

And your feet now blistered from yesterday's battle with the oversized leather boots feel like they've aged twenty years overnight.

The door creaks open.

No knock.

No good morning.

Just a presence.

A shadow in the shape of a man.

He walks in like he owns the place which you assume he does.

Your host,

If that word even applies,

Looks at you the way one looks at a wheelbarrow that somehow learned to speak.

Not curious.

Not friendly.

Just vaguely annoyed that you exist.

He drops something on the stump table with a thud.

Bread.

A chunk of it.

Not sliced.

Not buttered.

Just torn from a larger,

Meaner loaf.

It's heavy.

Misshapen.

And looks like it lost a fight with a rock.

He doesn't say a word.

Just grunts and turns to stoke the fire in the corner hearth,

Muttering something under his breath that may or may not be directed at you.

You nod.

A diplomatic,

Neutral kind of nod.

He doesn't look back.

You pick up the bread.

It's cold.

Dense.

Possibly older than your current predicament.

You bite it anyway.

Your jaw protests.

This is bread that doesn't want to be eaten.

This is bread that survived battles.

Your teeth manage to chip off a chunk.

It tastes like survival.

Not good.

Not bad.

Just edible.

Barely.

There's no coffee.

That realization hits slow and cruel.

No smell of it.

No mug.

No ritual of pouring.

You scan the room again like maybe,

Just maybe,

There's a French press hiding under the bed.

Nothing.

Just ash,

Dust,

And a pile of sticks that might be dinner or furniture.

Your mouth is dry.

You chew slower.

Not because it helps,

But because there's nothing else to do.

Your host finishes with the fire and sits down across from you.

Not at the table,

On a stool that wobbles like it's had a rough life.

He pulls out a knife the length of your forearm and begins scraping something off his boot.

Mud?

Manure?

Both?

You decide not to ask.

He doesn't seem like the small talk type.

The silence isn't awkward.

It's dense.

Like fog.

Like it belongs here.

You chew.

He scrapes.

The dog farts softly.

Eventually,

He looks up.

Not at you through you.

As if trying to decide what sort of creature you are.

His eyes are like burnt coal.

Not cruel.

Not kind.

Just tired.

He scratches his beard,

Then says the first word you've heard from him that's longer than a grunt.

Work.

You blink.

He points toward the door.

After.

Then gestures at the bread.

You nod again,

Unsure what work means.

Yesterday,

It meant hauling buckets and nearly getting pecked to death by a chicken.

Today,

Who knows?

You imagine they might hand you a shovel and tell you to move a hill or a goat.

You finish the bread.

It doesn't finish you.

That's a win.

You stand.

He stands.

The dog stays.

Outside,

The village is already busy.

Smoke from 10 different hearths curls into the sky.

Women with baskets stride past like they've got a schedule only they understand.

Children run barefoot through the mud,

Laughing and yelling at pigs like it's perfectly normal behavior.

Your host walks ahead,

Not checking if you follow.

You do,

Because there's nowhere else to go.

Your boots squelch in the muck.

A chicken eyes you with deep suspicion.

Somewhere,

A bell tolls again,

A different one this time.

Lower,

Slower.

Everything here has its own rhythm,

Its own soundscape of clatter,

Cough,

Grunt,

And cluck.

You pass a man urinating into a bucket like it's just part of breakfast.

He nods at your host,

Says something in that thick,

Muddy English that barely feels like English.

Your host nods back.

You're invisible again.

That's starting to feel comforting.

At the edge of the village,

There's a shed,

More like a shack that gave up halfway through becoming a building.

Inside,

Tools.

Rakes,

Shovels,

A two-handed saw that looks like it could sever a tree and maybe did.

Your host picks up a scythe,

Hands you something smaller,

A hoe,

Or a trowel,

Or a weapon.

Hard to tell.

You get the sense that today will involve dirt,

Lots of it,

Maybe potatoes,

Maybe something worse.

You sigh,

Not a modern scythe dramatic kind with AirPods and emails,

A real one,

Tired,

Resigned,

Almost sacred.

He looks at you one more time.

This time,

There's almost a smirk,

Not quite a smile,

But close,

Like he's seen something he understands,

A crack in your face that says,

You're beginning to accept it,

The lack of noise,

The lack of comfort,

The way mornings here begin with dry bread and silence.

And maybe,

Just maybe,

That silence is teaching you something,

Something you didn't know you needed to hear.

The bucket lands in your hands without ceremony,

No instructions,

No smile,

Just a dented tin pail,

Damp on the inside,

Heavy with implication.

Your host doesn't explain.

He doesn't need to.

He just nods toward the door,

Mutters something that might be well,

Or work,

Or worse,

Then turns his back and resumes the important business of ignoring your existence.

You stare at the bucket like it might come with a manual.

It doesn't,

Just a faint rust ring on the bottom and a handle that pinches your fingers when you grip it too tightly.

You step outside,

Hoping for a sign,

Any sign.

Instead,

You get a whiff of pig,

Then chicken,

Then something sour and wet that you decide not to investigate further.

It's early still.

The village is just waking.

Thatched roofs stretch beneath the yawning sky.

Smoke curls upward like sleepy thoughts.

People move like they've already been moving for hours.

A woman walks past with a basket on her head and a baby strapped to her chest.

She glances at you,

Then your bucket,

Then back at you.

No words,

Just a short,

Exhausted laugh.

You follow the flow of bodies toward the sound of splashing and wooden creaks.

And then you see it,

The well.

It's taller than you expected,

Thicker,

A stone cylinder with a wooden frame above it and a crank that looks like it was built to outlast empires.

A line's already formed,

Mostly women,

One boy,

All with buckets like yours,

Though theirs don't look borrowed.

A few glance at you,

A couple whisper.

You pretend not to notice or understand.

When it's your turn,

The old woman ahead of you doesn't move.

She just jerks her chin at the crank like she's daring you.

You step up,

Take the handle,

And begin turning.

It groans loudly.

Your arms burn almost immediately.

The rope fights back.

Water doesn't want to be lifted.

It wants to stay deep,

Secret,

Untouched.

But after several rotations,

The bucket rises,

Sloshing and swaying like it's drunk.

You lift it,

Spill a bit,

Pretend you didn't,

Pour it into your pail.

The old woman grunts,

Approving or disgusted you can't tell.

Then she turns and walks away.

Your pail is half full.

You debate doing it again,

But your arms have filed a complaint,

So you stop.

You carry the water back through the village,

Slowly,

Carefully.

Every step becomes a negotiation.

The handle bites your palm.

The water sloshes over your boots.

It's heavier than it looks,

Cold too,

Like it knows it's better than you.

People don't get out of your way.

They don't have to.

You're the new one.

You're the one who doesn't walk like they're used to,

Hauling things that matter.

You return to the cottage.

Your host isn't there.

The door creaks.

The dog lifts his head just enough to confirm you still exist,

Then returns to the art of sleeping.

You place the pail beside the hearth like it's sacred.

It's not.

Within seconds,

It's being used.

For what?

You're not entirely sure.

Washing,

Drinking,

Cooking,

Possibly all three.

You sit,

Hoping that's enough.

It's not.

A second bucket is pushed into your chest.

Smaller,

Wooden,

Damp in a suspicious way.

This time the nod is downward,

Toward the back corner.

There's a second door you hadn't noticed.

Behind it,

A tiny room,

Dirt floor,

A stool with a hole in the center,

A smell that slaps you across the face with the force of history.

And now you understand.

This is not a water bucket.

It's a waste bucket.

The chamber pot.

The medieval answer to indoor plumbing.

And it's full.

Not overflowing,

But substantial.

You pick it up,

Trying not to breathe through your nose.

It sloshes in a way water doesn't.

Thick,

Malevolent.

You hold it as far from your body as your arms allow.

Your host doesn't follow.

This mission is yours alone.

You walk again.

This time not to the well.

This time beyond the last cottage,

Toward the trees.

You follow the scent of ammonia and despair until you find what must be the dumping site,

A pit covered in flies.

A silent testament to the human condition.

You pour,

Carefully,

Slowly,

Trying not to imagine the splash pattern.

When you return,

No one congratulates you.

No one claps.

You place the bucket near the side of the cottage.

A woman walks by and nods.

That's all.

But it feels earned,

Like your first unspoken promotion.

Later,

When you sit by the fire,

Chewing another hunk of bread and pretending it has flavor,

You realize something.

The bucket was never just about the bucket.

It was initiation,

Trial by pale.

A medieval rite of passage that separates the tourist from the tenant.

You're not one of them.

Not yet.

But today,

You hauled their water.

You emptied their waste.

And somehow,

You survived both.

The door sticks again.

It always sticks.

You have to lean into it with your shoulder just to open it,

Like the house itself is trying to keep you in,

But you push through.

And outside,

The village greets you the same way it always does,

With chickens.

They're everywhere.

Like they've staged a takeover in the night,

Pecking,

Flapping,

Strutting like tiny feathered judges.

One hops onto a barrel and stares you down like it knows what you did.

You don't make eye contact.

The last time you did that,

It chased you for half a street.

The air is wet with fog,

Thick enough to muffle footsteps,

But not enough to hide the looks.

They glance at you from windows,

From doorways,

From the corners of their eye as they go about their routines.

They don't stop what they're doing.

They just take you in,

Again,

Like they're trying to decide if you're getting better or just stranger.

A man walks past you,

Pushing a wheelbarrow full of turnips.

You nod.

He nods back,

Eventually.

Not a greeting.

More like a confirmation.

You're still here.

Still the stranger.

Still the one who showed up asking questions about apps and electricity and whether or not the bread had gluten.

A child calls out behind you.

Stranger!

And throws a clump of moss.

It hits your boot and flops to the ground.

She giggles and runs away before you can even turn.

It's not mean.

Not quite.

It's more like a game.

You're the village novelty.

The accidental mascot of confusion.

Down the path,

The blacksmith hammers away like he's mad at the metal.

Sparks leap with every strike,

Lighting up his sweaty face like he's forging weapons for the end of the world.

He doesn't look up.

You've passed by him enough times to know he has two moods,

Working and sleeping.

Neither includes talking.

You step around a puddle that looks deep enough to have its own ecosystem and head toward the market square.

It's not a square,

Really.

More of a muddy circle,

Surrounded by carts and crates and people trying to look busier than they actually are.

A woman arranges leeks in a row,

So straight it could be military formation.

A man shouts something about eels.

Another plays a lute,

Missing two strings and one sense of rhythm.

You linger near a cart stacked with apples.

The vendor eyes you,

Then casually slides his arm between you and the produce.

Not today,

Stranger.

You move on.

Someone calls out again.

Oi,

Stranger.

You still sleep in an Osric's barn.

You don't know who Osric is,

Or if it's even a question.

You just nod once and keep walking.

Better to agree than explain.

Explanations here don't go over well.

You've tried.

Once,

You said you were from the future as a joke.

They made the sign of the cross and didn't speak to you for two days.

At the well,

You watch as two women fill buckets and talk in fast,

Clumsy English that still sounds more like poetry than conversation.

One glances at you,

Then whispers,

Then laughs.

You pretend you didn't hear.

You always pretend you didn't hear.

There's a rhythm to the village now.

You can feel it.

Even if you're not part of it,

You know it's beat.

Morning water,

Midday meals,

Afternoon repairs,

Sunset silence,

And you moving just behind the tempo,

Always half a step late,

Always watched.

A boy walks by,

Leading a pig on a rope.

The pig snorts at you like it remembers something personal.

You try to smile.

The boy doesn't return it.

He just says,

Mind you don't curse the beast,

Then keeps walking like that was a completely normal sentence.

You pass the chapel.

The priest is sweeping the steps.

He pauses,

Watches you,

Then says,

Stranger,

Not unfriendly,

Not welcoming,

Just a label.

You wonder if he even knows your name.

If anyone does,

If it matters.

Someone hands you a small loaf of bread.

No explanation.

No eye contact.

Just passes it into your hands and moves on.

You stare at it.

It's still warm.

You take a bite,

Then another.

It's better than yesterday's.

Less rock,

More dough,

A quiet offering,

Or maybe just a leftover.

You sit on a stump near the edge of the square.

Watch as the village breathes around you.

Dogs bark.

Children shout.

Someone drops a crate and curses in a language you almost understand.

The sky starts to shift from pale to gold.

Another day passing.

They still call you stranger.

Still glance at you like you might sprout feathers or breathe fire.

But no one's run you out.

No one's tried to burn you.

That feels like progress.

And for a second,

Just a small one,

You realize something.

They forgot you don't belong.

And part of you has started to forget,

Too.

It happened before breakfast.

Before you learned what the word porridge really meant.

Before you understood that people here don't sip.

They slurp.

You were tired.

Still half asleep,

Mouth dry,

Brain not quite accepting that your bed is now a pile of straw and your alarm clock is a dog with a sinus issue.

You had followed your host,

Osric,

As you finally learned his name to the village square.

He grunted.

You followed.

That's the arrangement.

He walks.

You try not to get lost or accidentally offend someone by existing too loudly.

The market was buzzing.

Not loud.

Just alive.

Wooden carts rolling across mud.

People shouting about onions.

A man selling eels out of a barrel that may or may not also be his bathtub.

The air smelled like smoke and cabbage and wet wood.

You saw a baker.

You didn't plan to say anything.

But your mouth moved before your survival instinct caught up.

Do you guys have Wi-Fi?

You said it under your breath,

Not even as a question.

More like a sad joke you whispered into the world.

A string of words your mouth released out of habit.

But someone heard.

They always do.

The baker froze.

Midloaf.

His eyes narrowed like you just asked if bread was a government conspiracy.

He made the sign of the cross.

Not quickly.

Slowly.

Purposefully.

His eyes locked on yours the whole time.

Like he wasn't sure if the devil was inside you or standing directly behind you.

You opened your mouth to explain,

But it was too late.

A boy across the lane pointed.

He said Wi-Fi.

Another voice piped up from somewhere behind a sack of turnips.

Is that a spell?

A woman clutched her apron and turned away like you were leaking disease.

Osric didn't speak.

He didn't need to.

The look he gave you could have shattered glass.

It said one thing very clearly.

Don't.

You laughed it off.

Tried to.

A weak,

Cracked sort of laugh that died in the mud.

Never mind,

You said.

It's nothing.

Just something dumb.

But the damage was done.

The crowd had already decided.

By midday,

Someone had whispered that you spoke in tongues.

That you might be part fey.

That you came from the forest or across the sea or from the stars.

The stories changed by the hour.

But the word stuck.

Possessed.

You'd earned a new title.

Not just stranger.

Not just new boy.

Now you were the one who speaks of the sky web.

It didn't help when you tried to ask if anyone had seen a charger.

You didn't even mean it seriously.

You were trying to be funny.

Lighten the mood.

But they don't have the mood here.

They have chores.

They have blisters.

They have frostbite in May and childbirth and fields and men who leave for war and never come back.

Your joke was just noise.

From then on,

Things shifted.

Subtly.

You'd walk past the baker and he'd mutter something under his breath.

You'd step into the market and a child would pretend to cast a spell on you,

Laughing until their mother pulled them back.

One night,

Someone left a sprig of garlic by your door.

You started speaking less.

Listening more.

You learned how to nod without inviting follow-up.

How to look busy.

Even when you weren't sure what your hands were supposed to be doing.

You stopped asking questions.

Especially the wrong ones.

The village doesn't hate you.

Not exactly.

You're still fed.

Still handed tools.

Still allowed to exist within the blurry borders of their day.

But there's a perimeter around your presence now.

A half-step of space people leave between you and them.

You're not dangerous.

But you're not right.

Either.

You said something that wasn't supposed to be said.

You reminded them that you think in a language they don't understand.

So you swallow your words.

Let them sink.

You learn how to make eye contact that doesn't linger.

How to carry a bucket without spilling.

How to eat in silence.

How to take up less space.

Breathe quieter.

Disappear just enough to avoid being remembered too clearly.

But you never forget the moment.

The way the market slowed.

The way the baker's face changed.

The way that single word,

Wi-Fi,

Felt like a betrayal of something sacred.

Like you'd spit on their god,

Their bread,

Their weather-worn rhythm.

You learn,

Quickly and completely,

That the past has no patience for your present.

You're here now.

In this place.

This time.

Where the only web is made by spiders and no one laughs when you say something they don't understand.

You don't ask again.

You don't explain.

You just shut up fast.

They're waiting for you.

On the floor.

Right by the door.

Like someone placed them there on purpose.

Two wooden shapes.

Awkward.

Clunky.

Carved.

Like someone gave up halfway through making a chair and decided it would be easier to just strap the failed pieces to someone's feet.

Your name well.

Your nickname.

Scratched into the side in childlike letters.

New boy.

No one says who left them.

No one needs to.

You stare at them for a long time.

Before touching them.

They don't look dangerous.

But they don't look comfortable either.

You reach out.

Tap one.

It makes a hollow thump against the stone floor.

It feels wrong to call them shoes.

They're more like wearable planks.

But your host nods toward them that morning.

So you try.

The first thing you learn is that your foot doesn't go in easily.

These weren't made for feet.

Not real ones.

They were made for a vague idea of a foot.

A medieval sketch of what toes probably looked like.

You shove,

Twist,

Curse under your breath.

Finally,

With enough force to sprain logic,

You get both feet in.

There's no left or right.

Just pain.

You take a step.

The noise is immediate.

A clump.

Then another.

You sound like a haunted wardrobe dragging itself through a hallway.

The dog opens one eye.

You take another step.

Your ankle rolls.

Your knee screams.

You make it three paces before you stub your toe on the doorframe,

Which is impressive,

Since your toe is now protected by what might as well be a wooden brick.

You walk outside,

One slow step at a time.

The chickens scatter.

You feel taller.

Not in a good way.

More like you're balancing on a pile of regrets.

Children point.

One claps.

Another mimics your gait,

Exaggerated and loud.

You want to laugh.

You almost do.

But the blister forming on your heel starts whispering threats,

And you go quiet again.

You miss sneakers.

You miss arch support.

You miss the quiet glide of rubber soles and the soft give of fabric.

But most of all,

You miss socks,

The way they used to cradle your feet like tiny woolen apologies.

Now your toes rub against the wood like two enemies stuck in the same prison cell.

By mid-morning,

You've developed a limp,

Not dramatic,

Just enough that every third step looks like you're reconsidering all your life choices.

You try walking on the balls of your feet,

Then the sides.

Then you just surrender and start dragging your legs like you're being punished for something.

The blacksmith sees you hobbling by,

Doesn't say a word,

Just shakes his head once,

Deeply disappointed in your existence.

A woman selling leeks clicks her tongue.

You walk like a man who owes the road money.

You don't respond.

You just try not to fall into another puddle.

Work today involves carrying logs.

You're not told where to carry them to.

Just handed one and pointed vaguely toward the west.

The log is heavier than your pride and shaped like regret.

Your wooden shoes catch on every root,

Every stone,

Every slight change in elevation.

You trip twice.

On the third stumble,

You fall forward,

Not far,

Just enough to get a mouthful of moss and the sudden awareness that,

Yes,

You can sprain your dignity.

You look up from the ground.

No one offers a hand.

A boy laughs and walks past,

Balancing his own log on one shoulder like it's nothing more than a feather with ambition.

You push yourself up,

Adjust your shoes.

One is already starting to crack on the side.

You wonder if it's symbolic.

You wonder if everything here is.

Later,

At the stream,

You try to wash your feet.

Getting the shoes off is harder than getting them on.

You pry,

Yank,

Eventually remove them with a noise that sounds like betrayal.

Your heels are red,

Your toes bruised.

You consider just walking into the water and floating away,

Becoming a myth,

A warning tale the villagers tell their children.

Don't ask about Wi-Fi or you'll become the river ghost,

But you don't.

You dry your feet on a patch of grass,

Slide the shoes back on,

And walk slowly back toward the village.

You sit outside the cottage that evening,

Legs stretched out,

Shoes in front of you like conquered beasts.

The sunset is kind,

Gold spilling across the sky,

Softening the edges of the world.

Someone walks past and nods at you.

Not a greeting,

More like acknowledgement,

Like they've seen the limp,

The effort,

The endurance.

You don't belong yet,

But you wore the shoes.

You survived the walk,

You didn't quit,

And maybe,

Just maybe,

That counts for something here.

It hits you in waves,

Not suddenly,

Not like stepping into a room where something's gone wrong,

More like being slowly lowered into a bucket of smell.

One day,

It's a hint of damp wool.

The next,

Wet hay,

Then body odor fermented by sun and sealed in by layers of unwashed tunic.

Eventually,

It's everything all at once,

Earth,

Animal,

Smoke,

Salt,

And something human that no modern word quite captures.

You wake to it,

You sleep in it.

It crawls into your clothes,

Clings to your skin,

Lives in your hair.

You've stopped noticing when you breathe through your mouth.

It's just instinct now,

A quiet surrender.

No one else reacts,

That's the strangest part.

No one flinches when the butcher walks by smelling like spoiled soup and blood-soaked leather.

No one comments when the old man on the bench smells like he's been pickled in sweat and onions.

A woman lifts her arms to hang laundry and unleashes a storm front of armpit and people just nod politely,

Like it's weather.

Here,

It is.

Soap exists,

But you don't see much of it.

When you asked about it once,

Someone handed you a lump that looked like it had been chipped off a barn wall.

You tried it.

It smelled like ashes and fear.

It disintegrated in the cold stream like it had unfinished business elsewhere.

After that,

You stopped asking.

Bathing is more rumor than ritual.

Someone mentioned a tub once behind the tavern,

But it costs money and the water isn't warm and there's only one,

Which means it's not yours,

Which means you're not sure who's been in it before you.

You don't ask.

You don't wanna know.

The stream is your best bet.

You try to be discreet.

Go early,

Go alone.

Scrub with sand and prayer.

The water's cold enough to make your spine remember childhood trauma.

You rinse your arms,

Your face,

Your neck.

Below that,

You lose nerve or circulation.

It's enough,

You tell yourself.

Good enough.

Your hair is another story.

It's gone from soft to straw,

From straw to mat.

You try to comb it with your fingers,

But they catch on knots that weren't there yesterday.

Once,

You found a leaf.

Another time,

A small feather.

You decide not to investigate further.

The hair stays wild,

Honest.

Teeth are trickier.

You miss the ritual,

The mint,

The foam,

The two-minute lie you told yourself every morning and night.

Here,

People chew on sticks,

Rub ashes on their gums.

You try it once and gag so hard you scare the chickens.

You settle for rinsing with stream water and hoping your teeth hold out until,

Well,

You're not sure until when.

You haven't smelled clean in days,

Maybe longer,

But something changes,

Not in them,

In you.

Your nose starts to forget,

Slowly,

Like a fog lifting backwards.

You stop noticing the scent of damp boots.

You stop recoiling at the pigsty.

You walk past the fish stall without flinching.

You stand beside Asrik,

Your host,

Whose natural musk could be weaponized,

And you don't even blink.

You're adapting or breaking,

Maybe both.

One afternoon,

You catch your own scent.

It's after a long morning hauling sacks of grain that leaked all over your shirt.

You sit,

Stretch,

And lift your arm.

The smell hits you like an old memory.

You lean back,

Exhale,

And for the first time,

You don't hate it.

It smells like effort,

Like work,

Like someone who belongs outside.

There's freedom in it,

Strange,

Unwashed freedom.

No pressure to impress.

No perfume,

No deodorant battles.

Just you,

As you are,

As the dirt sees you,

As the wind accepts you.

At night,

Lying on straw,

You scratch your scalp and feel flakes,

Dust,

History.

You no longer recoil.

This is your new skin,

Your new shell,

Not polished,

Not perfumed,

But real.

Honest in a way you hadn't expected to find comforting.

The villagers never comment on your scent.

That's how you know you've blended in.

They gossip about everything,

Your limp,

Your mutterings,

Your inability to distinguish wheat from barley,

But not your smell.

That means it's no longer foreign.

It's just yours.

You stop apologizing for the dirt under your nails.

Stop trying to smooth your hair.

Stop pulling your shirt away from your chest when it clings.

The old rules are gone.

There are new ones now,

And one of them is this.

Clean is relative,

But survival is permanent.

So you sleep with your boots by the door,

Your shirt damp from sweat and rain,

Your breath tasting of firewood and roasted turnip,

And you don't flinch.

You just breathe through your nose,

Because finally,

Finally,

Your nose doesn't fight back.

It started innocently enough.

Osric handed you a basketroff,

Splintered,

Smelled like onions,

And Regretand pointed toward the henhouse with a grunt that somehow meant eggs.

You nodded,

Like this was something you could handle.

Eggs,

How hard could it be?

You'd seen chickens before,

In petting zoos,

On TV,

On sandwiches.

None of them had ever looked like a threat.

None of them had glared at you.

But these chickens,

These were a different breed.

Medieval chickens,

Wiser,

Meaner,

Built for war.

You approached the henhouse like it was sacred ground.

The air smelled like straw,

Feathers,

And something vaguely aggressive.

There were no instructions,

No guide,

Just a basket in your hand and a vague memory of cartoons where farmers whistled and chickens just complied.

You crouched,

Reached under the first hen,

And she allowed it.

Warm,

Feathery cooperation.

You felt the egg with your fingers,

Smooth,

Perfect,

Still warm from her body.

You lifted it carefully,

One down.

Your confidence swelled.

You could do this.

You were doing this.

The second hen flinched when you got close,

But you gave her space,

Whispered an apology.

She blinked at you with mild suspicion,

Then shuffled aside just enough.

Another egg,

Two.

Maybe you were made for this.

Maybe you were finally getting the hang of,

Then came her.

You didn't see her at first.

She was tucked into the darkest corner of the coop,

Half hidden behind a crooked plank and a pile of old feathers.

You approached cautiously,

Basket now half full,

Smile on your face,

Pride swelling like your blistered feet.

You bent down,

Extended a hand,

And then everything changed.

She struck before you even touched the nest,

Beak first,

Straight to the wrist,

Then wings wild,

Flapping chaos,

Feathers exploding into the air like a pillow fight in a hurricane.

You staggered back.

She followed,

Fast,

Screaming.

It wasn't a cluck,

It was a battle cry,

The sound of a creature that had seen things,

Survived winters,

Buried enemies.

She leapt,

Actually leapt,

Onto your chest,

Claws digging into your tunic like hooks.

You flailed,

Spun.

The basket flew from your hands,

Eggs shattering like your dignity.

You tried to shake her loose.

She tightened her grip,

Pecks to the neck,

Flaps to the face.

Somewhere,

You think you screamed.

You stumbled out of the coop,

Arms windmilling,

Hair full of feathers,

Heart full of fear.

The villagers were already watching.

Of course they were.

One child pointed and shouted,

The chickens winning.

Another yelled,

Run stranger,

Run.

You ran across the path.

Through the mud,

Past the smithy,

Past the pigs.

Chickens scattered in all directions like you were the harbinger of poultry doom.

But she stayed on you,

Clinging,

Pecking,

Screeching her fury into the wind.

Finally,

In a last desperate act,

You spun one final time and flung your arms outward.

She released,

Sailed through the air like a feathery javelin,

Landed squarely in a barrel of cabbage.

Silence,

Then laughter,

Loud,

Long,

Ruthless.

The kind of laughter that binds a village together for decades,

The kind that echoes through generations.

A woman dropped her washings.

She was laughing so hard,

A man fell off a bench.

Children reenacted the scene before you'd even caught your breath.

You stood there,

Shirt torn,

Face flushed,

Basket empty.

You picked up one of the broken eggs from the mud,

Stared at it,

Then stared at the coop.

She was back in her corner already,

Looking smug,

Victorious.

Osric walked over,

Looked at the remains of the basket,

Looked at your neck,

Said only one word,

Marge,

Then shook his head and walked away.

Apparently she has a name.

Of course she does.

You spent the rest of the day with bits of straw on your hair and dried yolk on your hands.

No one let you forget it.

A man at the well clucked at you every time you passed.

A boy drew a picture in the dirt of a stick figure being pecked by a giant bird.

You were legend now,

Not heroic,

Just remembered.

That night,

You lay on your straw mat,

Sore and humiliated.

The dog snored beside you.

You rubbed your wrist,

Still red from the beak,

And oddly,

You smiled because somehow,

For the first time,

The village saw you,

Really saw you.

Not just the stranger,

Not just the outsider.

You were now the fool who fought a chicken and lost,

Which meant you were one of them.

A little broken,

A little bruised,

But finally part of the story.

The market doesn't announce itself,

It just appears.

One morning you step outside and the air is thicker,

Not with fog,

But noise.

Clanging pots,

Shouting voices,

The occasional shriek that may or may not be from a goat.

The village square has transformed.

Carts have rolled in from corners you didn't know existed.

Tables have been dragged into the mud.

Fabric hangs from poles.

Baskets overflow with things you don't recognize and aren't sure you should.

Osric hands you three coins.

They're heavy,

Misshapen,

Each one stamped with something vaguely royal and badly worn.

He says one word,

Pie,

And sends you off like it's obvious,

Like pie is easy.

You walk into the mess of humanity slowly,

The way someone walks into a dream they know might turn on them.

The smells hit you first,

Fresh bread and old cheese,

Boiled onions,

Warm manure,

Dried fish.

Something sweet,

Something rotten,

Something burning.

It's a scent collage designed to confuse and conquer.

Your stomach turns in slow circles.

You pass a woman selling roots from a basket shaped like a skull.

She waves a carrot at you,

Says it cures melancholy.

You nod politely.

Keep walking.

A man calls out,

Holding what appears to be a dried frog on a string.

Wart prevention,

He says,

Like it's common sense.

Someone else is trying to sell blessed salt,

But it looks suspiciously like regular salt.

You find the pie stall by accident.

It's not labeled.

Just a man with one eyebrow and an apron so stained it looks camouflaged.

He's got rows of them,

Round and golden,

Stacked like treasure.

They smell good.

Untrustworthy,

But good.

You point.

He grunts.

You hand over all three coins.

He gives you one pie and one look,

The kind that says good luck without any kindness behind it.

It's warm in your hands,

Dense.

The crust is cracked in places,

Leaking gravy.

You take a bite.

At first,

It's not bad.

Savory,

A little chewy,

Rich,

Spiced with something that numbs the tongue a bit too quickly.

You swallow.

It doesn't sit right,

But you're hungry.

So you keep going.

Three more bites.

The flavor shifts halfway through sweet.

Then sour.

Then something metallic.

You pause.

Look at the filling.

It's meat,

Definitely meat.

But it doesn't look like any meat you've ever trusted.

There's a vein running through it and something that crunches.

You swallow the last bite like a dare.

It fights back.

You walk back through the market slowly,

Mouth tingling,

Stomach unsure.

A boy offers you a second pie.

You shake your head.

He winks.

That first one's squirrel,

He says casually.

Then adds,

I think.

You stop walking.

A woman at a nearby stall laughs.

Could have been better,

She says.

Could have been pigeon.

She pulls a feather from her teeth and flicks it to the ground.

You head toward the well and try to drink away the taste.

It doesn't work.

The water makes it worse.

The grease resurfaces like a ghost.

You sit on a barrel and let your stomach make its decisions without you.

The sun's too bright.

The air too full.

The sounds around you blend into a fuzzy blur.

Someone tries to sell you a jar of leeches.

You shake your head.

He shrugs and moves on.

Eventually you stand.

Walk in the direction of home.

Slowly,

Your limbs feel heavy.

The pie has lodged itself somewhere between your regret and your intestines.

You pass a pig that looks at you with deep personal sympathy.

At the edge of the square,

Osric is waiting.

Arms crossed,

No expression.

Just a raised eyebrow that asks the question.

You hand him the empty paper wrap.

He smells it,

Snorts,

Says nothing.

You expect judgment.

Instead,

He pats your shoulder once,

Hard,

Like a priest blessing the damned.

Then he walks away.

That night,

Your stomach gurgles like it's debating revolution.

You lie awake on your straw mat,

Shifting every few minutes.

The dog sighs beside you.

The room creaks.

Somewhere,

A chicken clucks in its sleep.

You think about the pie,

The flavor,

The gamble,

The moment of warmth,

Followed by slow betrayal.

It was food.

It was mystery.

It was medieval honesty,

Baked in lard and wrapped in secrets.

And now,

You understand something.

Here,

Food isn't comfort.

It's survival.

It's whatever's available.

Whatever didn't escape fast enough,

Whatever someone was willing to chop,

Boil,

And stuff into pastry,

Flavor comes second.

Trust isn't part of the recipe.

You curl up tighter,

Try not to breathe too deeply.

Your stomach groans.

You whisper a quiet apology to your intestines.

And for the first time since arriving,

You feel like you've truly eaten like one of them.

Consequences and all.

It begins with a sound.

Low,

Distant,

And far too serious for the morning you were having.

One moment,

You're crouched by the stream,

Trying to scrub yesterday's pie regret off your tunic with a mossy rock,

And the next clang of deep,

Thunderous rings splits the air like judgment itself.

You freeze.

The bell tolls again.

Then again.

You count,

But lose track after six or seven.

It doesn't matter.

You look up,

And the village has already changed.

People stop,

Mid-step.

Conversations die,

Mid-sentence.

A woman drops a bundle of sticks and makes the sign of the cross before hurrying toward the chapel.

Children stop chasing each other and fall into line behind their parents.

Even the dog you've been secretly feeding meets scraps to sits and whines at the sky like he knows something's coming.

Osric doesn't look at you.

He just nods in the direction of the chapel like a man resigned to fate.

You follow,

Unsure of the rules,

But sure that not following them will be worse.

The chapel isn't large,

More like a stone box with a wooden door and a single stained glass window that's more brown than colored.

It smells like old paper and older air.

Inside,

It's dim,

Cold.

You can see your breath.

The villagers file in without a word,

Like they're all part of the same quiet machinery.

You try to copy them.

Step where they step.

Sit where they sit.

Kneel where they kneel.

You don't know the prayers,

Not the words,

Not the rhythm,

But they do.

Every voice,

Low and steady,

Weaving into one hum that sounds ancient.

You mouth along,

Moving your lips in time,

Hoping no one notices that your chant is a lie.

Then everyone stands,

So you do.

Then kneels,

So you kneel,

But your timing is off,

Always off.

You rise half a second too late,

Drop your knees too early.

Someone beside you winces when your wooden shoes scrape against the stone floor like a scream.

The priest begins to speak.

You understand every fourth word,

Something about fire and sin and sheep,

A lot about sheep.

He gestures with his hands in a way that feels vaguely threatening.

At one point,

He holds up something small and gold.

Everyone bows their heads.

You follow.

Your back starts to ache.

Your stomach growls.

You pretend it didn't.

Then comes the incense.

A boy walks down the aisle with a swinging censer.

Smoke pours from it like the building itself is sighing.

It smells like a pine tree fell in love with a campfire.

You breathe it in and nearly cough,

But swallow it.

Everyone else seems unfazed,

Eyes half closed like they've been here a thousand times.

Maybe they have.

You're not sure how long the service lasts.

Time behaves differently here,

Like the church itself is holding the clock hostage.

Minutes stretch.

Thoughts wander.

Your legs go numb.

Your feet cramp inside the wooden shoes.

You try shifting your weight and bump into a woman beside you.

She glares.

You mouth sorry and immediately realize she has no idea what that means.

The priest lifts his arms again.

Everyone murmurs something.

You copy the sounds phonetically.

Something about mercy,

Maybe bread.

You're not sure,

But no one stops you,

So it must have been close enough.

Then,

Kneel again.

You sink to your knees,

And this time something in your back pops.

It's not pain.

Not exactly.

More like your spine whispering,

Really?

You rest your hands on your thighs and stare at the stone floor.

It's covered in marks,

Scratches,

Drops of wax,

A crack that looks like it's been stepped on too many times by too many prayers.

You start counting breaths.

Anything to stay conscious.

You don't know how anyone does this daily.

Your thoughts drift to your old life,

Pews with cushions,

Air conditioning,

That one lady who always wore too much perfume.

You miss her.

You miss her so much it hurts.

Then,

Silence.

The bell tolls again.

A final note.

People cross themselves one last time,

Rise,

And shuffle toward the door.

You follow,

Legs trembling,

Feet numb.

Outside,

The sun looks brighter.

The air feels real again.

You inhale,

Long and deep,

Like you've surfaced from a different world.

No one speaks as they leave,

Just nods.

Small,

Reverent nods,

Like they left a part of themselves behind in there or maybe picked up something heavier.

You're not sure which.

Osric waits at the path.

He looks at you,

Raises one brow,

Says,

Didn't faint,

That's something,

Then walks.

You follow.

Later,

Back at the cottage,

You sit on the edge of the straw mat,

Staring at your knees like they betrayed you,

Your head still full of smoke and echoes.

The rhythm of the prayers lingers,

Like a song you don't know the words to but can't stop humming.

You still don't understand the rituals,

The kneeling,

The silence,

The bell that cuts through everything,

But for the first time,

You feel it,

The weight of it,

The pull,

The unspoken thread that ties these people to something old.

You were faking it,

Badly,

But somehow,

The chapel let you stay.

You were told it was an important job,

Vital even,

Good for the earth,

They said,

Necessary for the fields.

Osric handed you a shovel that looked like it had survived three wars and pointed toward a low wooden pen behind the cottage.

The smell hit you before you reached it,

Not a sharp,

Sudden stench,

But a deep,

Ancient reek,

The kind that feels alive.

You tried not to breathe.

It didn't help.

The pigs watched you,

Judging.

The cow ignored you completely,

Which felt worse,

Like you didn't even register as a threat or a presence.

You stood at the edge of the pen,

Boots half sinking into mud that may or may not have been just mud.

You looked at the shovel,

Then at the ground,

Then at your own hands.

None of them wanted to cooperate,

But this was your job now.

You learned quickly that there's a difference between moving manure and shoveling it.

Moving it implies progress,

Purpose.

Shoveling it is just surviving eye-tone scoop at a time with no promise that it will ever end.

You find a rhythm,

Lift,

Dump,

Shift,

Lift,

Dump,

Shift.

You try breathing through your mouth,

But it just changes the flavor of the air.

Your hands blister by midday.

The wooden handle rubs against skin that hasn't earned its calluses yet.

You try switching hands.

That just spreads the damage evenly.

Your arms ache,

Your shoulders burn.

You tell yourself this is strength training.

You tell yourself this is character building.

You tell yourself lies.

The worst part isn't the smell,

Or the flies,

Or the heat.

It's the texture,

The weight,

The reality of it.

It's heavy in a way nothing should be,

Not just physically,

But emotionally.

This is your life now.

You,

The shovel,

And a slowly growing pile of regret.

A child walks by and laughs,

Not cruelly,

Just honestly.

You glance up and see them mimicking your motion,

Pretending to gag.

You want to be offended,

But you kind of agree.

Still,

You keep going.

After a while,

Something strange happens.

Your mind drifts.

The motion lulls you,

The same way rocking chairs or ceiling fans do.

You stop resisting and just move.

One pile becomes another,

Then another.

The sun shifts,

Shadows stretch.

The cows moo once,

Then go silent again.

You lose track of time.

Someone brings you water.

It's warm,

Tastes like wood.

You drink all of it,

Say thank you.

They nod and walk off without a word.

You go back to shoveling.

The rhythm returns.

Lift,

Dump,

Shift.

There's a kind of dignity in it,

Not the kind that comes with medals or applause.

The other kind,

The quiet kind,

The kind that smells bad and looks worse,

But still matters.

You're cleaning something,

Making it less chaotic,

Turning filth into fertilizer.

You've stopped thinking about what's in it.

You just think about where it needs to go.

The sky darkens slowly.

The air cools.

The flies thin out.

The animals retreat to corners.

You finish one side of the pen.

Look at it,

Admire it,

Almost.

A clean patch of earth that,

For the briefest moment,

Belongs to you.

You sit on a stump nearby and exhale.

There's a smudge on your face,

A streak of something across your arm.

You don't wipe it off.

What's the point?

You stare at the shovel leaning against the fence.

It's less of a tool now,

More of a partner.

You survive together.

You bled together.

You formed a mild trauma bond.

Osric passes by,

Doesn't stop,

Just nods once.

Like maybe,

Just maybe,

You didn't fail today.

That's the closest thing to praise you've received in weeks.

Later that night,

You lie in your corner of the cottage.

The dog curls beside you,

Indifferent as ever.

Your clothes smell like suffering.

You itch,

You cough,

But you don't cry.

That's the real victory.

You didn't cry,

Because earlier today,

When the shovel slipped and your boot sank ankle deep in something awful and unnameable,

You almost did.

When the wind shifted and the smell punched you straight in the soul,

You almost broke,

But you didn't.

You shoveled dung for hours,

And you're still here,

Still breathing,

Still whole,

If slightly worse smelling than before.

Somehow,

That feels like progress.

It begins with a whisper.

Somewhere near the well,

Two women lean in just a little too close to be talking about weather.

One stirs a pot of something thick and beige.

The other adjusts her headscarf and glances over her shoulder like she's guarding the secret recipe to sin itself.

You slow your step,

Just enough to catch a fragment.

And I told her,

That goat's got more sense than he ever did.

You blink,

Look around.

No one else reacts,

Not even the chickens.

But something in the tone,

That conspiratorial tilt of her voice,

Hooks you.

Later,

While hauling a basket of half-rotten cabbages that may or may not be your lunch,

You hear it again.

Stole her boot clean off her foot.

Just chomp gone.

Widow Marta screamed like the saints themselves were getting mugged.

You pretend to adjust your load,

But you're listening now.

Every third villager seems to be whispering about it.

Not directly,

Not in full sentences,

Just murmurs.

All laced with that tone.

Delightful judgment.

The thrill of someone else's embarrassment.

You pass the baker's stall.

He's laughing,

Loudly.

Slapping dough like it wronged him.

Between chuckles you catch.

I told her,

Don't wear leather near Edgar,

Unless you want to lose it.

Edgar,

A goat.

Of course it's a goat.

By noon,

You've pieced together the basics.

Widow Marta sharp-tongued,

Always in black,

Rumored to have buried three husbands and possibly one tax collector lost her right boot to a goat named Edgar.

Not just any goat.

The Miller's goat.

Known village-wide for his unpredictable appetites and moral flexibility.

Apparently the widow leaned over the trough to scold the pigs.

Edgar approached from behind with the stealth of a thief and clamped down on her boot with the force of divine punishment.

She shrieked.

Fell over.

Landed in mud.

The goat pranced off with the boot like it was a wedding prize.

Some say he ate it.

Others say he buried it behind the tavern.

One child swears they saw it hanging from the church bell rope.

No one knows for sure,

But everyone talks like they were there.

You sit at the edge of the common square that evening,

Exhausted from a day of moving hay that clearly didn't want to be moved.

A group gathers near the fire pit,

Older women with thread baskets,

A few men with calloused hands and stories to spare.

Someone's shelling peas.

Someone else is carving wood into the vague suggestion of a spoon.

And then it begins.

I heard she tried to chase him.

Slipped.

Cursed loud enough to wake the blessed mother herself.

Gasps.

Laughter.

She marched barefoot all the way to the mill,

Waving her stick like it was a sword.

More laughter.

I bet the goat's still wearing it,

Like a trophy.

And on it goes,

Each person adding their version,

Each detail a little more ridiculous than the last.

You don't speak.

Just sit back.

Listen.

Let it wash over you.

It's not just about the goat.

You realize that quickly.

It's about the ritual,

The gathering,

The unspoken joy of knowing something absurd happened and you weren't the victim.

It's medieval therapy.

A community exhale.

Even Osric,

Who hasn't smiled since you arrived,

Mutters,

First shoe she's lost that wasn't a man.

And the whole group erupts.

You nearly choke on your bread.

You think about your old life.

News alerts,

Tweets,

Comment threads,

Information fired at you like arrows.

But none of it felt like this.

No one huddled around a fire to laugh together.

No one whispered secrets over vegetable stew.

Here,

Gossip is sacred.

It doesn't destroy reputations.

It preserves them.

The widow will be remembered not for her grief or her solitude,

But for the day she tried to outrun a goat and lost.

And somehow,

That's kinder.

You spot Edgar the next morning near the mill,

Standing proud,

A little too proud,

Chewing on something suspicious.

His eyes meet yours.

There's no guilt there,

Only victory.

You nod once.

Respect.

Later that day,

You find yourself repeating the story to someone else,

A version of it at least.

You add a flourish,

A dramatic reenactment.

You wave your arm like a goat hoof.

They laugh.

You laugh.

You've become part of the echo.

And for the first time,

The village doesn't feel like a place you're visiting.

It feels like a place that's beginning to let you in,

One scandalously stolen boot at a time.

It starts with a child.

You're hunched near the chicken coop again,

Trying to fix a slanted door with a rock,

Because hammers apparently are reserved for people with a better reputation than yours.

You're muttering something about angles when a tiny voice rings out from behind the fence.

Oi,

New boy.

You look up.

A kid,

Seven,

Maybe eight,

Gap-toothed and sticky with something jam-adjacent.

He grins like he's discovered fire.

New boy,

Fix the poop door,

He yells,

Delighted by his own accuracy.

You stare at him,

Waiting for the joke to pass.

It doesn't.

Another child echoes it from across the path.

New boy's got mud in his hair.

Then another.

New boy smells like donkey.

Within minutes,

The chant has grown legs.

By the time you limp back to the cottage,

Half the village has heard it.

Some shout it in passing,

Like a greeting.

Some whisper it with theatrical pity,

As if your name were a curse they're too polite to say out loud.

New boy,

Not creative,

Not cruel,

Just sticky.

It doesn't even make sense.

You're not new anymore.

You've been here long enough to ruin two tunics,

Sprain your dignity twice,

And memorize the smell of every outhouse within a 300-foot radius.

You've eaten pies that betrayed you.

You've knelt in a chapel like a folding chair.

You've shoveled things no human should ever have to shovel.

But still.

New boy,

The blacksmith is the next to adopt it.

He says it casually,

Without malice,

As he hands you a dented bucket.

Here,

New boy,

Don't drop it this time.

He chuckles.

You nod,

Like you didn't just feel your soul collapse a little.

At the bakery,

The old woman with hands like wrinkled bread calls out.

Morning,

New boy.

Try not to burn your fingers today.

You hadn't even touched anything yet.

Somehow she knew.

Even the goat joins in.

Edgar,

Still proud from his boot-stealing glory,

Gives you a hard stare when you pass.

He doesn't speak,

Obviously,

But if he could,

You know he'd bleed it.

New boy,

With smugness,

You try to shake it.

Correct someone once.

Actually,

It's,

But they wave you off mid-sentence.

Right,

Right,

New boy.

Eventually,

You stop fighting it.

Names are strange here.

No one asks for yours.

They assign one based on a trait,

A habit,

A moment you thought no one noticed.

There's a man called Three-Tooth and a woman called Brambles.

No one questions it.

The names grow roots.

They become part of the soil.

One evening,

As you help Osric stack firewood,

He finally says it,

Quietly,

Like a verdict.

You're holding that wrong,

New boy.

Then he grunts,

Adjusts the log,

And says nothing else.

It's the first time he's spoken to you in hours,

Maybe days.

You nod,

Say nothing,

Stack the next log better.

At night,

You lie on your mat and listen to the cottage-breath Osric snore,

The dog's twitchy dreams,

The wind through gaps in the walls.

Your back aches,

Your fingers sting,

But the name echoes louder than all of it.

New boy,

It shouldn't matter.

It's just a word,

A sound,

But it lodges itself behind your ribs and hums.

It means you don't belong yet,

Not fully,

Not really.

You're tolerated,

Not trusted,

Present,

But peripheral.

A guest in a house where even the mice have seniority.

You think about your real name,

The one from before,

The one no one here has said out loud.

It feels soft now,

Distant,

Like a jacket left behind on a chair you're not allowed to return to.

You try whispering it to yourself once.

It sounds foreign,

Decorative,

Like something that wouldn't survive here.

And yet,

New boy is easy.

It fits in a way,

Not tight,

Not right,

But familiar,

Like a pair of boots a size too big that you're learning to walk in.

The kids chant it again the next day as you carry a sack of onions through the square.

One of them runs up,

Taps your arm,

And bolts.

New boy's it,

He yells.

Suddenly,

You're in a game you didn't agree to.

You chase,

You catch,

You laugh.

That night,

One of the older men at the fire calls out,

New boy,

You playin' cards or just sittin' pretty.

You play,

You lose,

They let you stay anyway.

And that's the shift.

Somewhere between mockery and familiarity,

The name loses its sting,

Becomes something else.

Not affection,

Not yet,

But a placeholder,

A hand reaching out,

Not quite touching,

But not pushing away either.

So you let them say it,

Let it echo,

Let it grow,

Because here,

Being named is the first step toward being seen,

And being seen even badly's better than being invisible.

You weren't invited.

No one said,

Come to the tavern,

New boy.

But when the sun dipped low and the cold set in like it meant business,

You followed the crowd without thinking,

Feet sore,

Shoulders aching,

Clothes stiff with dirt and old regret.

And there it was,

Wooden,

Crooked,

Humming with voices,

The tavern.

It leans slightly to the left.

The door creaks like it's complaining.

The floor slopes just enough to make standing feel like a sport.

Candles drip onto warped tables.

The air smells like wood smoke,

Onions,

And something fermenting in a barrel that probably lost its dignity a decade ago.

Inside,

It's loud,

But not chaotic.

Familiar loud,

Boots shuffle,

Tankards clink.

Someone plays a stringed instrument that's either broken or just misunderstood.

No one looks at you too long,

Which is how you know you're slowly becoming part of the background.

A chair with legs,

A body with a shovel story.

Osric nods toward a bench.

That's as close as you get to a welcome.

You sit,

A mug slides your way,

No explanation,

No toast,

Just warm,

Brownish liquid that sloshes like it's trying to escape.

You take a sip,

And it is,

Without exaggeration,

The saddest beer you have ever tasted.

It's warm,

Flat,

Somehow both thin and sticky,

Like bread water,

Or someone tried to remember what beer tasted like and got bored halfway through.

You pause,

Blink,

Take another sip just to be sure.

Yep,

Still sad,

Still beerish,

But no one complains.

They drink it like it's nectar.

One man downs his in one gulp and slams the cup with the reverence of a holy rite.

Across from you,

A man named Oswin clears his throat.

No one introduced him.

He introduced himself just by being louder than everyone else.

His beard is wild,

His tunic stained,

His hands constantly moving,

Waving,

Gesturing,

Performing.

You know,

He begins,

As if picking up a thought he's been rehearsing all week.

Turnips weren't always round.

You blink,

He leans closer.

Aye,

Not always.

Used to be long,

Like a carrot,

But fatter.

Not good for stew,

Too awkward.

One fellow Branrick tried to shave his down with a knife,

Slipped,

Lost a toe.

You take another sip of melancholy beer and nod.

Oswin continues.

Well,

That toe went bad,

Real bad.

But his wife,

She cooked the turnip anyway,

Claimed it cured his fever.

Maybe it did,

Maybe it didn't.

But ever since,

Branrick only grew round ones,

Said they behaved better.

You look around.

No one stops him.

No one interrupts.

They've heard this story,

Or one like it,

And they're letting it live its life.

Oswin goes on.

The thing is,

Those round turnips caught on.

Everyone started copying.

Whole region changed shape because one man got unlucky with a knife.

And now,

To this day,

He taps the table like a scholar finishing a thesis.

That's why we stew him that way.

You take another sip.

You're not sure if the story made sense,

Or if it needed to.

Later,

Someone sings,

Badly,

A ballad about a cow that ran away.

People join in.

Oswin slaps the table in rhythm.

The chorus has no real words,

Just vowels shouted at roughly the same time.

You pretend to know it.

They pretend not to notice.

The sad beer keeps flowing.

It never improves.

But after a while,

It doesn't matter.

You're not drinking it for the taste.

You're drinking it because it's there,

Because the room is warm,

Because for the first time all day,

Your hands aren't working or carrying or shoveling.

They're just holding something,

Resting.

Osric doesn't speak much,

But he refills your cup once,

Which is something.

At some point,

You realize your cheeks hurt from smiling,

Not frostbite.

Someone tells a joke you barely understand,

But you laugh anyway,

Not to fit in,

Just because it feels good to move sound through your body.

And Oswin?

Still going.

Saw a turnip once with a face in it.

Looked like my uncle.

Swear to the saints,

I refused to eat it.

Gave it a name,

Kept it on the shelf till it rotted.

Whole cottage smelled like wisdom and shame.

Eventually,

The fire burns low.

People trickle out in pairs,

In silence.

Oswin dozes in a corner mid-sentence.

Osric grunts,

Stands.

You follow.

Back in the cottage,

The air is colder,

But something's changed.

Not outside,

Not even in the room,

Just you.

You survived the tavern,

The beer,

The stories,

The unofficial initiation into whatever this village is.

You weren't just tolerated tonight,

You were included.

Even if your name's still Newboy.

Even if the beer tasted like boiled sadness.

Even if you now know too much about the history of root vegetables.

It was yours,

A night,

A story,

A memory.

And tomorrow,

When Oswin starts again,

Maybe this time,

About the time he married a girl who could read smoke,

You'll nod,

You'll sip,

You'll listen.

Because sometimes,

The saddest beer still tastes like belonging.

You didn't mean to start a war,

You just wanted cheese.

It happened at the market again.

By now,

You've learned how to dodge the pig cart,

Avoid the onion hag's flirty nephew,

And keep your coin pouch tucked somewhere less.

Stealable,

But cheese?

That was still uncharted territory.

The stall looked innocent.

A rough plank balanced on two barrels,

Draped with burlap.

Behind it stood a man with forearms like tree trunks,

And a mustache that could have had its own tax record.

He nodded once as you approached,

But didn't smile.

You took it as a neutral sign,

Not friendly,

But not hostile.

Laid out before you were wedges,

Crumbling,

Pale blocks,

Dark,

Waxy triangles,

Something gray,

One that glistened,

Each with its own mysterious aura.

You hovered,

Trying not to breathe through your nose too hard.

Some looked edible.

Others looked like they had opinions.

You pointed to one near the edge,

Yellowish,

Mold-free,

Reasonably shaped.

This one,

You asked,

Hoping for approval.

The man said nothing.

You took that as permission.

Your hand was halfway to the wedge when someone growled behind you.

Not cleared throat,

Not polite cough,

A full growl,

Low,

Primal.

You turned,

Slowly.

Behind you stood a man who could have doubled as a battering ram.

Thick neck,

Arms like barrels,

A jaw carved from spite.

He was holding a sack and glaring at you like you'd insulted his ancestors.

That's mine,

He said.

You looked at the cheese,

Looked back at him.

Two didn't know,

You stammered.

I thought,

He took one step forward.

The earth didn't shake,

But it flinched.

From somewhere beneath his cloak,

He pulled a dagger.

Not a fancy one,

Just sharp,

Well-used,

Honest in its intentions.

You froze.

He didn't raise it,

Just held it at his side,

Like a punctuation mark.

The cheese seller stayed silent,

Not helpful,

Just mildly entertained.

You looked around.

No one intervened.

A woman across the lane started selling apples louder.

Two boys perched on a cartwheel whispered eagerly.

One of them mouthed,

Fight.

You held up both hands.

I swear,

You said,

Voice cracking slightly.

I didn't know it was yours.

You have every right,

Full rights.

I don't even like cheese.

I'm lactose suspicious.

Please.

There was a beat.

Then the man cheese mountain,

You privately labeled him grunted,

Loudly,

Like a bear making a decision.

He stepped forward again,

Snatched the wedge from the table,

Held it to his nose,

Sniffed hard,

Then glared at you with renewed intensity.

This one's mine,

He repeated,

Just in case your fear had made you forget.

Of course,

You nodded.

Naturally,

He tucked the cheese into his sack,

Slowly sheathed the dagger,

And walked off.

You didn't exhale until he disappeared around the fish cart.

The stallkeeper finally looked at you,

Smirked.

Lucky,

He said.

You stared at him.

He dueled a guy last month.

Same mistake.

Left handed now.

You look down at your hands,

Both still yours.

You flexed them out of gratitude.

You got anything less.

Controversial,

You asked.

He reached behind the barrels,

Pulled out a smaller wedge.

Mishapen,

Cracked.

Goat,

He said.

Nobody fights over goat.

You nodded,

Took it,

Paid too much,

Didn't argue.

Later,

Sitting on the edge of the stream,

You nibbled the goat cheese.

It was sour,

Dry,

Crumbly,

A bit like despair,

But safe.

Osric joined you halfway through,

Sat beside you without speaking,

Looked at your cheese.

Goat,

He muttered,

Bold.

You told him the story.

Short version.

Left out the part where your voice squeaked and your legs almost betrayed you.

He grunted once.

The closest he comes to a laugh.

Next time,

He said,

Watch for the wax seal.

What seal?

He picked a piece of straw from his sleeve.

Some families mark their claim on food.

Etched into wax.

That wedge you touched belonged to the Trenums.

You waited.

They're sensitive,

He added.

You made a mental note to only buy cheese under cover of darkness from now on.

Back at the cottage,

The dog sniffed your fingers,

Sneezed,

And walked away.

Even he didn't respect goat cheese.

But you were alive.

Dignity slightly dented,

Fingers intact,

Pride wounded,

But healing.

That night,

You dreamed of dairy,

Of enormous men with cheese swords,

Of being chased through a market with nothing but a cracker shield.

You woke in a cold sweat.

Welcome to medieval life,

Where even your snacks come with risk.

It starts before the sun.

Always before the sun.

A sound slices through your dream sharp,

Nasal,

Vengeful,

The rooster.

You don't know its name.

You're not sure it has one.

It's not the noble painted bird from old kitchen wallpaper or children's books.

This one is angry.

Ragged.

A patchy red demon with feathers that stick out like bad intentions.

Its crow is less of a song and more of a war cry.

It doesn't greet the dawn.

It dares it.

The first morning you heard it,

You fell out of bed.

The second morning,

You threw a shoe in its direction.

Missed.

Third morning,

You tried covering your ears.

Didn't help.

The sound travels through straw,

Through wood,

Through bone.

Now,

It's routine.

You wake up half a second before the crow,

Like your body has learned to flinch in anticipation.

It's always the same pitch black cold air,

The dog stretching somewhere nearby,

And that shrill call from a beast who seems to loathe your existence.

You hate the rooster,

Deeply,

Philosophically,

On a level that transcends reason.

But you get up,

Because fighting it doesn't work,

And ignoring it only prolongs your misery.

So you roll off your straw mat,

Stretch limbs that never seem to stretch far enough,

And start the day.

Osric's already outside,

Always.

You don't know when he wakes.

You suspect he never actually sleeps,

Just lies in wait.

He nods when he sees you,

As if to say,

The rooster got you too.

Then,

Hands you a bucket.

That's your first job.

Every morning,

Fetch water.

The bucket is cold.

The handle digs into your palm.

The path to the stream is wet with dew,

And every stone finds your foot like it's on a mission.

You pass the chickens.

The rooster watches you from his perch.

Smug.

You resist the urge to hiss.

By the time you return,

The sky is pale gray.

Someone's stoking the hearth.

Bread dough is rising in a bowl near the window.

You nod at the woman in charge of baking.

She doesn't nod back.

You've made peace with that.

You drink a bit of water.

Splash some on your face.

It helps,

Slightly.

Then it's chores.

The same ones,

Every day.

Clean,

Carry,

Fix,

Fetch,

Repeat.

There's comfort in the pattern now.

Your hands know what to do before you tell them.

You don't ask as many questions.

You don't get as many answers,

But it doesn't bother you like it used to.

You know which chickens bite,

Which piglets wander,

Which tools are rusted but still usable.

You've stopped expecting things to make sense.

They just are.

And that,

Strangely,

Helps.

Meals come when they come.

Bread,

Mostly.

Gruel.

Sometimes a piece of salted fish so dry it could be used as currency.

You eat in silence,

Surrounded by people who still don't say much to you.

But they pass you the bowl without hesitation now.

They expect you to be there.

That's new.

One afternoon,

You're fixing the fence when the rooster struts by.

Doesn't look at you.

Just clucks,

Pecks at the dirt,

Moves on.

You freeze.

Realize something unsettling.

You know its pattern.

Its route.

Its habits.

You've memorized the enemy.

You've learned to live around it.

You're not sure when it happened.

When the desire to escape dimmed.

When you stopped counting days.

When,

How do I get home?

Became,

How do I not mess this up?

You just know that now,

You wake with the rooster.

You no longer hate it.

Not entirely.

You respect it.

It's consistent.

Honest.

It screams when it feels like screaming.

That kind of freedom is rare.

You still flinch.

Still fantasize about feathers flying.

But when it crows,

You move.

And that movement has become your rhythm.

Evening comes quietly.

You sit by the hearth.

Your hands hurt in familiar ways.

Your stomach is full enough.

You smell of sweat,

Hay,

And faintly of goat cheese.

Someone's telling a story about a man who tried to grow onions in winter.

You listen.

You even laugh.

Outside,

The rooster settles into his roost.

You hear a rustle.

A sleepy cluck.

You nod once in his direction.

A silent truce.

Because tomorrow,

Before the sun even considers rising,

He'll scream again.

And you'll rise.

Not because you want to,

But because that's what you do now.

You never cared much about cabbage.

Before all this,

It was just there.

Something your grandma mentioned occasionally.

A filler vegetable.

Harmless.

Forgettable.

A background player in a stew.

You barely noticed.

Now it's a life partner.

You don't know when the shift happened.

Maybe it was the morning you woke up shivering and the only thing in the bowl was something grayish green and steaming.

Maybe it was the third consecutive meal where chewing cabbage was the only thing keeping you from passing out.

Or maybe it was the moment you realized you could identify the type of cabbage just by smell.

White.

Red.

Savoy.

Boiled.

Pickled.

Fried.

Raw.

Shredded into soup.

Slapped on bread.

Tossed in whatever counted as oil in this part of the world.

If there was a way to cook cabbage,

You've seen it and judged it.

You have opinions now.

You think boiled cabbage is an insult unless salted first.

You believe raw cabbage belongs only in desperation dishes or punishment meals.

You've found,

To your shame,

That pickled cabbage is your guilty pleasure.

Salty,

Sour,

Aggressive.

It's the only food that doesn't pretend to be happy to see you.

But cabbage alone won't save you.

So you learn porridge.

Or rather,

You submit to porridge.

It's not food so much as a concept.

A warm,

Mushy suggestion.

It sticks to your ribs and your wooden spoon and sometimes your dignity.

They call it gruel some days.

Mash on others.

Doesn't matter.

It's the same beige blob with the same limp grains and the occasional mystery lump.

One time you bit something crunchy and no one would tell you what it was.

Still,

You eat it.

Every day.

Because you must.

Because hunger isn't poetic,

Here it's.

Not skipping a meal to look cool.

It's kneeling on a dirt floor,

Praying the pot's not empty and scraping the sides just in case.

There are rules.

Unspoken ones.

You never serve yourself first.

You never take more than one ladle unless invited.

And you always,

Always leave the last scoop for someone else even if no one's looking.

Especially if no one's looking.

That's how you earn quiet nods around here.

Your stomach learns to anticipate disappointment.

You stop craving flavor.

You start craving texture.

Crunch is a luxury.

Warmth is a blessing.

Anything that doesn't remind you of soggy bark is a treat.

One day,

A turnip shows up in the stew.

Just one.

A single brave slice,

Floating near the edge of the pot like a survivor.

You almost cry.

Not because you like turnips,

But because it's different.

Osric watches you eat,

Says nothing.

But when you reach for seconds,

He stops you with a glance.

You nod,

Push the ladle back in.

He grunts.

That's his version of,

You're learning.

Later,

You ask the baker if he ever gets tired of cabbage.

He laughs like you asked if trees get tired of standing.

Tired,

He says.

It's the only thing that grows when God's angry.

You believe him.

You try to help in the garden once.

Pull weeds till soil.

You're terrible at it.

Your rows are crooked.

Your hands blister.

But you touch the cabbage as it grows.

Cradle it like something sacred.

Because it is.

Food is sacred here.

Not because it's rare,

But because it's constant,

Predictable.

The one mercy the land still offers.

In your old life,

Meals were background noise,

Screen time,

Multitasking.

Here,

They are rituals.

Porridge in the morning,

Cabbage soup at noon,

A crust of bread by firelight if you're lucky.

And on feast days,

Well,

You haven't seen one yet.

But the whispers make it sound like meat might exist again someday.

You ask a boy once what his favorite food is.

He says,

Hot cabbage.

You laugh,

Thinking it's a joke.

He doesn't.

Now,

When you're hungry,

You don't think about pizza or pancakes or anything covered in cheese.

You think about the crunch of a roasted cabbage leaf,

About how it curls at the edges like it's stretching.

You think about porridge with a bit of salt just a bittened,

How that one pinch can change everything.

That's what you've become.

Not broken,

Just adjusted.

Someone who can get excited over a vegetable with range.

Someone who knows the value of an extra spoonful.

Someone who understands that surviving isn't always glorious.

It's sometimes just finishing your bowl and being thankful there was one.

It started with a drizzle,

Harmless,

Soft,

The kind of mist that feels like the sky's just clearing its throat.

You didn't even put on the cloak they gave you,

That scratchy,

Patchy thing that smells like sheep and old smoke.

You thought,

This isn't real rain.

By midday,

The sky had changed its mind.

The drizzle turned to drops,

The drops turned to sheets.

By evening,

The world was soup,

Every surface slick,

Every path a trap.

The roof dripped in a new corner,

The fire refused to stay lit,

And your socks,

Such as they were,

Became sponges with hopes and dreams,

And none of them involved keeping you dry.

You tried to keep working,

Tried to haul logs and feed animals and carry buckets through ankle-deep mud without looking like a baby giraffe learning to walk.

It didn't go well.

Slip one,

Happened near the woodpile,

A casual step,

One boot sank,

The other didn't.

You tilted,

Flailed,

Landed flat.

Your spine met earth,

Mud up your back.

The dog watched,

Unimpressed.

Slip two was more dramatic.

You were carrying a basket of laundry toward the cottage Osric's shirts mostly,

All of them seemingly made from lead and sorrow when the ground shifted,

Not visibly,

Not scientifically,

Just enough to remind you who was in charge.

You fell sideways,

Laundry flew,

A pair of woolen underthings landed on your face.

You didn't scream,

You just paused.

By day two,

Your knees had given up,

Your hands stayed raw,

Your will to live was dripping somewhere near the pigpen.

It kept raining,

Morning to night,

The kind of rain that soaks through you,

Through fabric,

Through skin,

Through spirit.

It drummed on the roof like mockery.

It filled the bucket faster than you could empty it.

It made everything you owned smell like despair and mildew.

Slip three was public.

In front of the baker,

You landed on your side like a sack of defeated potatoes.

He didn't laugh,

Just handed you a half burnt roll and said,

Eat.

You look like you need to chew something.

Slip four was near the well.

You caught yourself on a rope,

Nearly dislocated something,

Still had to draw water after.

Slip five was the one that broke you,

Not because it hurt,

Not because it was dramatic,

Just because you were so tired of trying not to fall.

You were walking to the barn,

Nothing heavy in your hands,

No danger,

No audience,

Just you and the mud and the soft,

Insistent drizzle that never quite stopped.

Your foot slid,

Your arms flailed.

You landed hard face down.

The sound it made was wet and personal.

You didn't get up,

Not right away.

You stayed there.

Let the rain pat your back like an old friend.

Let the mud press into your sleeves,

Your collar,

Your teeth,

And you cried,

Not loudly,

Not dramatically,

Just enough,

Enough to let the ache out of your chest,

Enough to admit you missed warm beds and hot showers and dry feet,

Enough to say,

If only to yourself,

I don't want to do this anymore.

No one came.

No one asked.

No one told you to get up.

Eventually you did,

Because what else was there to do?

You trudged back to the cottage,

Shed your outer layer like a snake giving up,

Set your boots near the hearth knot,

Close enough to warm,

Just close enough to hope.

The others came in,

Wet,

Quiet,

Tired.

You expected someone to say something,

To point out the mud still on your cheek,

To make a joke,

But no one did,

And somehow that hurt worse,

Because this wasn't new to them,

Not the rain,

Not the misery,

Not the quiet collapse of someone trying to pretend they're fine.

They'd all been there.

There's no ceremony for suffering here,

No pity,

Just endurance.

Osric handed you a bowl.

Gruel,

Again,

Salted this time.

You took it,

Ate in silence,

And felt,

Not better,

But not alone.

That night,

The wind howled like it wanted in.

The roof groaned.

Your mat was damp,

But you slept,

Because there's a strange peace that comes after breaking,

A quiet sturdiness in knowing you've already cracked once,

And the world didn't end.

You slipped five times.

You cried once.

No one noticed,

And somehow that's what kept you going.

You knew it was coming.

You just didn't think it would be today.

It started when Osric sniffed the air near you,

Grimaced,

And muttered something about barn rot.

You laughed nervously.

He didn't.

Later,

One of the younger boys walked by,

Paused,

And then held his nose with theatrical flair.

You tried to ignore it,

But when the dog who had rolled in something dead just that morning chose to sleep away from you,

You got the message.

It was bath time.

You hadn't taken a real one since arriving.

You'd wiped your face with a damp cloth,

Splashed your armpits once using drinking water when no one was looking,

But a full body,

Head under,

Kind of clean that felt mythological,

Like something nobles did while the rest of the world embraced odor as a lifestyle.

Still,

When the old woman tossed you a rag that may once have been a towel and pointed toward the river,

You didn't argue,

Just trudged through the muck,

Carrying a bar of soap that looked suspiciously like a chunk of lard.

The river was worse than you remembered.

It was always cold,

Always moving too fast,

But today it looked actively hostile.

Mist clung to the edges.

The rocks were sharp,

Slick,

And judging you.

You stood at the bank for a while,

Just stood there,

Trying to hype yourself up like it was a duel,

Because it was.

You versus nature,

You versus dignity,

You versus whatever lived in that water and had no name but many teeth.

You stripped,

Not fast,

Not proudly,

Just one piece at a time,

Like peeling off layers of shame.

The wind didn't help.

It bit every inch of skin with icy precision.

Your breath fogged,

Your toes screamed.

You stepped in.

The water hit like betrayal.

It didn't just make you cold,

It made you doubt everything,

Your life choices,

Your ancestors,

The meaning of existence.

You gasped so hard your lungs folded,

Your heart hiccuped.

You considered running back to the mud and accepting your stink as destiny,

But then,

Movement.

On the opposite bank,

A pig stared,

Not just glanced,

Stared,

Big eyes,

Slightly cocked head,

An expression that said,

Really,

You ignored it,

Tried to lather something.

The soap slipped,

Floated downstream like a coward.

You splashed water on your face,

Wincing every time.

You bent to scrub your legs and slipped,

Went under,

Fully,

A baptism of humiliation.

When you emerged gasping,

Sputtering,

Eyes wide,

You heard laughter.

Children,

Three of them,

Perched on a rock like goblins,

Watching you.

One had a fistful of moss.

You froze.

The moss hit your shoulder with a wet plop.

You said nothing.

Another chunk sailed through the air,

Hit your forehead,

Slid down slowly,

Like shame in physical form.

They laughed harder,

Pointed,

Chanted something that rhymed,

Though you couldn't understand the words.

You tried to move faster.

Splash,

Rinse,

Get it over with.

Your fingers had gone numb.

Your ears burned not from temperature,

But from awareness.

You were the show,

The afternoon entertainment.

And still,

The pig watched.

You climbed out,

Soaked and shivering,

Your skin blotchy,

Your pride somewhere floating near the soap bar,

Lost to the current.

You wrapped yourself in the rag.

It was damp,

Probably already had stories of its own.

You didn't care.

The children clapped as you left,

Not kindly.

Back at the cottage,

Osric looked up,

Sniffed once,

And said,

Better,

That was it.

No congratulations,

No medal,

Just better.

You collapsed near the hearth,

Your body steaming gently.

Someone handed you a crust of bread.

Someone else poured warm water into a bowl and set it near your feet.

No one mentioned the moss or the pig.

But later,

One of the older women passed you,

Paused,

And said,

You smell like you're trying,

Then walked on.

And honestly,

That felt like a compliment because you were trying,

Trying to belong,

Trying to survive,

Trying to remember what dignity felt like without clinging to it too tightly.

That night,

Wrapped in a dry tunic,

You lay on your mat,

Muscles aching in weird new ways.

The dog curled close again.

You ran a hand through your harrot,

Felt cleaner.

It smelled neutral.

You smiled.

It had cost you everything,

Warmth,

Privacy,

The illusion that you were still in control of your life.

But you were cleaner.

Technically,

You didn't mean to say anything strange.

It just slipped out.

It was late,

And you were tired mentally,

Physically,

Emotionally,

Spiritually tired.

The kind of tired that makes you say things without thinking.

The fire was low,

The bread was burnt,

And the baker was lamenting his luck again.

Third loaf ruined this week,

Said he must be cursed,

Or maybe the oven was.

You'd meant it as a joke.

You said,

Maybe the stars are just misaligned.

That was it.

A passing comment,

A harmless phrase you'd used a hundred times before in your old life,

The one with apps and traffic and weather forecasts.

But here,

Those words landed differently.

The baker went still,

Completely still,

Like someone had pressed pause on him.

You looked up.

He was staring at you,

Pale,

His hands hovering above the dough like they'd forgotten what to do.

What did you say?

He asked,

Slowly.

You swallowed.

The stars.

Misaligned.

It's just something people say.

He didn't answer.

Just turned away,

Muttered something,

And started kneading again harder than before.

You thought that was the end of it.

It wasn't.

The next morning,

He didn't greet you.

No nod,

No grunt,

Just eyes that slid past your face like you weren't there.

At breakfast,

A child left a small clump of moss on your stool.

You moved it.

It showed up again on your mat.

You tossed it.

That night,

It was tucked into your boot.

By the third day,

There were five pieces of moss in various stages of decay surrounding your bedding.

You asked Osric what was happening.

He chewed his bread for a full minute before saying,

You talked about the stars.

And?

He looked at you like you'd asked why the sun rises.

Only the seers talk about the stars.

You blinked.

I'm not a seer,

Osric shrugged.

Too late.

You said it.

That's how it works here.

You don't get to choose what you are.

They decide.

And they decided you see things.

Soon,

People started avoiding your gaze.

Not rudely,

Not out of malice,

Just out of quiet,

Respectful terror.

The blacksmith's wife asked if you could unsee her husband's back pain.

You told her you didn't know how.

She nodded solemnly and brought you a boiled root anyway.

Children began following you from a distance,

Leaving gifts,

Mostly moss,

Sometimes rocks,

Once a dead frog with daisies in its mouth.

You tried to explain,

Tried to tell them you weren't magic.

You were barely functional.

But the more you denied it,

The more convinced they became that you were hiding your powers out of humility.

You became star talker.

You found out from the old man who cleaned the well.

He said it casually,

Like everyone had agreed and no one had thought to tell you.

The baker stopped speaking entirely.

Just set your bread down with both hands,

Eyes averted,

Mouth tight.

You missed being ignored normally,

Regular,

Everyday dismissal.

This was different.

This was reverent silence,

Which somehow felt worse.

At one point,

A woman brought her baby to you and asked if the stars would favor him.

You panicked and said,

He has a strong aura.

She wept with joy and gave you a jar of pickled eggs.

You hate pickled eggs,

But you accepted them.

Because at this point,

Saying no to anything might only deepen your myth.

Osric found the whole thing hilarious.

You could charge,

He said,

Mouthful of something root-based.

People would pay,

Even in turnips.

You didn't want turnips.

You wanted to go back to being new boy.

At least that was simple.

Annoying,

Yes,

But understandable.

This was unsettling.

You began watching what you said,

Avoiding metaphors,

Refusing to comment on weather,

Harvests,

Dreams.

You nodded and smiled and said nothing of value,

Just in case,

But it was too late.

You'd said something celestial,

And now moss was your currency.

One morning,

A child handed you a perfectly round stone and asked if the moon was angry.

You said no.

They smiled.

Later,

You caught Osric carving a tiny star into your wooden cup.

You glared.

He didn't stop.

You thought about the world you came from full of astrology apps and zodiac memes and horoscopes that told you to avoid Xs and wear green on Tuesdays.

None of it had meant anything,

Just noise.

But here,

It did.

Your accidental superstition had become belief.

And belief,

Once born,

Doesn't die easily,

Especially not in a village with more goats than logic.

So,

You let them believe.

Because maybe it gave them comfort.

Maybe it made the rain hurt less.

Maybe it made the bread rise better.

Maybe the moss meant protection.

And maybe,

Just maybe,

In a world where you didn't belong,

It gave you a place.

Even if that place smelled faintly of frogs and lies,

It wasn't a decision.

It was a failure.

Your shoes gave up on you.

One morning,

You slipped them on and felt something shift,

A soft tear somewhere near the heel.

You ignored it,

Walked anyway.

By midday,

One sole had peeled halfway off.

By evening,

Both had split,

Like old fruit left in the sun.

Osric looked at them,

Nodded solemnly and said,

They've returned to the earth,

Which felt unnecessarily poetic for footwear,

Made of splintered wood and disappointment.

You tried patching them,

Wrapped them in twine,

Stuffed the insides with straw.

Nothing worked.

They were done.

You stared at them like fallen comrades,

Then left them by the fire as a quiet offering.

And you walked out barefoot.

It was meant to be temporary.

Just until someone found you something else,

Another pair of clogs,

Even a sack you could tie around your feet,

Anything.

But no one did.

And after a few days,

You stopped waiting.

At first it hurt.

The ground was not kind.

There were stones,

Roots,

Unexpected bits of bone and mystery metal.

You learned quickly to tread lightly,

To read the earth with your souls.

But then something shifted.

The ground warmed.

The cold dirt of spring gave way to the soft sun-soaked soil of summer.

The grass grew fat and lazy.

The paths became dry and crumbly.

And one afternoon without thinking,

You curled your toes into the warm dust and just stood there.

And it felt good.

Not just tolerable,

Not just survivable,

Good.

Like the earth knew you were fragile and decided just for a moment to hold you gently.

You began to walk slower.

Not because you were tired,

But because you wanted to feel it longer.

The mud between your toes near the pig trough,

The mossy patches behind the bakery,

The cracked,

Sun-drenched dirt near the garden wall.

Each texture told you something.

Here is where the rain lingers.

Here is where the goats have passed.

Here is where people rarely walk,

But sometimes sit.

Shoes had muted all of that.

Barefoot,

The world spoke to you and you listened.

There was a joy in it,

A strange,

Quiet joy.

Not loud enough to call happiness,

But close enough to make your chest feel soft.

You caught others watching you,

Some with pity,

Some with amusement,

A few with a strange envy,

Like they remembered what that freedom felt like once long ago before chores and pride and splinters made them forget.

One child followed you once,

Mimicked your steps.

When you turned,

They giggled and ran off,

Barefoot as well.

The next day,

Two more did the same.

A barefoot parade,

A rebellion made of silence and skin.

You didn't lead them,

You just walked,

And the dirt received you.

On hotter days,

It scorched a little,

But that too became part of the rhythm.

A dance,

Step fast on the hot stones,

Linger where the shadows stretch,

Learn the secrets of the village,

Not by eyes or ears,

But by the nerve endings on the bottom of your feet.

You found places you hadn't noticed before,

A patch of ferns behind the smithy that felt like velvet,

A dry creek bed lined with pebbles that rolled under your toes like laughter,

A flat sun-baked stone near the fence where you'd sit sometimes and let your souls rest.

No one asked you why.

Maybe they assumed it was punishment.

Maybe they thought it was a ritual.

Or maybe they just accepted that you were strange,

Moss hoarding,

Star mumbling,

Barefoot you,

And you accepted it too.

You didn't need shoes anymore,

Not for identity,

Not for protection,

Not even for respect.

You had the earth,

And it was enough.

Sometimes at night,

You'd step outside when everyone was asleep and feel the ground cooling under the moon,

Damp in places,

Crisp in others.

The dog would follow,

Lay beside you,

Breathe in time with the breeze.

No one talked about this kind of peace.

It wasn't celebrated or praised.

It just existed in small moments between the noise.

Warm dirt,

Bare feet,

A breath that doesn't feel borrowed.

You hadn't chosen it,

But it had chosen you.

And for once,

You didn't need anything more.

It happened fast.

One moment,

The child was running.

The next,

They were gone.

The puddle wasn't even that big.

You'd stepped around it earlier without thinking just another shallow mud trap among dozens that form when the road decides it's tired of pretending to be solid.

But the child,

Sprinting barefoot and wild-eyed with a stick in hand,

Didn't see it coming.

Their foot caught the edge,

Slid forward,

And the rest of them followed.

They didn't fall gracefully.

It was arms flailing,

Knees first,

Face nearly planted into the muck.

A flump,

A splat,

And then stillness.

For a second,

No one moved.

You were standing a few feet away,

Holding a half-empty bucket and pretending to care about the laundry line.

The child stayed crouched in the mud like they'd just discovered the floor of the earth was an emotional home.

A pause stretched into three seconds,

Then four,

And then they looked up.

Moss in their hair,

Dirt on their cheeks,

A single worm clinging to their sleeve like a passenger unwilling to disembark.

They grinned,

Not a smirk,

Not embarrassment disguised as bravery,

Just pure,

Shameless delight,

Like falling was the whole point of running in the first place.

And you laughed,

Not politely,

Not because it was expected,

Not to blend in.

You laughed the way people laugh when their ribs forget to protect them,

Sudden,

Unfiltered,

So sharp and full you startled yourself.

It broke out of your throat and spilled into the air like something that had been locked away too long,

A laugh that didn't come from irony or bitterness,

But from somewhere real,

Somewhere old.

The child giggled back,

Triumphant in their mud-coated glory.

They stood up,

Arms outstretched like a scarecrow,

And shouted something unintelligible before charging down the path again twice as fast,

Now soaking wet,

Unconcerned with everything.

You stood there,

Breath-catching,

The ghost of a grin still on your face,

And realized it had been weeks,

Weeks of silence mistaken for peace,

Of smiles performed like rituals,

Of nodding when spoken to,

And walking with the deliberate caution of someone trying not to break.

You hadn't laughed,

Not like this.

The last time you had,

It might have been during the firewood incident,

When Osric tried to chase a goat off the roof with a broom and ended up falling into a haystack.

You'd chuckled then,

Maybe even snorted,

But it had been the kind of laugh that covers discomfort,

The kind you use when you want people to think you're okay.

This was different,

This was light,

And it felt like something cracked open inside you.

You didn't even notice the mud on your boots,

The wet laundry dragging behind you.

You just stood there,

Letting the sun warm your face,

Still half-smiling like you just remembered something important and couldn't quite name it.

Later,

While folding clothes near the fire the old woman yells with,

You think her name is glanced over and said,

Heard you laugh today.

You looked up,

Startled.

She didn't smile.

Just nodded once.

About time.

Then went back to her sewing like she hadn't just marked a milestone,

But it was a milestone,

One you hadn't been tracking,

One that didn't come with a speech or ceremony or bread,

Just a fall,

A child,

A moment.

You found yourself watching the others more after that,

Not just studying them,

Seeing them,

How the blacksmith hums when he sharpens blades,

How the baker scratches his neck when nervous,

How Osric,

For all his scowling and grumbling,

Always tosses a bit of crust to the dog under the table when he thinks no one's watching.

There is humor here,

Not loud or clever or sarcastic,

Just soft,

Constant,

Like moss underfoot or wind through wheat.

It doesn't demand attention.

It waits for it.

And now,

You notice.

You catch yourself smiling at silly things,

At the chicken who thinks she owns the path,

At the piglet who sneezes mid-run,

At the goat that still refuses to acknowledge you unless you're carrying food.

You still miss things,

The warm buzz of artificial lights,

The hum of your old life,

The sarcasm that used to be armor and entertainment all at once,

But for a moment,

Just a moment,

You laughed like none of that mattered.

And for that heartbeat,

That breath,

That flicker of sun across the mud,

It was enough.

It started with horns,

Not battle horns,

Not warning horns,

Just celebratory ones,

Loud,

Off-key,

And impossible to ignore.

You were stacking firewood behind the bakery,

Trying not to get splinters under your thumbnail again when the first blast echoed through the village.

You froze,

Waited,

Another followed,

Then a third,

Then laughter,

Shouting,

Feet running.

You peeked around the corner and saw something bizarre,

People smiling all at once.

Not the usual smirks or exhausted grins after a long day of surviving pigs and bad weather,

But actual,

Unfiltered joy,

A little chaotic,

A little manic,

The kind of joy that comes with fermented drinks and very low expectations.

Osric passed by you wearing something that looked like a flower crown,

But was mostly just weeds and feathers.

He didn't stop walking,

Just tossed you a garland and said,

Come on,

The goat's about to be crowned.

You had questions.

You received no answers.

You followed anyway.

The town square,

What passed for it,

Was already alive.

Someone had hung colored cloth between two trees.

Children were chasing each other with sticks wrapped in ribbon.

A fiddler was tuning their instrument with the casual grace of someone who knew it would sound terrible no matter what and didn't care.

And there,

In the center of it all,

Stood the goat,

Not just any goat,

A large,

Confident,

Slightly menacing goat with one crooked horn and a posture that suggested it knew something you didn't.

It was wearing a cloak.

Someone had embroidered little suns and stars onto it,

A crown,

If you could call it.

That sat,

Lopsided on its head,

More weeds,

A feather,

Possibly a spoon.

The villagers surrounded it like royalty.

You leaned over to Ellsworth and asked,

What is this?

She grinned,

Festival.

Yes,

But what for?

She shrugged,

It's time.

That was it.

Apparently,

The why didn't matter.

Or if it did,

No one was in a hurry to explain it.

It wasn't a harvest celebration.

It wasn't a saint's day.

It wasn't commemorating a victory or a birth or anything you could track.

It just was.

And maybe that was the point.

Music started sharp and fast and wildly inconsistent.

But feet began to move.

Hands clapped.

People twirled,

Stomping and laughing,

Spinning with the kind of abandon you'd only seen in toddlers and very drunk wedding guests.

You stood on the edge,

Awkward,

Until a hand grabbed yours,

A child,

The same one who once threw moss at your face during your bath debacle,

Now smiling,

Tugging,

Pulling you into the chaos.

You resisted for half a second,

Then relented.

Because why not?

Why not let go for a few hours?

Why not stomp your bare feet into the dirt and let the rhythm claim you,

Even if you had no idea what beat you were supposed to follow?

So you danced,

Badly,

Arms too stiff,

Movements too late.

You bumped into people,

Tripped over your own foot,

Almost collided with the goat.

The goat did not flinch.

It merely stared at you as if to say,

"'Respect the crown.

' You bowed.

The goat ignored you.

Someone handed you a cup.

You drank.

It was something like cider,

But stronger,

Warmer,

Possibly fermented in a boot.

You drank again.

You started laughing,

Not because something was funny,

But because everything was.

Osric was trying to juggle turnips and failing spectacularly.

The blacksmith was dancing with a broom.

Someone's grandmother was reciting a love poem to a loaf of bread.

The goat was eating its own crown.

And in that blur of sound and spinning cloth and uneven clapping,

You forgot that you didn't belong,

Because in that moment,

You did,

Not as a seer,

Not as new boy,

Not even as the barefoot stranger from another world,

Just as a person,

Dancing,

Laughing,

Alive.

The sky turned orange,

Then deep blue.

The music slowed.

The crowd thinned.

People sat on the ground,

Leaning against each other,

Sharing crusts of food and sips from the same dented mug.

The goat,

Crownless but undefeated,

Curled up by the fire like it had been ordained to do so.

You sat too,

Breathless,

Sweaty,

Light.

You still didn't know what the festival was for.

No one ever told you.

And maybe that was the magic of it,

That for one day just one,

The village didn't need a reason to celebrate.

They just did.

And for the first time in a long time,

You didn't need a reason to smile.

You just did.

It was late,

The kind of late that didn't care about clocks,

Just the steady hush of a world that had finally run out of things to say.

No more voices,

No more chores,

No more shouting about spilled milk or goats gone missing or whose turn it was to fetch the night water,

Just silence.

You stepped outside without really meaning to.

The fire inside the cottage had started to dim and your mat felt too warm,

Too close,

Too full of dreams you didn't want to dream.

So you slipped out barefoot,

Wrapped in someone's cast-off cloak and let the door creak behind you.

The air outside didn't rush to meet you.

It just was.

Cool,

Still,

Thick with something that wasn't quite fog and wasn't quite breeze.

The kind of air that makes you pause before you breathe just to see if it's safe.

It was.

And above you,

The sky.

You'd forgotten.

Forgotten what darkness really looked like when it wasn't competing with street lamps or headlights or a neighbor's bathroom window left glowing at 3 a.

M.

This was black,

But not empty.

The stars were violent in their clarity.

Endless,

Unapologetically bright.

They didn't twinkle,

They burned.

Hung there like secrets no one had the right to know and yet everyone was allowed to see.

You stood still.

Let your eyes adjust.

Let your shoulders drop.

Even the pigs were quiet.

A few lay curled in their pen a few yards off,

Dreaming whatever pigs dream when they aren't biting,

Squealing,

Or trying to escape.

One let out a soft grunt,

Barely audible,

Like a punctuation mark to the silence.

You walked farther out,

Past the woodpile,

Past the fence with the one loose plank no one ever bothered to fix,

Into the tall grass where the earth felt warmer and the world stretched wider.

You lay down,

Right there,

No blanket,

No cushion,

Just damp dirt and flattened weeds and the faint smell of livestock and ash.

And you looked up.

It hurt a little how beautiful it was,

How indifferent,

How vast,

How still.

It reminded you of the moments before sleep back home when the phone was finally down and the lights were off and there was nothing but you and your heartbeat and the thoughts you couldn't outrun.

But here,

The thoughts didn't chase.

They circled,

They softened,

They fell apart before they could form teeth.

You couldn't remember the last time you'd been bitten by a mosquito.

That thought alone was almost enough to make you cry.

No high-pitched whine,

No slaps in the dark,

No itching your ankle until sunrise,

Just stars,

Air,

Dirt,

Peace,

Not the loud kind,

Not the kind you post about or earn through struggle,

The quiet kind that arrives when everything else gives up and lets you be.

A shooting star crossed your vision.

You didn't make a wish.

You didn't need to because you were already somewhere impossible,

Not home,

Not really,

But not lost either.

The strange part was you hadn't noticed it happening,

The shift,

The letting go.

Weeks ago,

You were clinging to everything,

Language,

Identity,

Routine.

Now,

You couldn't remember what day it was,

Couldn't remember the last time you used your own name and that should have been terrifying,

But it wasn't because here,

You weren't anyone in particular.

You were just a body in the grass,

Eyes on the sky,

Heart beating slowly enough to count the spaces between stars.

No one asked where you were.

No one cared.

And somehow,

That was a gift.

You stayed there for what could have been minutes or hours.

Time didn't pass here.

It settled like dust,

Like dew,

Like breath.

Eventually,

You sat up,

Legs stiff,

Hair tangled,

Dew on your arms,

A chill in your spine,

But your face dry,

No tears,

No salt,

Just something softer,

Something looser in the chest.

You whispered thank you to no one and meant it.

A pig snorted in response.

You smiled,

Then stood,

Walked back toward the cottage,

Slow,

Careful not to disturb the peace that wasn't yours,

But had let you borrow it for one strange,

Miraculous night.

The door creaked again as you stepped inside.

The fire had gone out.

You didn't relight it,

Didn't need to.

You curled up on your mat,

Pulled the threadbare blanket to your chin and let the stars you could no longer see keep watch outside.

And for once,

You slept like you were exactly where you were meant to be.

You didn't mean to volunteer.

It just sort of happened.

You were passing the bread table and someone muttered something about short on hands and you nodded without thinking.

That was all it took,

A nod,

A tiny,

Sleep-deprived gesture.

Now you were holding a dented bowl of flour and staring down your greatest culinary enemy,

Yeastless medieval bread.

You'd never made bread before,

Not in your old life.

You'd watched videos about it,

Sure dreamy montages of golden crusts and time-lapse bubbles,

But that was back when everything came with a pause button in a comment section.

Now there was just flour,

Water,

Salt and judgment.

Elswith handed you a wooden spoon and said,

Don't kill anyone.

You thought she was joking.

You were wrong.

Bread,

It turned out,

Was serious business.

Not fancy,

Not gourmet,

Just essential,

Daily,

Expected.

It kept people a liver,

Didn't.

The line between sustenance and dental crisis was thin and you were walking it with muddy boots and zero confidence.

You poured in water,

Too much,

Scrambled to fix it,

Added more flour,

Stirred.

It clumped like dry clay.

Your arms started to ache,

But you kept going.

The dough resisted you,

Mocked you,

Tried to leap from the bowl once.

You needed or tried to.

Your wrists protested.

The surface was uneven.

A dog wandered by and stared,

Judgmental and vaguely hungry.

You shaped the lump,

Lopsided,

Sweaty,

More weapon than food.

You slid it into the hearth oven with all the reverence of a final prayer.

And then you waited,

30 minutes of pacing,

Of sniffing,

Of trying not to inhale ash.

Osric passed by,

Sniffed the air and raised one eyebrow.

You weren't sure if that was a compliment or a warning.

Finally,

It was done or done enough.

It looked like bread,

Smelled like bread,

Hadn't exploded,

So far so good.

You set it on the table like an offering.

No one rushed to try it.

You couldn't blame them.

Eventually,

Elswith cut the first piece.

Steam escaped.

She tilted her head,

Bit in,

Chewed.

Slowly,

You held your breath.

She swallowed,

Then nodded.

Just once,

Not dramatic,

Not emotional,

But it meant everything.

Others followed,

A few villagers,

Osric.

The baker's apprentice who still wouldn't look you in the eye after the star comment incident.

They ate,

And they lived.

Someone said,

Not bad.

Another said,

Fills the stomach.

And one child possibly lying,

Possibly honest,

Whispered,

I like it.

You didn't know what to do with the feeling that followed.

Pride,

Relief,

Validation,

All of the above.

You'd made something,

From scratch,

With your hands.

Not because it was fun,

Or trendy,

Or for likes,

But because people needed it.

Because bread is what stands between hunger and exhaustion.

And you'd done it.

It was dense,

Lumpy,

A little too salty,

But it fed people.

It warmed their mouths.

It brought silence to the tablanot awkward silence,

But the kind that comes when chewing is more important than talking.

You sat down,

Took your own piece,

And bit in.

It was fine,

But it was yours,

And that made it better than fine.

You caught Elswith looking at you again.

She didn't say anything,

Just passed you a second lump of dough,

And smiled.

Not big,

Not wide,

Just enough.

That night,

Your hands ached,

Your back ached.

Your shoulders burned from stirring and lifting and trying not to drop a glowing hot peel on your foot.

But you were full.

Not just your stomach,

Your chest,

Your head,

Some small dusty corner of your soul that hadn't felt useful in weeks.

You'd made bread that didn't kill anyone.

And in a world like this,

That was a win.

It started with the fence.

A storm had blown through the night before angry wind,

Sideways rain,

The kind that made the shutters rattle like bones.

Morning came gray and thick with mud.

Everyone looked a little more hunched than usual,

A little more tired.

You stepped outside expecting the usual routine.

Fetch water,

Avoid the chickens,

Maybe scrub something that didn't need scrubbing.

But then you saw the fence.

One side of it was crumpled like a kicked chair.

The boards had snapped clean through in places.

The posts leaned like they'd given up halfway through their job.

A goat stood proudly in the wreckage,

Chewing on what may have once been someone's laundry.

You didn't think.

You just walked over and started clearing debris.

It wasn't much at first.

Just lifting fallen planks,

Stacking them neatly,

Pulling loose nails out with the edge of a rock.

Osric appeared with a hammer,

Didn't say anything.

Just nodded once and got to work beside you.

A child brought rope.

Someone else brought new boards.

It became a rhythm.

Hold,

Nail,

Tie,

Shift.

The smell of damp wood,

The sting of a fresh splinter in your palm,

The satisfying thunk of a board locking into place.

You didn't talk much.

No one did.

Just the sound of working hands and a few grunts of approval.

And then he said it.

A man you'd only seen once or twice,

Older,

Wore a hat that might have once been white,

Now mostly resembling a leaf pile.

He was adjusting one of the outer posts when he looked over and said,

Good eye,

Neighbor.

That one was loose.

You froze.

Not because of the compliment,

But because of the word.

Neighbor,

Not stranger,

Not new boy.

Not even the whisper name they used when talking about you behind your back.

Just neighbor.

It landed softly,

Like dust,

Like rain,

Like something true that didn't need to be shouted.

You nodded.

Didn't trust your voice,

Just kept hammering.

Later that day,

You walked past the bakery and the baker nodded at you without the usual squint.

The blacksmith offered you the last turnip without being asked.

One of the children waved with both hands,

Like you were something worth waving at.

You didn't feel different,

But somehow you were.

There was no ceremony.

No one handed you a ribbon or painted your face with ash or said,

You belong now.

But you did.

Not because you'd earned it in some grand way.

Not because you'd passed a test or lifted a cart off a drowning pig.

But because you'd stayed.

You'd woken up here.

You'd fallen here.

You'd eaten their food,

Shoveled their manure,

Survived their gossip,

And danced at their goat festival.

You'd made mistakes.

You'd laughed anyway.

You'd baked bread.

You'd bathed in the river and lived to tell about it.

And now,

Now,

You were one of them.

Not fully,

Not perfectly,

But enough.

Enough that someone called you neighbor.

Enough that no one corrected him.

You found yourself walking differently,

Standing straighter.

Not out of pride,

But out of comfort.

You knew which stones on the path would shift under your feet.

You knew which chickens to avoid and which ones liked to peck ankles for sport.

You knew when the bell would ring and how long the prayer would take and who always mumbled the last line.

The village hadn't changed,

But you had.

And in tiny,

Invisible ways,

It changed for you too.

That night,

You passed by the repaired fence,

Ran your fingers along the wood.

It wasn't perfect.

Some boards stuck out too far.

One post leaned a little,

But it held.

It did the job,

Just like you.

You sat by the edge of the road as the sun began to bleed into the horizon.

The sky turned that familiar medieval orangeth,

Kind that said the fire should be lit soon and the bread should be cooling.

Osric passed by with a bundle of sticks.

Didn't stop,

Just said,

See you tomorrow,

Neighbor.

And this time,

You said it back.

It sneaks up on you.

At first,

The absence is loud.

Phantom vibrations in a pocket that isn't there.

That quiet,

Compulsive twitch of your hand when the silence lasts too long reaching for something familiar,

Comforting,

Flickering.

You'd tap your thigh,

Feel the rough fabric,

And pause every time,

But there's no phone.

There never is.

In the beginning,

That loss felt sharp,

Like losing a limb or a part of your memory.

You didn't know what time it was,

What day.

You couldn't check.

No updates,

No buzzing,

No light glowing in your palm to keep the dark from settling in too deep.

At night,

You missed the screen the most.

Back home,

Your phone was the final voice of the day,

The last comfort before sleep.

You'd scroll until your eyes blurred,

Lull your brain into forgetting what it didn't want to feel.

It wasn't entertainment,

It was escape.

Every headline,

Every video,

Every picture of food you wouldn't eat it gave you something to disappear into.

But here,

There's nothing to disappear into,

Just firelight,

And breath,

And the wind outside your door.

You used to panic at the stillness,

Like your brain would overheat if you didn't give it something fast and flashing.

You'd lie in bed and wish for notifications,

Like they could stitch your mind back together.

Now,

You just lie there.

You stare at the wooden ceiling.

You listen to the snores of the dog,

The creak of the shutters,

The low murmur of the wind moving through the trees like it's humming to itself,

And that's it.

No screen,

No glow,

No feed to refresh,

Just stillness.

And then one day,

You notice something strange.

You haven't reached for your pocket in a while.

You haven't imagined a buzz or found your fingers curling into that familiar scroll shape.

Your body stopped asking.

The urge quieted,

Like a song you'd heard too many times finally lost its hook.

You don't know when it happened.

Maybe it was the bread baking day.

Maybe it was during the goat festival.

Maybe when you were too tired to think or when you were laughing too hard to remember you ever needed distraction.

You just forgot,

Forgot the need,

And it's not like you suddenly hate technology.

If someone handed you a phone right now,

You'd probably cry.

You'd check the weather and your texts and what bizarre world events you missed.

You'd watch at least one video of a raccoon doing something human,

But you don't crave it anymore.

You don't miss the noise like you thought you would because here,

There's enough.

The sky tells you what time it is.

The people tell you what matters.

The silence fills the gaps you used to patch with pixels.

You've learned to sit still with your own mind,

And that's terrifying sometimes.

It's not all peace and clarity.

Sometimes the thoughts are loud,

Ugly,

Regretful.

They echo harder without distractions to soften them,

But you don't run from them now.

You let them arrive,

Stay a while,

And then leave,

Like visitors,

Not invaders.

You learn to listen to the wind again,

To the way rain sounds on a wooden roof,

To how fire crackles differently depending on what wood you burn.

You never noticed those things when you had a screen in your face.

You didn't need to,

But now you hear everything,

A bird nesting near your window,

The far-off clank of a blacksmith's hammer,

The way Ellsworth hums the same tune every morning when she stirs the pot.

A song you once thought was meaningless now loops in your head like a lullaby.

This world is quieter,

But not empty,

And for the first time in your life,

You realize how much space you were filling just to avoid being alone with your own presence.

Now,

Your presence is the thing you look forward to.

You sit outside and watch the light change.

You don't post about it,

You don't snap a picture,

You just watch,

And that's enough.

You still remember your phone,

Its weight,

Its feel,

The crack in the corner from the time you dropped it on the sidewalk,

But the attachment is fading.

You don't miss scrolling,

You don't miss buzzing,

You don't miss filling every second with noise.

You've remembered how to live without it,

And strangely,

You don't want it back.

Not yet,

Maybe not ever,

Not while the sky keeps turning gold at dusk,

Not while the wind keeps whispering secrets only the quiet can hear.

The dreams come slower now.

You used to fall asleep with a flicker half-thoughts,

Static,

Images blurred by blue light,

Your brain always running,

A movie you didn't remember choosing,

Playing on loop behind your eyelids.

You'd wake up exhausted,

You'd wake up with your jaw clenched and your fingers curled like you were bracing for something,

But here,

Dreams arrive differently.

They float in,

They settle,

Like ash from the fire or the hush after a long,

Hard rain.

There's no buzz before sleep now,

No inbox reminders,

No digital clock burning red into the dark,

Just the soft flicker of the candle low,

Warm,

Sometimes sputtering in protest,

Sometimes leaning gently toward you,

Like it wants to be the last thing you see before you drift off.

You close your eyes and the world doesn't rush in,

It exhales.

Your body doesn't tense anymore when you lie down,

It sinks,

The straw mattress still scratches,

The blanket still smells faintly of smoke and dog,

But they've become part of the rhythm.

Familiar textures,

Predictable discomforts,

Anchors in their own strange way,

And then it happens,

The dream.

You're standing in the woods,

Not lost,

Just there,

Trees taller than seems possible,

The air soft,

Like wool against your skin.

You can hear something moving in the distance,

A fox maybe,

Or just the wind,

You don't panic,

You don't wonder where your phone is or who's trying to reach you.

There's no reaching here,

No needing,

There's only noticing.

And then,

From somewhere off the path,

A woman appears.

You don't know her,

But somehow,

You do.

She's carrying a bucket.

It swings gently from her hand as she walks.

Her feet are bare,

Like yours,

Her hair's tied with twine.

She doesn't speak,

Just nods at you,

Once.

The kind of nod that says,

You're late,

But it's all right.

She keeps walking,

You follow.

Not out of curiosity,

Not out of fear,

Just because she leads you to a stream.

The water is clear,

Ridiculously so.

You can see tiny rocks beneath the surface,

Little snails clinging to them,

Bits of leaves drifting past like they have somewhere to be.

She kneels,

Fills the bucket.

You watch the water rise.

You feel its weight,

Even before she lifts it.

Then,

Without a word,

She hands the bucket to you.

You take it.

It's not heavy,

But it matters.

You look up and she's gone.

You don't panic,

You just turn.

Walk back the way you came,

Bucket in hand.

You don't know where you're going,

But your feet do.

The candle flickers beside your bed.

You shift.

In your dream,

The trees part.

A village rises in the distance.

Not your village,

But not not yours either.

Smoke from chimneys,

A crooked fence.

The sound of chickens losing some argument.

You feel the weight of the bucket against your leg.

You keep walking.

The dream doesn't end,

It just fades.

And when you wake,

It's not like before.

No gasp,

No dread,

No fumbling for a forgotten charger,

Or scanning for a notification to tether you back to the noise.

You open your eyes slowly.

Let the dim light find you.

Let the stillness settle in your chest,

Like warmth from tea.

You remember the trees,

The bucket,

Her.

You don't know what it meant,

You don't need to.

Some dreams aren't puzzles,

They're places.

And you've started visiting them more and more.

Dreams without voices,

Shouting your name or deadlines chasing you.

Dreams without sirens,

Without rush,

Without that strange low-level anxiety that always trailed behind you like a second shadow.

Now,

It's just her,

The bucket,

The woods,

And you walking through candlelight into something unnamed.

Sometimes you wake with the image still pressed behind your eyes.

Sometimes it disappears like breath on a mirror,

But the peace stays.

Even after you rise,

Even after the day begins with its usual clang and chaos and chores,

The dream lingers,

Not in your mind,

In your bones,

Like the memory of being handed something simple and being trusted to carry it.

You didn't ask for the bucket,

But you hold it anyway,

Because in the dream,

It always felt like yours.

It was nothing special.

The morning came like it always did,

With the rooster screaming in victory and someone clanging a bucket against a post just to make sure the rooster had backup.

You groaned,

Stretched,

Sat up slowly.

Your blanket was half off,

Your back a little sore,

But not worse than usual.

You rubbed your face and didn't hate the idea of standing.

You stepped outside.

The light was soft,

Pale gold,

The kind that makes the whole village look like it's holding its breath just for a moment before the noise begins.

You breathed it in.

The air still had a bite to it,

But it wasn't cruel,

Just a reminder that you were alive.

You didn't even flinch at the cold dirt under your feet.

Elswith nodded at you from the well.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't have to.

You weren't new boy anymore.

You weren't a curiosity.

You were just you,

One of them,

Here,

Awake.

You helped carry the water without being asked.

The dog followed you most of the way.

No barking,

No leaping,

Just quiet companionship and the occasional sniff of approval.

Breakfast was porridge,

Again,

But it was warm.

And this time,

You didn't mind the lumps.

Someone had added a pinch of herbs,

Or maybe it was just salt.

Either way,

It tasted better than it had any right to.

You ate slowly.

No one rushed you.

There was a joke told at the table.

You didn't catch the beginning,

But you laughed anyway.

Not because you were trying to fit in,

But because the laughter around you made sense.

It filled the space.

It echoed in your chest.

Later,

You helped mend a fence.

Not the broken kind,

Just one that leaned a little more than it should.

You tied rope,

Adjusted posts,

Wiped sweat from your brow,

And didn't feel bitter about the work.

Your hands moved without needing to think.

Your back complained,

But you ignored it.

The sun was warm.

The grass underfoot was dry for once.

You didn't slip,

Or fall,

Or drop anything important.

Lunch was bread and cheese,

A little stale,

But filling.

You ate,

Sitting on a stump beside the blacksmith,

Who grunted approval at the sky like he owned it.

No one asked anything of you.

No one avoided you.

You weren't a guest.

You weren't a burden.

You were just there,

Same as everyone else.

You sat in the sun afterward,

For a long time.

No reason,

No urgency,

Just because you could.

You leaned back,

Eyes half-closed,

And listened.

Chickens squabbled nearby.

A woman sang a tune you didn't recognize,

Off-key and honest.

A child ran past,

Giggling over something too small to explain.

You didn't check the sky for planes.

Not once.

You didn't wonder what day it was.

You didn't feel the ache to leave,

Or the fear of staying.

You just were.

Someone passed you a plum.

You didn't ask for it.

They didn't say anything.

Just placed it in your hand and walked on.

You bit into it.

Sweet,

Messy,

Real.

It stained your fingers.

You wiped them on your trousers and didn't care.

The sun slid slowly down the sky.

Shadows stretched but didn't threaten.

The day grew quieter,

Not colder.

You stood,

Stretched again,

And made your way back to the cottage.

No stubbed toes.

No awkward encounters.

No disasters hiding around corners.

Just quiet.

At the door,

The dog was already curled up.

You sat beside him,

Not quite ready to go in.

The stars would come out soon.

You didn't feel the need to count them,

Or name them,

Or wish on them.

You just wanted to see them.

The candle would be lit inside.

The straw mattress waiting.

The soft rustle of someone shifting in sleep.

The night would hold its breath,

Then let it out slow,

And you'd sleep.

Without restlessness.

Without fear.

Without needing anything more than what you had.

It was a good day.

That's all.

No great revelations.

No turning point.

No deep meaning to extract and carve into stone.

Just a good day.

And somehow,

That felt like a miracle.

It's quiet.

Not the usual kind,

The kind with creaking shutters and someone snoring across the room and the distant shuffle of animals waking up before the humans do.

No.

This quiet is thicker.

Still.

Like everything has paused,

Just for you.

You open your eyes.

Slowly.

The ceiling above you is unfamiliar again.

Too smooth.

Too white.

Not wood.

No smoke.

No straw.

Just blank.

You blink.

Try to sit up.

Your body doesn't ache.

There's no crust of mud on your hands.

No cold in your toes.

The air smells sterile.

Not like fire.

Not like sweat.

Not like bread or cabbage or moss.

Just clean.

You look to your side.

A digital clock glows red.

4,

37 AM.

The numbers blink at you,

Steady and indifferent.

You sit there,

Breathing.

Your chest doesn't feel heavy.

Your mind isn't racing.

But something is different.

You swing your legs over the edge of the bed.

Carpet,

Not dirt.

You press your feet into it and almost laugh.

It's too soft.

Too forgiving.

It doesn't argue back like the earth did.

It doesn't teach you how to walk around puddles or avoid sharp stones.

It just holds you,

Gentle and neutral.

You stand.

Look around.

The room is yours.

Familiar.

The bookshelf.

The half-folded laundry.

The faint glow of a streetlight bleeding through the curtain.

Everything exactly where you left it.

But you're not.

You walk to the mirror.

Your face is your face.

But there's something else now.

Something older.

Not in the skin,

But in the stillness behind your eyes.

Like a story that's been told only once,

But remembered forever.

Was it a dream?

The thought arrives like a whisper.

Logical.

Dismissive.

But you look at your hands scallowsed,

Somehow.

You touch your arm,

Expecting softness.

But there's a phantom soreness that shouldn't be there.

You remember.

The rooster.

The bread.

The mud.

The cold river.

The children's laughter.

The dog curled by the fire.

The woman with the bucket.

You remember the moment someone called you neighbor.

You remember laughing without sarcasm.

Sleeping without dread.

Eating without checking a screen.

Feeling your own heartbeat slow beside the stars.

It was too vivid to forget.

Too specific to invent.

Maybe you never left.

Maybe you're still there.

And this is the dream.

Maybe the candle is still burning.

You sit back down on the bed.

The modern one.

The one without splinters,

Or the threat of a goat barging in.

It's comfortable.

But it doesn't feel like yours anymore.

You close your eyes.

And you're there again.

The dirt under your nails.

The call of the village bell.

The weight of a pail in your hand.

Filled with water you actually worked to gather.

The ache in your muscles that felt like proof you existed.

You open your eyes again.

The room hasn't changed.

But you have.

You stand and walk to the window.

Outside,

The world is still.

Quiet cars.

Dark houses.

Everything's sleeping.

But the stars are there.

And suddenly,

They don't feel like background noise.

They feel familiar.

Like they've followed you across lifetimes just to remind you,

You were there.

You lived it.

Even if no one else will believe you.

Even if it fades like smoke the moment the sun rises.

You don't need proof.

You lived a whole life without noise.

Without news.

Without needing to be anything but present.

And that's the part that stays.

Not the dirt.

Not the bread.

Not even the rooster.

Just the stillness.

The quiet that felt earned.

You lie back down.

Pull the blanket over your chest.

Close your eyes again.

You don't need to decide if it was real.

You just know you're warm.

And for the first time in a long,

Long time,

You rest.

Hey,

Guys.

Tonight's story drops you into a village where everyone smells faintly of goat.

Half the women look like startled eggs and children scream,

No feathers,

At the browless lady next door.

A nobleman struts past with teeth as black as burnt wood and people cheer,

Not because he's terrifying,

But because rotting teeth mean he's rich.

Here,

Every wrinkle,

Freckle,

And unfortunate hair color is a scandal.

And tonight,

We're wandering straight into that world of medieval beauty where survival is ugly and beauty is deadly.

Now get comfortable.

Let the day melt away and we'll drift back together into the quiet corners of the past.

You are told that beauty is written on your skin,

Not in the metaphorical sense,

Not in the inner glow sense,

But quite literally in whether your cheeks look ghostly,

Pale,

Or ruddy with the hue of outdoor labor.

You quickly learn that to be beautiful here,

You must appear as though you have never once lifted a finger nor exposed your face to the vicious peasant sun.

A pale face is a wealthy face and therefore the only face worth admiring.

The problem,

Of course,

Is that you live in a drafty cottage with a roof that lets in more daylight than is strictly good for your complexion.

Every trip outside to fetch water or wrangle poultry brands your cheeks with a little pink betrayal.

You peer into a polished scrap of metal,

Your only mirror,

And groan.

Your nose is shining with vigor,

Your forehead freckled with effort,

And your entire aura screams,

Works for a living.

Tragic,

Absolutely tragic.

So you do what everyone does,

You cheat.

A sack of flour sits temptingly by the hearth and with the precision of a painter,

You pat a handful onto your face until your reflection looks like a startled ghost.

You inhale at the wrong moment,

Choke on the powder,

And immediately blast a fine white cloud across the room.

The unfortunate cloud drifts into your neighbor's soup bowl as he stops by to complain about the noise from your chickens.

He coughs,

Spoons up the thickened stew,

And declares it improved.

You smile,

Serenely,

Pretending this was entirely intentional.

The village,

Meanwhile,

Buzzes with its usual gossip.

Pale skin equals nobility,

But too much pallor,

And you risk looking like death warmed over.

Lady Agnes looks refined.

Someone murmurs at the well.

"'Yes,

But doesn't she also look like she's been embalmed?

' replies another.

No one remembers what Agnes actually does,

But everyone remembers her complexion.

You take mental notes.

Too pink,

You're a field hand.

Too white,

You're a corpse.

The sweet spot lies somewhere between sickly poetry muse and fainting heroine.

You pass a group of girls sitting under the shade of the church wall,

Giggling and comparing arms.

One moans that she was caught carrying buckets yesterday,

Her skin bronzed in betrayal.

Another brags about staying indoors for three days straight,

Insisting her complexion has reached dove's egg status.

You resist the urge to show them your flower-dusted cheeks,

Because deep down,

You suspect the flower hasn't blended evenly.

One side likely screams prosperous noble while the other whispers deranged baker.

And then there's old Henry,

Whose face is naturally pale,

But not in a flattering way.

His skin carries the hue of sour milk left in the sun,

And the children call him ghost turnip.

He is living proof that paleness alone is not enough.

You must have the right sort of pale.

You must glow faintly with delicacy,

Not curdle with impending gout.

You practice fainting dramatically in your cottage,

Trying to cultivate that fragile nobility,

But all you manage is a bruised hip and a chicken perched indignantly on your chest.

The church,

Of course,

Has opinions.

A sermon last week warned that vanity leads to damnation,

But the priest's own sister has been spotted plucking weeds only under moonlight to avoid the sun.

Everyone nods piously at the sermon while simultaneously eyeing each other's cheeks for suspicious hints of labor.

Holiness may glow from within,

But beauty,

Apparently,

Is best dusted on with pantry staples.

At market,

You overhear a fishmonger's wife whisper,

Look at her,

Cheeks like fresh roses.

She must be spending too much time out of doors.

The woman in question flushes further under the scrutiny,

Only proving the point.

You imagine living in fear of your own circulation.

One sneeze,

One brisk walk,

And suddenly you've betrayed your class aspirations.

Pale beauty is exhausting.

Back home,

You refine your method.

Instead of dumping flour straight on your face,

You mix it with a splash of vinegar water until you achieve a paste of questionable consistency.

The paste clings stubbornly,

Refuses to dry evenly,

And cracks when you smile.

You attempt a demure expression in the mirror and look instead like a wall with water damage.

Still,

You convince yourself it is working.

As dusk falls,

Neighbors pass by your window.

One compliments your new pallor,

Though she adds that it makes you look slightly consumptive.

Another asks if you've been unwell and offers onion broth for your weak lungs.

You murmur vague thanks,

Too proud to admit this look required both flour and vinegar.

Deep down,

You know they're whispering already,

And so the game continues.

Every day becomes a balancing act of sun avoidance,

Flour rations,

And calculated faintness.

Too pink,

And you're mocked for your obvious labor.

Too pale,

And they'll start measuring you for a coffin.

But for now,

You step outside into the evening,

Cheeks ghostly and powder still dusting your lashes,

And you hold your head high.

You may look like a half-baked loaf,

But to the gossiping eyes of the village,

You are beauty incarnate.

Hair is never just hair.

It is declaration,

Accusation,

And occasionally damnation,

Depending on what color sprouts from your unfortunate scalp.

You quickly learn that blonde is the holiest shade,

Celebrated as the color of angels,

Saints,

And any noblewoman who manages to sit indoors long enough for her.

Locks to fade gently toward gold.

The trouble is that natural blonde is rare,

So everyone starts inventing their own ways of manufacturing it.

You spot one girl rinsing her hair in stale vinegar until she smells like a pickle barrel.

Another kneels by the river,

Scrubbing furiously with crushed herbs and pigeon droppings,

Insisting it will brighten her strands.

You don't know if she means brighten the hair or simply bleach the life out of her soul.

If blonde is divine,

Then red is not.

Red hair means suspicion,

Danger,

And possible consorting with Satan himself.

Poor Matilda down the lane was born with a fiery crown,

And though she has never hexed a cow in her life,

The village insists she whispers curses into the butter churn.

They glare when she walks by,

Mutter when her shadow falls,

And cross themselves if she sneezes.

You sometimes think she should lean into the drama,

Wear black,

Cackle loudly,

Maybe acquire a broom and fly off into the night.

At least then she'd be in control of the rumors.

Instead,

She just weeps quietly and tucks her hair under a cap while children whisper that her freckles are witch marks.

Black hair,

Meanwhile,

Carries its own intrigue.

It is considered mysterious,

Exotic,

A touch of dangerous allure.

Travelers from far off lands are admired for their jet tresses,

Though when the look appears in your village,

Everyone alternates between fascination and fear.

She has raven hair.

Someone sighs,

As though reciting a poem.

Yes,

Another mutters darkly.

Ravens eat corpses.

You decide it is safest to keep your own hair as nondescript as possible,

Somewhere between muddy straw and could-be wheat if you squint.

For those unwilling to accept their natural lot,

Wigs provide salvation,

Or at least a lumpy facsimile.

The nobility prance about with enormous headdresses and wig creations that appear to be made from equal parts human sacrifice,

Goat trimmings,

And anything the barber happened to sweep up that morning.

You see one lady tilt her head too far and her wig slides askew,

Revealing a suspicious patch of coarse brown beneath.

The entire feast hall pretends not to notice,

Though you catch three servants exchanging coins over whether it was horse or cow hair.

The local monks,

Of course,

Get involved.

One in particular,

Brother Gerald,

Claims to have acquired holy relic hair from the skull of a saint.

He cuts locks into neat bundles and sells them to pilgrims who stitch the sacred strands into their veils.

You take one look and realize it is goat fur shaved clean off the abbey's particularly bad-tempered billy.

Yet people buy it eagerly,

Stroking their new saintly wigs while the goat itself stares through the fence,

Looking oddly bald.

The deception is so blatant that you nearly admire Gerald's audacity.

Maintaining fashionable hair is no easier than acquiring it.

Combs are carved from bone or wood,

And you spend hours dragging them through tangles that seem to multiply in the night.

Lice are the constant enemy.

Tiny tyrants that infest every scalp regardless of social class.

You attend gatherings where nobles lift their elegant veils only to reveal furious scratching,

As discreet as possible but obvious to everyone.

Children hunt the creatures for sport,

Proudly displaying the little bodies like trophies.

The priest warns that lice are a punishment from God for vanity,

Though he scratches his own tonsured scalp mid-sermon and pretends not to notice.

You try your own experiments.

Perhaps blonde would suit you,

You think,

And mix a concoction of ashes,

Vinegar,

And questionable herbs.

The smell is appalling,

The sting immediate,

And the result underwhelming.

Your hair emerges not golden but a shade somewhere between mold and despair.

You rush to the well,

Dunk your head in,

And listen as the washerwomen laugh so hard they nearly drop the linens.

For days afterward,

They call you Swamp Sprite,

Which is not the elegant title you had hoped for.

At market,

Beauty standards parade themselves openly.

One stall sells hair ribbons dyed in every shade imaginable,

Though the seller insists pale colors best complement blonde hair.

Another woman offers little pots of concoction promising shine and luster,

Though you notice it smells strongly of goose fat.

Everyone debates endlessly whose hair is most admired,

Most envied,

Most certainly blessed.

Behind the chatter lurks the fear of stepping out of line.

Too red,

And you're cursed.

Too pale,

And you're mocked as sickly.

Too black,

And you're whispered about as though you harbor dark secrets.

By evening,

You watch the shadows lengthen across the village and see a group of young men boasting about a night with flowing golden locks.

Claiming his hair shimmered like sunlight in battle.

You wonder if they forgot he wore a steel helm the entire time.

Stories,

It seems,

Polish hair into legend just as much as vinegar or wigs.

You imagine what tale they might one day tell of you,

Whether your hair will be remembered as divine,

Suspicious,

Or merely in need of a good scrub.

For now,

Though,

You tug a kerchief over your head,

Ignore the itch of lurking lice,

And hope that tomorrow you wake up as a saint instead of a swamp sprite.

You are told that the seed of wisdom lies in the forehead,

And therefore the bigger the forehead,

The wiser and more beautiful you must surely be.

This,

Naturally,

Leads to a local arms race in which everyone is plucking,

Shaving,

Or otherwise banishing their hairline back toward the crown of the skull.

You walk into church one Sunday,

And it looks less like a congregation and more like a collection of startled eggs,

Each head gleaming with an expanse of pale,

Exposed skin.

The priest drones about humility while half his parishioners are quietly comparing who has the grandest stretch of forehead real estate.

The methods are,

As usual,

Both desperate and absurd.

Women sit by candlelight with tweezers carved from bone,

Yanking hairs one by one until tears streak their cheeks.

Others prefer a quicker approach,

Lathering soap and scraping a sharp blade across their hairline until it retreats obediently,

Leaving behind an angry red frontier.

The most devoted even apply concoctions of vinegar and pigeon droppings,

Convinced this will discourage regrowth.

The smell alone would make any hair flee,

Though it does nothing for social gatherings.

You pass one such devotee at market and nearly faint from the fumes,

Though her forehead does gleam like polished marble.

The gossip mill,

Ever vigilant,

Thrives on this new obsession.

One villager brags that her forehead measures five fingers high,

Proudly slapping her palm against her brow like she's displaying a prize harvest.

Another sneers that the butcher's daughter has only a three-finger forehead,

Clearly the mark of peasantry.

You overhear two washerwomen whispering cruelly about a girl whose hair grew back unevenly,

Leaving tufts that resemble a patchy field.

Looks like a sheep got halfway through grazing her,

One snickers.

The poor girl pretends not to hear and tugs her veil lower.

You,

Of course,

Cannot resist trying it yourself.

With shaking hands,

You take a small blade to your own hairline,

Pressing closer and closer until the upper half of your face begins to resemble a barren field awaiting spring planting.

The first moment is thrilling.

You imagine yourself radiating intelligence,

Noblesse,

Perhaps even saintly aura,

But then the draft sneaks in.

A wind whistles across your new expanse of exposed skin,

And you realize you have created a personal wind tunnel above your eyebrows.

Goose flesh rises immediately,

And your eyes water as though you are forever standing in a gale.

You regret everything,

But it is too late.

The hairline has been conquered,

And the enemy will not return quickly.

Villagers notice.

One old man chuckles and tells you that your forehead could now serve as a fine writing desk.

Children giggle and play a game of trying to count how many beans they could balance upon it.

Even the chickens seem to stare longer than usual,

Their beady eyes reflecting off the pale stretch of flesh.

You attempt to hold your head high,

Though the cold makes you shiver,

And everyone mistakes this for elegant trembling.

Suddenly,

They are praising you for your delicate constitution,

Your refined beauty,

While you are simply trying not to sneeze.

At feast days,

The competition intensifies.

Women arrive with foreheads so vast you wonder how they can even keep their wigs balanced.

One noble woman,

Desperate to outdo the rest,

Appears with her hairline shaved nearly to the crown,

Leaving only a small island of curls perched like a bewildered squirrel at the back of her skull.

People gasp in admiration while you marvel at her bravery or madness.

The men,

Meanwhile,

Pretend indifference but secretly measure themselves against one another.

A merchant jokes that he can project announcements onto his neighbor's brow like a church wall.

The neighbor does not laugh.

Of course,

Fashions are fickle,

And already you hear whispers that two large foreheads may be unbecoming.

A traveler passing through claims that in his region,

A natural hairline is prized and women with endless foreheads are mocked as looking permanently surprised.

The village freezes in collective horror,

Suddenly uncertain whether to pluck more or let nature reclaim the land.

For now,

Though,

The mania continues and you wrap a scarf tightly around your head to keep the wind from howling across your newly expanded territory.

At night,

As you lie on your straw bed,

You wonder if beauty is worth this constant battle against your own biology.

Yet in the morning,

You catch your reflection in a bowl of water,

Forehead gleaming,

Eyes wide beneath the pale expanse,

And you almost convince yourself that you do indeed look more intelligent,

More refined,

More holy.

Almost.

Then a spider scuttles across your brow as if it mistook the space for open field and you swat it away,

Groaning at your own vanity.

Eyebrows are a luxury,

Not a necessity,

Or so everyone in the village insists,

As though generations of evolution had mistakenly supplied you with a set you are better off without.

Fashion here demands either the thinnest suggestion of a line,

Delicate as a whisper,

Or their total removal,

Leaving the upper half of your face as smooth and bare as a plucked goose.

You wake one morning to find that half your neighbors are proudly parading about with foreheads stretching unbroken down to their lashes,

And you begin to suspect that your own stubborn brows are holding you back from true beauty.

The noble women lead the charge,

Naturally.

You attend a feast where Lady Isolde sweeps in,

Veils floating around her like she is drifting on a cloud of her own superiority,

And her face looks permanently surprised.

Not a hair sits above her eyes when someone dares to ask about it,

She declares,

With the fervor of a saint testifying to a miracle,

That removing her brows allows her to see God more clearly.

No one points out that she now resembles a startled eel because it is very difficult to argue with a woman who owns half the sheep in the county.

Once Lady Isolde makes her declaration,

Every ambitious woman in town rushes to pluck,

Scrape,

Or otherwise obliterate their own brows.

The apothecary begins selling sharpened clamshells as holy eyebrow removers and business booms.

Children pick at their mother's foreheads like diligent gardeners weeding a field.

The blacksmith,

Ever entrepreneurial,

Even advertises brow removal by hot iron,

Though the smell that drifts from his forge afterward convinces you to decline.

The market becomes full of red-eyed women blinking furiously,

Their upper faces shiny and raw,

While they reassure each other that beauty always requires sacrifice.

You are not immune to the fever.

One evening,

You sit before your polished scrap of tin,

Staring into your reflection with determination.

You hold up a candle for better light,

Grip a pair of bone tweezers,

And begin.

The first pluck makes your eyes water.

The second convinces you that perhaps you are communing with God after all,

Because surely no mortal pain could be this sharp.

You continue stubbornly until half your brow is gone,

Then pause to examine yourself.

The result is not holy.

It is not noble.

It is,

Quite frankly,

Horrifying.

You look like a man only halfway through a transformation into boiled poultry.

Still,

Half-finished as you are,

You must live with the result.

The next morning,

Villagers notice immediately.

Some are impressed,

Nodding and murmuring about your bravery.

Others snicker and whisper that you look like a startled boiled egg.

A child runs past,

Points at you,

And yells,

No feathers,

Before darting away.

You attempt to scowl,

But without brows the expression falls flat,

Leaving your face an unreadable blank.

This,

Perhaps,

Is the true purpose.

No one can tell if you are furious or serene,

And so they assume the latter.

Of course,

Fashions are never without contradiction.

As you stumble through your experiment,

You hear rumors from a neighboring town where women darken their brows with soot to achieve the illusion of drama and intensity.

While your village plucks away until their faces gleam bald,

Others are painting thick black arches that make every expression look like thunder.

A traveler passes through wearing exactly such soot-painted brows,

And your neighbors nearly faint in horror at the sight.

She,

In turn,

Looks at them as though they are naked moles.

You realize,

With some despair,

That no matter what you do,

You are destined to be wrong somewhere.

By week's end,

The true absurdities arrive.

One widow claims that shaving off her brows cured her headaches.

A farmer swears that his wife's browless stare frightened wolves away from the flock.

Someone insists that eyebrows catch disease and should be removed for health.

The priest,

Not to be outdone,

Gives a sermon on humility while his own sister sits front row,

Her brow space gleaming like freshly polished marble.

The contradiction is delicious,

But no one mentions it aloud.

You,

Meanwhile,

Adjust to your new reality.

Wind seems to sting your eyes more often,

And when you attempt to flirt at market,

Your expression slides into something more akin to bewildered goose.

Still,

You hold your head high because this is what beauty demands.

You imagine future generations looking back in awe at this noble sacrifice.

In truth,

You know they will probably laugh,

But tonight,

As the candle flickers and you examine your bald reflection once more,

You tell yourself that perhaps Lady Isolde was right.

Perhaps without brows,

You do see God more clearly,

Or perhaps it is simply the result of all the tears you shed plucking them out.

Either way,

You have committed yourself,

And tomorrow,

The village will gossip all over again.

Teeth are the most treacherous part of beauty because no one really has them in the way you expect.

A smile here is less gleaming pearl and more medieval ruin,

Each tooth standing at a different angle like drunk soldiers on parade.

White teeth exist,

But they are rare,

Usually belonging to children too young to have ruined theirs with ale,

Bread grit,

Or general survival.

By adulthood,

The teeth you have left are a patchwork,

And the village agrees to politely pretend that this is attractive.

There are trends,

Of course.

Once sugar makes its way into noble circles,

The strangest fashion arises,

Blackened teeth as a status symbol.

Only the rich can afford enough sweets to rot their mouths into charcoal stumps,

So black teeth become a way of boasting.

You overhear one lady at market laughing behind her fan,

Showing off gums that look like a burnt log.

Her companions coo with admiration,

Insisting that her decay proves her wealth.

You marvel at this logic,

Then watch as a peasant with naturally blackened teeth from neglect tries to join in,

Only to be shooed away for being inauthentic.

It seems even rotting must be done with style.

Your own teeth are an embarrassment.

Too many have cracked from biting bread baked with grit,

And one molar wiggles ominously whenever you chew.

You try rubbing them with ashes,

As advised by the wise woman,

But this only leaves you tasting fireplace for hours.

Charcoal is another remedy,

And after a week of scrubbing,

Your teeth do look darker,

But not in the glamorous,

Noble fashion,

More in the ate-the-chimney sort of way.

Still,

You practice smiling in your water bowl reflection,

Hoping the dim light will hide the truth.

Dentists,

If you can call them that,

Offer their services with alarming cheer.

You witness one set up a stool in the market square,

A pair of iron pliers gleaming at his side.

His cure for every ailment,

Ache,

Rot,

Swelling,

Is simple.

Remove the offending tooth.

For bravery,

He prescribes ale,

Both for the patient and for himself.

You stand among the crowd as a farmer sits down,

Gulps two mugs,

And leans back with all the dignity of a condemned man.

The pliers clamp,

The dentist yanks,

And out comes a molar with a squelch that makes your stomach flip.

The farmer roars,

Spits blood into the dirt,

Then raises the tooth like a trophy as the crowd cheers.

Children scramble forward to see the prize,

While the farmer's wife swoons at the sight of her husband's courage,

Or possibly from the smell.

Later,

You meet a man who grins proudly to show off the three molars he has left.

He insists that their survival proves both his strength and God's favor.

You nod politely,

Though you cannot help but notice they wobble in time with his laughter.

Another woman brags that she can crack nuts with her remaining front teeth,

A party trick that both impresses and horrifies.

Here,

Dental pride is less about quantity or quality and more about sheer persistence.

At feasts,

You notice how nobles manage their smiles.

Many conceal their mouths behind napkins,

Goblets,

Or coy gestures,

As though teeth are secrets too scandalous to reveal.

Others,

Bolder,

Flash their blackened gums like a badge of honor.

You sit chewing carefully,

Praying your loose molar doesn't choose that moment to leap free and land in the stew.

When a knight across the table winks at you with a grin full of gaps,

You realize that everyone is performing the same balancing act of confidence and decay.

Superstitions abound.

Some claim toothaches are caused by tiny worms gnawing inside the enamel,

And remedies range from burning herbs to chanting charms over your mouth.

You watch one poor soul hold a candle by his jaw,

Swearing he saw a worm wriggle out before collapsing from the pain.

Others swear that burying an extracted tooth beneath the threshold of your house will prevent evil spirits from entering,

Though this simply makes you worry about accidentally stepping on a hidden graveyard of molars.

One evening,

You try to imagine what future poets will say about beauty.

Will they sing of bright eyes,

Flowing hair,

Delicate hands,

And teeth like broken tombstones?

Will some troubadour compose a ballad about the brave knight whose gums were as noble as his deeds?

The thought makes you laugh until your loose molar gives a warning twinge,

Silencing you.

Beauty,

It seems,

Is a game of survival,

And if you can flash even a partial smile without scaring children,

Perhaps you are already ahead.

As you lie in bed that night,

Tongue prodding nervously at the gaps in your mouth,

You accept that teeth are not about perfection here.

They are about endurance.

Whether black,

White,

Or missing entirely,

Each one that remains is a relic of all the bread,

Battles,

And bad decisions that came before.

Tomorrow,

Someone will boast about theirs again,

And you will nod,

Knowing your own mouth is less a shrine to beauty than a battlefield scarred by time.

Still,

You smile into the darkness,

Gap-toothed and weary,

Because in this world,

Even three molars can make a person proud.

The perfect lady is not perfect in the way you first imagine.

She is not slim,

Swift,

Or sun-kissed.

No,

Here perfection is measured in flesh.

To be admired,

You must carry the sort of plumpness that suggests your family has so much bread and butter that you could eat steadily through a famine.

Round cheeks mean prosperity,

Wide hips mean fertility,

And a soft belly under silks means you have servants to do all the heavy lifting.

To be thin is to be tragic,

Pitiable,

Suspiciously close to starvation.

The perfect lady should wobble ever so slightly when she walks,

Her body whispering luxury with every step.

Hands are another battlefield.

Yours are too scarred,

Too freckled,

Too familiar with rope and wood.

True beauty demands hands pale and soft,

Untouched by work,

As though they have never even considered milking a cow or carrying water.

At feasts,

Noblewomen raise goblets with fingers so white and delicate they might snap under the weight of the wine itself.

They smile knowingly,

As if the paleness proves divine blessing.

You try to mimic the gesture at home,

Cradling a goose feather with the daintiness of a duchess.

It immediately slips,

Drifts into your nose,

And makes you sneeze so violently that the entire bird flaps off indignantly.

You clutch your reddened face.

Certain no poet will ever immortalize you in verse.

Clothing helps complete the illusion.

Gowns with endless fabric,

Embroidery thick enough to stand upright,

And sleeves that trail so long they double as floor sweepers.

To wear such garments means you do not need to stoop or bend or run.

You exist to be admired like a tapestry.

You watch one noblewoman attempt to sit while wrapped in fur and velvet,

Only to teeter like an overstuffed pudding before toppling into her chair with a thud.

The hall pretends not to notice,

Though you hear muffled laughter from the servants.

You realize beauty demands not just wealth,

But also balance,

For one wrong tilt could ruin the whole performance.

The face,

Too,

Must contribute,

Pale as cream,

Ideally powdered,

With cheeks kissed lightly by berry stains to suggest health without implying outdoor labor.

The perfect lady does not tan.

Tanning suggests fields,

Toil,

And sweat,

None of which are suitable for someone who must be admired for existing.

To keep pale,

Women shun the sun like it is the plague,

Hiding beneath hoods and veils while muttering curses at its audacity.

You try staying indoors for two days,

But the smell of your cottage convinces you that sunlight,

Even at the cost of beauty,

Is sometimes necessary.

Behavior seals the image.

A perfect lady moves slowly,

Deliberately,

As though each gesture has been rehearsed.

She nods instead of laughs,

Smiles instead of snorts,

And drifts rather than stomps.

You,

On the other hand,

Cannot resist clapping when amused or tripping over your hem when distracted.

When you attempt a graceful curtsy,

You wobble and nearly topple into a trough.

Children nearby shriek with laughter,

And you wonder if perhaps you are destined to be admired for comedy rather than charm.

Yet,

You also see the cracks in this perfection.

Behind the veils and powders,

The noble women itch at lice.

Beneath the layers of velvet,

They sweat profusely.

Their servants whisper about secret feasts devoured late at night,

About belts unbuckled when no one is watching.

You realize that beauty is both a performance and a prison,

Where the smallest mistake invites ridicule.

A too-large bite of bread,

A clumsy step,

Or a sunburned nose can undo months of cultivated elegance.

Still,

You cannot deny the spell.

When the ladies sweep through the market,

Everyone stops.

Even the pigs pause in their rooting.

Villagers sigh and murmur,

Longing for a touch of such grace.

Poets compare them to lilies,

Moons,

Doves,

Angels.

You catch yourself staring,

Too,

Jealous not of their wealth but of the effortless way they make others believe.

And perhaps that is the true perfection,

Not the plumpness,

Not the pale hands,

Not even the gowns,

But the ability to convince the world that this is beauty and that they were born to embody it.

That night,

You sit at your table and practice again with the goose feather.

You lift it delicately,

Balancing it between your fingers,

Trying to conjure grace.

The bird eyes you from the corner,

Ready to attack if you sneeze again.

You stare at your own reflection in the darkened window,

Cheeks unevenly flushed,

Hair slightly tangled,

And hands still rough from work.

You sigh,

But then smile,

Because even if you look nothing like the perfect lady,

At least you can laugh.

And laughter,

Though rarely praised in ballads,

Feels far more comfortable than holding your breath for beauty.

The perfect man,

At least in the eyes of this century,

Is built less like a poet and more like a well-fed ox.

His chest should be broad enough to serve as a small dining table,

His calves thick enough to trample mud without sinking,

And his posture unwaveringly knightly,

As though he were permanently posing for a tapestry.

When such a figure strides through the square,

Villagers nudge one another and murmur with admiration,

While you stare and wonder how on earth a human manages to look like a barrel turned upright.

Strength is beauty,

But it is a very specific strength.

It is not the wiry endurance of field laborers whose backs hunch from years of carrying wood and hay.

That sort of strength is practical,

Useful,

And therefore dismissed.

True beauty in men is measured by the sort of bulk that announces he has swung a sword rather than a scythe,

That his arms were sculpted in jousts and not in threshing.

To be admired,

He must be capable of lifting a lady onto a horse in one smooth motion.

Even if he has never so much as owned a horse,

His shoulders are expected to carry armor,

Or at the very least,

The heavy expectations of looking like he might someday wear armor.

Of course,

Grooming plays its own role,

Though the bar is hilariously low.

The perfect man does not need to smell like roses.

He merely needs to smell less offensive than the pigsty.

A rinse in the river once a month,

A dab of vinegar water,

And perhaps a sprig of herbs stuffed under the tunic is enough to inspire awe.

You watch one man at market who has clearly discovered rosemary,

Strutting proudly as though he carries a garden upon his person.

The crowd nods appreciatively,

Never mind that his boots are caked with manure.

Another man,

Less fortunate,

Arrives smelling of wet sheep and is promptly ignored no matter how thick his calves appear.

You take note.

In this world,

Smelling faintly edible is preferable to smelling distinctly alive.

Facial hair is optional,

But risky.

A well-tended beard can make a man appear wise,

Rugged,

Or knightly.

An untamed mess,

However,

Makes him indistinguishable from a hedge.

The perfect man keeps his beard oiled,

Combed,

Perhaps even dusted with flour to give the illusion of age and gravitas.

You once overheard a group of young women debating whether a knight's beard looked more like noble silver or pigeon droppings.

The disagreement nearly ended in violence,

Proving that beauty is as dangerous as it is subjective.

You,

Naturally,

Attempt to imitate the knightly bearing.

You square your shoulders,

Puff out your chest,

And imagine yourself stepping proudly into the square,

Admired by all.

The effect lasts precisely three seconds,

Until your foot lands squarely in manure.

You wobble,

Flail,

And collapse into a pose that resembles less hero of the realm and more confused scarecrow.

The pigs snort in laughter,

Villagers smirk,

And your attempt at glory dissolves into the stink of your boots.

You scrape furiously at the ground,

Muttering that even true knights must have slipped once or twice,

Though no ballad ever remembers those moments.

Still,

The image of the perfect man endures.

At feasts,

He is the one who carves meat with a flourish,

Lifting the knife as though it were a sword.

At tournaments,

He charges with confidence,

Even if his lance wobbles.

At church,

He kneels with a solemnity that suggests his calves could support a cathedral.

Everyone whispers that such men are destined for greatness,

That their very posture guarantees divine favor.

You remain skeptical,

Yet you cannot deny the way eyes follow them,

The way villagers speak of them long after they depart.

The irony,

Of course,

Is that even the perfect man suffers.

His armor leaves bruises,

His posture aches by night,

And his broad chest requires endless food to maintain.

You once overhear a knight groaning to his squire that he would give anything to hunch like a farmer just for one evening's rest.

The squire nods sympathetically,

Though you can see he envies the knight's form all the same.

Beauty,

It seems,

Is a burden carried on shoulders broad enough to bear it.

As you sit on your stool that night,

Rubbing the mud from your boots and trying once again to square your posture,

You realize you will never look like a tapestry knight.

Your calves are stubbornly practical,

Your chest refuses to inflate beyond its limits,

And your attempt at grooming leaves you smelling vaguely of turnips.

But then you laugh,

Because even if you are no perfect man,

At least you are not forced to spend your life worrying about the angle of your stance or the girth of your calves.

Beauty may belong to them,

But freedom,

Perhaps,

Belongs to you.

The medieval makeup kit is a marvel of both creativity and recklessness,

For it contains the very tools that can make you radiant or,

With equal ease,

Make you very dead.

You are told that to be beautiful you must appear pale,

Luminous,

And faintly otherworldly,

Like a statue carved from marble.

Unfortunately,

Nature insists on giving people complexions that actually reflect their lives.

Ruddy cheeks from labor,

Freckles from the sun,

Sallow undertones from bad bread,

So everyone turns to paint.

White lead is the foundation of choice,

A substance mined directly from the earth and smeared generously across faces,

As though God himself made rocks specifically to be worn as skin.

When you first try it,

The paste is cold,

Chalky,

And oddly sweet-smelling.

You smooth it onto your face with trembling fingers,

Watching your reflection pale into ghostliness.

For a moment,

You are thrilled.

Your skin glows with a porcelain sheen,

Smooth and perfect.

Then the tingling begins,

Followed by a faint itch.

You remember hearing rumors that lead seeps into the body,

Rotting it from the inside,

But by then,

You are already invested.

Beauty,

You decide,

Is worth at least a few strange rashes.

After all,

Every noblewoman you see wears the same gleam,

And none of them seem concerned that their beauty is slowly poisoning them.

They even brag about it.

"'Better to die admired than live unnoticed,

' one lady sniffs,

Her face already cracking under the weight of her own vanity.

Of course,

Pallor alone will not do.

To suggest that your blood still circulates,

You must add a flush to the cheeks.

Berries are the favored choice,

Crushed into little pots and smeared on the skin.

You watch a girl at market dab strawberries against her face,

Insisting the seeds exfoliate,

Though you suspect she has simply smeared dessert upon herself.

You try the technique at home,

And for a few brief seconds,

Your reflection glows with vitality.

Then the juice dribbles down your chin and stains your tunic,

Giving the impression not of health,

But of a botched execution.

You scrub furiously with water,

Leaving your cheeks raw,

Which ironically achieves the very look you were after in the first place.

Eyeliner comes in the form of soot.

Some swear by lamp black,

Carefully scraped from candle stubs,

While others use ashes from the hearth.

You attempt the latter,

Holding your breath as you dab the dark dust along your lashes.

Immediately,

A speck falls into your eye,

And you yelp,

Tears streaming.

The result is less sultry mystery and more tragic chimney,

Sweep.

You try again,

Determined,

But the soot clings unevenly,

Smudging in streaks.

Just as you begin to look vaguely presentable,

You sneeze,

The soot explodes across your face in wild lines,

And you stare into your reflection in horror.

You do not look like a noble lady.

You do not even look like a servant.

You look like a demonic jester who crawled out of a coal mine.

The village notices.

As you emerge from your cottage,

Children stop their games to point and giggle.

One woman gasps,

Clutching her chest,

And mutters a prayer against evil spirits.

Even the chickens scatter,

Convinced you are some new form of predator.

You rush back inside,

Scrubbing frantically with water,

But the soot only spreads,

Leaving you blotchy and streaked.

Eventually,

You give up,

Collapsing on your stool with the despair of someone defeated not by war,

But by cosmetics.

Yet despite your failure,

You see others succeed,

Or at least believe they do.

At church,

The pews gleam with powdered faces,

Rosy cheeks,

And darkened eyes,

As though the saints themselves have descended to worship.

No one mentions the faint smell of vinegar and ash that fills the air.

Nobles strut through feasts with painted perfection,

Sipping wine while their skin cracks and flakes beneath the lead.

Some even touch up their paint mid-meal,

Casually smearing poison across their mouths between bites of mutton.

You sit in the corner,

Eating plain bread,

Wondering if you should admire them or fear them.

What strikes you most is the contradiction.

Everyone knows the paint is dangerous,

Yet everyone insists on wearing it.

People laugh at neighbors who dare to show their natural faces,

Mocking freckles,

Blemishes,

And wrinkles.

A woman with a bare face is considered careless,

Perhaps even unclean,

And so the choice is no choice at all.

You either glow with the brilliance of lead or fade into obscurity with the honesty of your own skin.

That night,

You examine yourself once more in your warped mirror.

The soot has mostly washed away,

Though faint smudges linger like bruises.

Your cheeks are still flushed from scrubbing,

And your skin feels oddly tender.

You try to imagine yourself at a feast,

Cheeks painted,

Eyes darkened,

Lips stained with berry juice.

Would anyone believe you were beautiful,

Or would they see through the mask to the anxious,

Itchy figure beneath?

You cannot decide.

Still,

You reach for the pot of lead again,

Smearing a little across your cheekbones,

Telling yourself it is just for practice.

You cough as the dust fills your nose,

Sneeze again,

And this time manage to send powder across the room where it settles ominously on the bread.

You stare at it for a long moment,

Then laugh.

If beauty is poisoning you from the outside,

Why not from the inside as well?

After all,

It seems that here,

Glowing and dying are almost the same thing.

Cleanliness is a rare and suspicious thing.

To bathe too often is to invite sickness,

They say,

For everyone knows water seeps into your pores and drowns you from within.

Thus,

Most people bathe only a few times a year,

And the rest of the time,

They disguise the evidence with perfumes,

Herbs,

And outright lies.

The streets smell of humanity baked in wool,

Yet everyone insists the sweet scent of lavender lingers in the air.

You sniff,

And all you catch is smoke,

Manure,

And desperation.

Perfume is not a luxury,

It is survival.

Pouches of dried lavender dangle from necks,

Belts,

And even sewn into sleeves,

So that every movement sends a faint cloud of floral distraction into the world.

You watch a woman at church adjust her veil and nearly choke as three lavender bags tumble out,

Releasing such a cloud that the priest pauses mid-sermon.

Another favors rosemary,

Stuffing sprigs into her bodice until she resembles a walking stew.

Vinegar washes are another favorite,

Splashed on the body in hopes of killing both stink and sins,

Though the result makes everyone smell faintly like sour pickles.

You try it once,

But the sting in your armpits convinces you that vinegar is best left on cabbage.

Rosewater is the most coveted,

Brewed in tiny batches by those who can afford both the petals and the time to distill them.

Bottles are sold for ridiculous sums,

And everyone claims theirs is pure.

You acquire a vial from a traveling merchant who swears on St.

Agnes' bones that it will make you smell like heaven itself.

You unstopper it eagerly,

Inhale,

And recoil instantly.

It does not smell like roses.

It smells suspiciously like goat.

The merchant insists it is a rare Damascus blend,

While the goat tied to his cart stares at you knowingly.

You dab a little on your wrist anyway,

Because what else can you do?

Later,

Someone compliments you,

Though their expression wavers between delight and confusion as if they cannot decide whether you smell like a garden or a barnyard.

Men are no better.

Knights reek of sweat trapped under armor.

Their so-called noble scent closer to wet iron than musk.

Farmers disguise themselves with handfuls of mint crumpled and shoved into tunics,

Though the effect fades quickly and leaves them smelling like bruised salad.

One man boasts that he rubs garlic on his skin to repel both fleas and women,

And you can confirm it works for at least one of those.

At feasts,

The air is a battle of scents,

Roasting meat,

Spilled ale,

Smoke from torches,

And a faint undertone of vinegar and wilted herbs.

People call it festive.

You call it unbearable.

The irony is that everyone pretends not to notice.

To acknowledge a smell is to admit that you yourself might reek,

So instead they exchange compliments.

How fresh you smell today,

Says one noble woman,

Waving her fan rapidly under her nose.

Why,

Thank you,

Replies another,

Discreetly pressing another pouch of lavender into her bodice before she faints.

It is a grand performance,

And everyone plays their part,

Even as the truth lingers in the air heavier than incense.

You try your own experiment one morning,

Stuffing sage and lavender into every pocket and seam you can find.

You step outside,

Confident that you radiate freshness,

Only for a neighbor to squint at you suspiciously.

Smells like my cooking fire,

She mutters,

Then asks if you've been rolling in herbs.

You protest,

Insisting you smell divine,

But a sudden breeze reveals the truth.

All your carefully arranged sachets have burst into powder,

Leaving you looking and smelling like a failed spice merchant.

Children trail behind you,

Laughing as you shed rosemary sprigs onto the path.

And yet,

Despite all this,

You understand the appeal.

For a fleeting moment,

When someone walks by trailing faint rose water,

Or even faint goat water,

You are distracted from the reality of sweat and grime.

You imagine yourself in a perfumed garden,

A noble court,

Anywhere but here.

Scent,

Even false scent,

Offers escape.

You cling to that thought as you dab vinegar behind your ears,

Ignoring the sting,

And hope that today you will pass for fresh rather than fermented.

By evening,

The perfumes mingle into a haze.

You sit among your neighbors,

All of you wrapped in lavender,

Vinegar,

Herbs,

And deceit.

The truth is,

No one smells clean,

But together you create an illusion strong enough to almost believe.

You breathe it in,

Close your eyes,

And let the lie carry you,

Because here,

In this world,

Beauty is never the absence of filth.

It is the art of pretending it isn't there.

Your hands betray you before you even open your mouth.

They are the first thing people notice after your face,

Because here,

Hands tell all.

Soft,

Pale,

And unblemished palms signal nobility,

A life of leisure where the heaviest thing you have ever lifted is a goblet.

Calloused,

Rough,

And stained fingers betray peasantry,

Proof that you have wrestled with ropes,

Soil,

Animals,

And possibly your own poorly thatched roof.

You can powder your face until you glow like marble,

But one glance at your hands will remind everyone exactly where you belong.

At market,

Women flaunt their fingers like jewels.

One noble woman extends her hand to a merchant,

Her palms so smooth it reflects light.

He bows over it as though it were a holy relic,

Though you notice she keeps it carefully still,

Terrified of letting the rough cloth brush against her fragile skin.

Meanwhile,

A milkmaid walks past with red,

Cracked hands that look as though they've been soaking in brine for days.

Children call her milkmaid palms,

And though she shrugs,

The words follow her like burrs stuck in wool.

You realize that mockery of hands is a sport here,

Sharper than any sword fight,

Because it cuts straight to the truth of your existence.

You try to soften your own.

That night,

You soak them in warm water,

Rub them with stale butter,

Even scrub them with ashes in hopes of creating some illusion of refinement.

The butter leaves you smelling like rancid cheese,

The ashes stain your fingernails black,

And the water only prunes your skin into wrinkles.

By morning,

Your hands look worse than before.

You catch your reflection in the basin and groan,

Convinced that no one will ever mistake you for noble.

Gloves are,

Of course,

The solution.

Nobles wear them from dawn until dusk,

Hiding imperfections beneath silk,

Velvet,

Or even fine leather.

You have none of these things.

Instead,

You contemplate stealing curtains from the manor hall,

Cutting them into glove shapes,

And stitching them together in secret.

You imagine strolling through the square with your improvised finery,

Hands swaddled in stolen brocade,

Admired by all.

Then you remember your sewing skills are closer to bird's nest,

Held together with desperation than delicate embroidery,

And the vision collapses.

Besides,

You suspect someone would recognize their missing window hangings and drag you out by your collar.

Still,

The dream persists.

You experiment by wrapping your hands in scraps of linen,

Pretending they are gloves,

But the effect is less aristocrat and more invalid.

People ask if you've injured yourself,

And when you try to explain that you're cultivating softness,

They laugh until tears run down their faces.

Even the priest chuckles,

Though he coughs afterward to disguise it as a holy wheeze.

Yet you cannot stop noticing how much hands matter.

At feasts,

The ladies gesture gracefully,

Fingers arched like swan's necks.

Every movement rehearsed to display their softness.

Men slam tankards on the table,

Their knuckles broad and unmarred,

Proof that they fight in tournaments rather than chop firewood.

You sit quietly,

Hiding your hands under the bench,

Terrified that someone will notice the calluses from carrying buckets and the blisters from tugging stubborn weeds.

One day,

You overhear a young squire boast that he could tell a woman's worth simply by feeling her palm.

His friends roar with laughter,

Though you cannot tell if they agree or if they are just amused by his confidence.

He goes on to claim that his future wife will have hands so soft they could not possibly have known work.

And you picture him weeping when his bride inevitably picks up a broom.

The arrogance is infuriating,

But also revealing.

Hands,

More than faces or gowns,

Seem to dictate the story people tell about you.

So you start wearing your calluses like armor.

When someone sneers at your rough palms,

You spread your fingers wide and declare they are proof of survival,

Of labor,

Of feeding yourself without relying on stolen curtains or poisoned powders.

Some villagers nod in agreement,

Though others only laugh harder.

Beauty,

After all,

Is not about honesty.

It is about convincing others of a lie so well that they forget the truth exists.

That night,

As you lie in bed staring at your hands in the flickering candlelight,

You sigh.

They are cracked,

Worn,

And marked by every task you've ever done.

No poet will ever compare them to lilies,

No knight will ever kiss them without flinching,

And no one will ever mistake them for noble.

Yet they are yours,

Stubbornly,

Undeniably,

Proof that you have lived.

You close your fists,

Rough against rough,

And think that perhaps beauty is not in the softness but in the strength to keep using them,

Curtainless,

Gloveless,

And unashamed.

Beauty here is less about what you are born with and more about what you are willing to smear across your skin without crying out in horror.

The shelves of apothecaries and the baskets of wise women overflow with concoctions that promise radiance,

Allure,

And eternal youth.

You quickly realize that most of these recipes are indistinguishable from poisons,

But no one seems deterred.

Mercury and lead are stirred into pastes as though they were flour and butter.

Frog bile is bottled like a precious tonic.

Anything that burns,

Stings,

Or smells like death is hailed as proof that it must be working.

You watch a neighbor dab mercury onto her temples,

Insisting it smooths wrinkles.

Her face does shine afterward,

But in the way a wet stone shines before a storm.

Another woman brags that she rubs lead paste onto her cheeks nightly to preserve freshness,

Though her lips tremble as she says it,

And her hands shake from what you suspect is not age but poison.

People nod approvingly,

Calling her dedicated.

You stare,

Wondering if beauty is a contest,

To see who can survive their own remedies the longest.

The frog bile is perhaps the most curious.

A vendor at market sells it in tiny jars,

Claiming it purges blemishes when rubbed across the skin.

He demonstrates by smearing a streak onto his own cheek,

Smiling brightly as everyone recoils from the stench.

See,

He cries,

The glow of youth.

In truth,

The glow is just the green smear catching the sunlight,

But the crowd murmurs with interest anyway.

You imagine yourself covered in frog slime,

And the thought alone makes you itch.

Then there is the wise woman of your village who peers at your face one afternoon and declares that your skin lacks luster.

Before you can protest,

She presses a jar into your hands.

Inside is slug slime,

Glistening and thick.

She insists that if you coat yourself with it,

You will gleam like polished ivory.

You hold the jar at arm's length,

Gagging slightly,

And debate whether glowing green truly counts as glowing.

She eyes you sternly until you nod,

Though the slug slime remains firmly sealed.

Later,

You watch her smear it onto her own arms,

And indeed they do shine,

Though more like the belly of a fish than a noble lady's radiance.

Everywhere you turn,

Someone is brewing another potion of doom,

Vinegar and ashes for whitening teeth,

Urine mixed with herbs to soften hands,

Sulfur fumes inhaled to purge the complexion.

You stumble across a young man sitting with his head in a bucket of smoke,

Convinced it will cleanse him from within.

He emerges coughing,

Eyes watering,

And declares himself reborn.

You try not to laugh as he stumbles blindly into a fence.

You experiment cautiously because the pressure is constant.

If you do nothing,

People accuse you of neglect.

If you do something wrong,

They accuse you of madness.

One night,

You smear a little lead paste along your cheekbones,

Careful not to overdo it.

Your skin feels oddly tight,

But in the dim light of your mirror,

You think perhaps you look noble.

Then you sneeze and the paste cracks,

Leaving jagged lines like dried mud.

You resemble less a lady of refinement and more a statue left outside for too many winters.

You scrub it off before anyone can see,

Though your skin tingles for hours afterward.

What makes it all stranger is that everyone is aware of the dangers.

People whisper about women whose faces have pitted and blistered from mercury.

They gossip about men who have lost their teeth from strange elixirs.

They mourn the noblewoman who turned a frightening shade of blue after months of lead treatments.

And yet,

At the next feast,

There they are again,

Painted and polished,

Sipping wine while their skin quietly deteriorates.

The contradiction is maddening,

But beauty demands sacrifice,

And sacrifice rarely asks permission.

By morning,

You have decided to stick with simple remedies,

A splash of water,

A smear of berry juice,

Nothing more.

But then you catch sight of Lady Margaret sweeping into church,

Her cheeks glowing like marble,

Her skin so smooth it looks carved,

And you feel the sting of envy,

Never mind that her color comes from poison,

Never mind that her hands tremble when she clasps them in prayer.

Everyone stares at her as though she is divine while you hide your calloused hands behind your cloak.

That night,

You find yourself staring at the jar of slug slime again.

It gleams in the candlelight,

Daring you.

You unscrew the lid,

Wrinkle your nose,

And dip a tentative finger inside.

The slime clings stubbornly,

Stretching like string.

You smear it on your cheek and wait.

The sensation is cold,

Wet,

And faintly horrifying.

You peer at your reflection,

Expecting transformation,

And see only a person who looks like they've lost a fight with a snail.

You laugh until your stomach aches,

Wiping it off quickly before it dries.

And yet,

In the morning,

Your skin does look a little different,

Not radiant,

Not divine,

But perhaps softer.

You wonder if the wise woman was right after all,

Or if you are simply delirious from the smell.

Either way,

You know the village will keep chasing its beauty through bottles of bile,

Powders of poison,

And jars of slime.

You will,

Too,

Though you promise yourself you'll draw the line before frog bile,

Probably.

Bathing is not the ritual of refreshment you once imagined,

But rather a gamble with death,

Or so the villagers insist.

Water,

They say,

Seeps into your pores,

Weakens the body,

And invites illness straight into your bones.

To immerse yourself regularly is to flirt with disaster.

Weekly baths?

Absurd.

Monthly baths?

Outrageous.

Yearly baths?

Perhaps if the mood strikes and the priest doesn't frown too deeply.

More often than not,

People live their entire lives in a haze of smoke,

Sweat,

And perfumes,

With the tub sitting unused except for brewing ale or hiding turnips.

You hear stories of kings who bathed twice in their lives,

Once at birth and once at marriage,

And their longevity is praised as proof that avoidance of water preserves health.

Commoners repeat these tales with grave nods,

Conveniently ignoring the constant coughs and sores that plague them anyway.

You suggest to one neighbor that perhaps washing more might help,

And she looks at you with horror,

Clutching her chest as though you've proposed consorting with demons.

Water makes you sick,

She hisses,

And then goes back to rubbing rosemary on her armpits.

So,

Cleanliness comes by other means.

You see men scraping their skin with knives to remove the top layer of grime,

And women rubbing themselves with rough cloth until they glow red.

Children roll in grass and declare themselves clean afterward,

While priests recommend smoke from incense as a holy disinfectant.

You,

Desperate to improve your own scent,

Take to scrubbing with moss,

Damp and spongy,

Stolen from the side of a well.

It leaves you smelling faintly of swamp,

But you hope someone will mistake it for a fashionable woodland fragrance.

You even practice introducing yourself with a subtle gesture of your moss-scrubbed arm,

Praying for compliments.

Bathhouses do exist in some towns,

Though they are frowned upon as dens of sin.

Steam rises from them,

Laughter and whispers float out,

And the pious declare them dangerous to both body and soul.

Yet people sneak inside anyway,

Desperate for warmth and the chance to soak away a year's worth of sweat.

You pass one once,

Catch the heady mix of soap,

Sweat and ale,

And feel a pang of longing.

But the price is steep,

And you know you'd emerge not purified,

But ruined by gossip.

Everyone would whisper that you were one of those bathhouse types,

Which is somehow worse than smelling like goats.

Water itself is not always the enemy,

Only the full submersion of it.

Washing hands,

Faces,

And feet is acceptable,

Even expected,

Though it is done quickly,

Like a thief stealing moments.

Some nobles dab their foreheads with scented cloths dipped in rosewater,

While peasants splash their faces with cold well water and call it done.

You attempt something similar one morning,

Pouring a bucket over your head in a burst of daring.

For a moment it feels heavenly,

Crisp and bracing.

Then you sneeze,

Shiver,

And nearly fall over from the shock.

Your neighbor,

Spotting your wet hair,

Gasps and demands to know if you wish to catch the plague.

You mutter something about piety and retreat indoors,

Dripping onto the floor like a guilty criminal.

Children,

As always,

Turn necessity into play.

They leap into rivers during summer,

Shrieking with delight,

While mothers shriek back that they'll drown or sicken.

They emerge muddy but joyous,

Then roll in grass to dry.

Adults scowl at their recklessness,

But secretly envy the freedom of it.

You envy it too,

Watching from the bank,

Wishing you had the courage to dive in without fear of whispers or illness.

By evening,

The scents of the village mingle into one overwhelming perfume.

Sweat,

Smoke,

Animals,

Herbs,

And faint vinegar.

You sit by the fire,

Sniffing yourself,

And deciding you are no worse than anyone else.

Your moss experiment has left faint streaks of green on your arms,

And though no one compliments you,

No one recoils either.

That counts as a victory.

You lean back,

Sighing,

And think,

Perhaps cleanliness is less about water and more about convincing others that you are no filthier than they are.

In this world,

That might be the closest thing to beauty you'll ever achieve.

The tooth powder is not so much a science as it is a gamble,

One in which every brush is a spin of fate's wheel.

People here insist on keeping their mouths clean,

Or at least less filthy,

By rubbing their teeth with substances that look more suited to fueling a fire than preserving a smile.

Charcoal is popular,

Ground into dust and smeared across enamel until every mouth resembles a chimney sweep.

Ashes from the hearth serve as another option,

Leaving behind a taste so bitter that you wonder if beauty is worth the suffering.

Crushed eggshells are considered luxurious,

Though you can't shake the feeling that you're gnawing on breakfast backwards.

You witness one villager grinning proudly at market,

His teeth black as coal.

He beams,

Insisting he has discovered the secret to freshness,

And calls it his minty smile.

You are too polite to tell him that the only thing minty about his mouth is the faint scent of the ale he drank earlier.

Still,

The crowd admires his confidence,

Nodding approvingly as though soot itself has become the new pearl.

You wonder if perhaps that is the trick.

Convincing others that your disaster is actually fashion,

Your own attempts are less successful.

Inspired by rumors that sour milk softens plaque,

You take a cup and dip your rag into it,

Rubbing your teeth with grim determination.

The taste is immediate and catastrophic,

Coating your tongue with rancid slime.

You gag,

Spit,

And nearly retch into the bucket,

Realizing too late that whoever recommended this remedy must have been a sworn enemy.

For hours afterward,

You burp curdled air,

And your mouth smells like the underside of a cheese wheel.

No one compliments you,

Though one child does ask if you've been kissing cows.

The variety of recipes is endless.

Some mix ashes with salt,

Grinding until the grains scrape across enamel like sandpaper.

Others swear by herbs,

Pounding mint and sage into powders that taste faintly medicinal but leave the gums raw.

A daring few experiment with urine,

Claiming its acidity whitens teeth,

Though you pray never to meet them up close.

The point is not hygiene,

Really,

But the performance of trying.

If you are seen scrubbing,

No matter with what,

People will assume you care about appearances,

And caring in itself is half the beauty.

You overhear an old man explaining proudly that his teeth have survived 60 years thanks to a regimen of soot and eggshells.

He opens his mouth wide to display them,

Revealing precisely three survivors clinging to his gums like battered soldiers.

The audience gasps in awe rather than horror,

Praising his diligence.

You bite your tongue to keep from asking what happened to the other 29.

Sometimes you wonder if the obsession is even about teeth at all.

Smiling is rare,

After all,

Reserved for feasts or mockery.

Most people keep their mouths firmly shut,

Only revealing their dental situation when drunk or boastful.

Yet the powders persist and the rituals continue because even if no one sees your teeth,

You must believe that they could,

At any moment,

Be judged.

You feel it too,

The anxious compulsion to scrape and scrub as though one day a poet might immortalize your grin and verse.

That night,

You sit by the fire with your rag,

Debating which horror to try next.

Charcoal leaves you looking like a demon mid-feast.

Ashes sting,

But at least feel effective.

Eggshells crunch unpleasantly,

Yet somehow give you hope.

You dip cautiously into a mixture of all three,

Rub them across your teeth,

And stare into your warped reflection in a pot of water.

Your smile gleams strangely,

Part shadow,

Part chalk.

You grin wider,

Unsure whether you look noble or cursed,

And laugh because here,

In this world,

Beauty has always been a lottery and you've just bought another losing ticket.

Hair here is not the glossy crown of glory sung about in poems,

But more often a battlefield between oil,

Dirt,

And small armies of lice.

The average scalp gleams not with health but with grease,

And the smell wafting off it could season a stew.

Washing with water is avoided for fear of weakness,

So hair is rarely rinsed,

Only occasionally dusted with flour or herbs in a desperate attempt to disguise the sheen.

You catch yourself wondering whether the shine counts as fashionable luster or just evidence of neglect,

But the truth is plain.

It's both,

Depending on who is staring.

Lice thrive in this world,

Moving through hair like fish in a stream.

People treat them not as pests to be eliminated but as annoyances to be managed,

Like unruly cousins who never leave.

Combs made of bone or wood are treasured possessions,

Passed down like heirlooms.

A fine-tooth comb can command the same respect as silver,

For with it you can drag an afternoon's worth of lice from your head and present them triumphantly to the fire.

You once see two men trade a pig for a particularly well-carved comb,

And neither feels cheated.

In a way,

That comb probably saves more lives than the pig ever would.

For those who can afford to abandon their own hair altogether,

Wigs become salvation.

Nobles wear them proudly,

Enormous constructions perfumed with rosemary and lavender,

Meant to suggest both refinement and immunity to filth.

The wigs are heavy,

Hot,

And suspiciously stiff,

But everyone nods approvingly as they pass.

You notice,

However,

That no one ever touches them.

To lay a hand on a wig is to risk disturbing whatever might be nesting within.

You keep your distance,

Too,

Until one day you watch a noblewoman parade through the square,

Her wig towering and fragrant.

She beams,

Lifting her chin,

Until suddenly the wig shifts,

Not from wind or gesture,

But from movement inside.

A ripple passes through it,

And you realize with dawning horror that the thing is alive.

She carries on as though nothing has happened,

While you stare,

Wide-eyed,

At the elegant monstrosity perched upon her head.

The poorer folk attempt their own remedies,

Usually involving smoke.

Women sit by the fire with cloaks over their heads,

Sweating until lice supposedly flee the fumes.

Men dunk their caps in vinegar and wear them proudly,

As though the sharp tang is proof of cleanliness.

Children run free with tangled mats,

Scratching openly and passing their burdens to one another with gleeful abandon.

You scratch your own scalp reflexively,

Though you're not sure if it's paranoia or infestation.

Perfuming hair is another trick,

Though rosemary is the universal favorite.

People weave sprigs into braids,

Tuck it into caps,

Or rub the oil onto their scalps.

The effect is strange,

A mixture of sweat,

Smoke,

And faint roast chicken.

You test it yourself,

Twining herbs into your hair until you smell like a cooking fire.

A neighbor nods approvingly,

Calling you almost refined,

Though a goat trails after you the rest of the day,

Convinced you are edible.

Wigs,

Perfumes,

And combs may create the illusion of order,

But beneath it all,

The truth remains.

Hair is wild,

Oily,

And alive with secrets.

You catch sight of your own reflection in a bucket of water,

Strands sticking up like straw,

And sigh.

You try to pat it flat,

But the grease only shifts,

Clinging stubbornly.

You imagine yourself with a grand wig,

Perfumed and powdered,

But the image falters when you remember the ripple you once saw moving beneath silk curls.

Perhaps it is better to remain plain,

Comb in hand,

Than risk carrying an entire kingdom of vermin on your head.

That night,

You sit by the fire with your borrowed comb,

Dragging it slowly through your hair.

Each scrape brings both relief and dread,

For you never know what you might find.

You tip the comb over the flames,

Watch sparks leap,

And whisper a small prayer of victory.

It is not glamour,

Not radiance,

But survival.

And in this world,

Survival is perhaps the truest form of beauty.

The hut smells like boiled herbs,

Blood,

And resignation.

It's where beauty goes to die,

Or at least to get lanced.

On a three-legged stool sits a woman with a wart the size of a pea on her chin,

Gripping a wooden spoon between her teeth like a knight preparing for battle.

Across from her,

The so-called healer dips a knife into something brown that hisses like it disagrees with its purpose.

People call this medicine.

You call it foreshadowing.

In the corner,

A boy presses a rag to his forehead where a boil has been drained.

He's pale and sweating,

But insists he feels handsome now.

Between shallow breaths,

His mother nods proudly,

Already planning which of her daughter's suitors will be next.

You try not to stare at the streak of pus on the floor,

But your eyes keep finding it like a bad painting in a church.

The healer.

He isn't a doctor.

He's barely a carpenter of flesh.

Claims his technique makes scars elegant.

He demonstrates by pulling down his sleeve and showing a long,

Pale line across his arm,

Which he describes as my masterpiece.

The crowd hums with admiration.

A man at your elbow mutters that his wife thinks scars are masculine,

Like jewelry for men who can't afford gold.

He rolls up his tunic to reveal a puckered oval on his thigh,

Grinning as though it were a badge of nobility.

Boil,

He says.

Cut it myself with a bread knife.

Nearly fainted,

But look at the shape.

It does indeed have a shape.

You nod weakly and reconsider the concept of attractiveness altogether.

In another corner,

A girl waits with a swollen finger,

The nail dark as a plum.

Her friend whispers that she's going to be beautiful after this,

That the swelling shows her humors are strong.

The healer doesn't argue.

He just takes another sip of ale and gestures for her to sit.

Ale doubles as anesthetic here.

People swig it until the world tilts and then let strangers dig at them with knives.

You're offered a mug yourself but decline,

Clutching your stomach and wondering if you'll faint before the girl does.

The tools are a horror,

Knives blackened from the fire,

Tweezers bent like old tongs,

Bits of thread from someone's torn apron.

Everything is wiped on the same rag,

Which looks more like a relic from a battlefield than a cloth.

But no one complains.

They've come here willingly,

Desperate to trim,

Drain,

Slice,

Or scrape their way to what they call improvement.

Beauty is pain,

Yes,

But here beauty is also infection,

Fever,

And a suspicious rash.

A man enters with a bandage across his cheek,

Swaggering like a knight returning from war.

He pulls the cloth away to reveal a new scar,

Red and raw,

Like a line of crimson wax.

Removed a mole,

He announces proudly.

No more whispers about witchcraft for me.

The room murmurs approval.

His chest swells.

He looks like he might bow.

You take one glance at the wound and the floor tilts sharply.

You don't remember deciding to sit.

You only realize you've slid down the wall when a cool draft runs under your collar.

Someone laughs softly and hands you a cup of water,

Which smells faintly of herbs and something else you'd rather not name.

Across the room,

The girl with the swollen finger is biting her lip,

Eyes wide,

While the healer leans over her with his knife.

He murmurs something about courage.

She nods,

Then screams.

Even after the scream fades,

You hear it in your head.

It blends with the hiss of boiling water and the low murmur of gossip.

Which cousin is next?

Which noble tried a new ointment made of snail guts?

Which villager cut off his own wart and buried it under the full moon to ensure it never returns?

You grip your knees and stare at the dirt floor,

Counting breaths.

One,

Two,

Three.

Don't look up,

But curiosity is stronger than caution.

You glance back just in time to see the healer lift the pus-slicked knife,

Mutter something about beauty restored,

And reach for the rag again.

The girl slumps in her chair but smiles faintly through her tears.

Her friends rush to tell her how radiant she looks already.

You swallow hard.

Maybe you are the only one who notices the tremor in her hands,

The gray tinge at the edge of her lips.

Outside,

The air smells of smoke and manure but feels miraculously clean.

You stagger out,

Blinking against the daylight,

And hear the man with the bread knife scar boasting behind you about how many admirers he expects now.

He sounds genuinely happy.

You lean on the fence and breathe until the world steadies.

Somewhere in the back of your mind,

A voice whispers that you came here to watch,

Maybe even to learn.

Instead,

You've learned that fainting is an entirely reasonable response to medieval self-care.

By the time you walk away,

The hut has swallowed another hopeful client.

You don't look back.

The mud squelches under your shoes,

The sky drizzles faintly,

And you imagine your reflection,

Pale,

Queasy,

And very much unscarred.

Perhaps,

You think,

Beauty can wait.

Perhaps it can stay right where it is,

Untouched,

Uncut,

And blissfully free of knives.

Fashion here is less about covering the body and more about broadcasting wealth as loudly as possible,

Like a medieval trumpet that happens to be stitched from cloth.

The brighter the color,

The more expensive the dye,

And the more impressive the statement.

Yellows so vivid they burn the eyes,

Reds so deep they look stolen from the heart of a dragon,

And blues so rare they may as well be painted with ground sapphires.

Wearing such colors is like walking through the market shouting,

Look at me.

I am rich enough to boil plants until they bleed.

Know it.

But color alone does not suffice.

Furs are stitched along every edge.

Ermine for kings,

Squirrel for lesser nobles,

Rabbit for those pretending.

The trims grow so thick they could double as bedding,

And some cloaks are heavy enough to pin the wearer in place.

You witness one unfortunate man wrapped in velvet and lined with fur attempt to descend a staircase,

Only to trip over his own magnificence and vanish in a tumble of fabric.

When he reappears at the bottom,

He is still clutching a goblet and insisting he meant to demonstrate the fullness of his cloak.

The servants are less convinced as they try to haul his drowned figure upright.

Then come the sleeves,

Swollen and monstrous,

Wider than your head and trailing to the floor.

They flap like sails when the wind catches them,

Knocking bread from tables and children from benches.

A noble woman waves to her suitor and accidentally slaps him across the face with her brocade cuff.

He swoons,

Not from injury but from admiration,

For nothing signals elegance like a sleeve capable of committing minor assault.

You try on a borrowed gown once,

Your arms swallowed in yards of fabric,

And immediately knock a jug from the shelf.

It shatters,

And you pretend it was deliberate,

An artistic display of your fashionable power.

No one believes you.

The most daring accessory of all is the train,

A length of fabric trailing behind like the tail of a comet.

Trains can stretch six,

10,

Even 12 feet,

Sweeping dirt,

Ash,

And the occasional small dog in their path.

Nobles glide through halls with attendants tasked solely with arranging their trains,

As if dragging half the castle behind them were a sign of majesty.

You,

Eager to test the effect,

Pin a blanket to your tunic and step proudly through your doorway.

Within seconds,

The blanket tangles around the doorframe,

Yanking you backward so violently you nearly topple.

You flail,

Caught between dignity and defeat,

Until you surrender and crawl free,

Swearing you will never attempt nobility again.

And yet,

Despite the absurdity,

The spectacle works.

People gasp when a lady enters draped in scarlet velvet,

Her sleeves brushing the ground like banners.

Men puff their chests beneath mountains of fur,

Strutting like bears in human form.

Every feast becomes a battlefield where cloth and color duel for dominance,

Each outfit an armored proclamation.

I am wealthier,

Holier,

Stronger,

More enviable than you.

Fashion is not frivolity here.

It is war,

Stitched in silk.

At the end of the day,

You sit by the fire in your plain wool tunic,

Tugging at the loose threads and wondering if anyone would ever admire you in 12 feet of velvet.

Then you picture yourself stuck in another doorway or drowned in your own sleeves and laugh.

Perhaps beauty does not require armor after all.

Perhaps survival in something you can walk in without needing four attendants and a prayer is victory enough.

Jewelry is not just decoration here.

It is ammunition in the endless battle of status.

Gold rings flash on swollen fingers.

Necklaces jingle like chains of command and belts gleam with so much metal they could double as siege weapons.

But the newest and boldest fashion flex sits in the mouth.

Gold teeth caps.

A smile that sparkles is not merely a grin.

It is a declaration that you are so wealthy you can afford to plate your rotting molars instead of letting them fall out.

You see a man at market beam wide revealing two gleaming nuggets where his front teeth should be and the crowd gasps as though Christ himself has returned.

You are torn between admiration and horror because it does look impressive,

But he also whistles faintly every time he talks.

Not everyone can afford gold,

So beads are pressed into service,

Strung around necks,

Wrists,

And even hair.

Bright glass from Venice is most prized,

Each bead a tiny sun catching the light while clay imitations fool only the desperate.

Children barter them like candy,

But nobles pile them until their necks look like strangled rainbows.

You try wearing a string of cheap beads once,

Hoping to dazzle,

But the knot snaps and they scatter across the ground.

You scramble to gather them while villagers stomp them into mud,

And you decide perhaps understated beauty is safer.

Then there are the reliquaries,

Those miniature shrines hung proudly on chains.

They are supposed to hold holy fragments,

A scrap of cloth,

A splinter of wood,

A bone small enough to pass as divine.

Some might actually be authentic,

Most are not.

Still,

To wear one is to display both piety and wealth,

The perfect combination.

You watch a neighbor flaunt a pendant said to contain the toe bone of a saint,

Though no one can remember which one.

Saint who knows?

He calls it proudly,

And everyone nods because to question is to risk looking unholy.

You roll your eyes,

Yet deep down you feel the twist of envy.

Fake or not,

The way people lean in to see his little bone makes you wish you had a saint of your own dangling from your neck.

Jewelry multiplies in absurd directions.

Some men hang bells from their hats so their approach jingles like a parade.

Women sew coins into their gowns until every step clinks like a treasury on the move.

One girl even braids pewter spoons into her hair,

Insisting it shows off her family's wealth.

You pass her in the square,

And she looks both radiant and oddly prepared for dinner.

No one mocks her though because confidence itself seems to be half the beauty.

You meanwhile try to imagine your own fashion flex.

You have no gold for teeth,

No reliquary bone,

Not even a strand of glass beads.

The best you can manage is a string of polished pebbles and a tooth from the pig you slaughtered last winter.

You tie them together,

Hang them proudly,

And step into the square.

The reaction is mixed.

One man snickers,

Another asks if you're starting a new saint cult,

And a child whispers that you look cursed.

You pretend not to hear,

Though later,

In the privacy of your cottage,

You untie the pig tooth and sigh.

Still,

The envy lingers.

When your neighbor grins with his golden caps or jingles his fake saint bone,

The villagers gather,

Admiring the performance.

It doesn't matter if the relic is questionable or the gold is stolen.

What matters is the gleam.

Jewelry here is not truth.

It is theater.

You stare at your bare wrists and plain tunic and wonder if beauty will ever be yours.

But then you laugh,

Because at least your smile,

Crooked though it is,

Doesn't whistle when you speak.

For now,

You decide.

That is treasure enough.

Shoes are not meant for walking.

Not here.

Shoes are meant for proving that you can afford to walk badly and still be admired.

The latest craze is Krakow's.

Long,

Pointed shoes with tips so absurdly extended that they curl upward like question marks,

Daring anyone to ask why.

The answer,

Of course,

Is status.

The longer the point,

The wealthier the wearer.

A peasant's shoes might barely cover the toes,

While a noble's stretch so far ahead they could announce his arrival a full minute before the rest of him stumbles in.

You first spot them at market,

Gleaming with embroidered leather and trailing lace worn by men who stride or attempt to stride with dignity.

One noble pauses to chat,

Shifting his weight carefully to balance the extra half foot of leather dragging in front of him.

Another bends to adjust his shoe,

Only to topple sideways into a barrel of eels.

No one dares laugh aloud,

But the air vibrates with suppressed giggles.

The noble emerges smelling like fish,

Muttering that his shoes are the latest from Krakow,

As if that explains everything.

The tripping becomes routine.

At feasts,

Nobles march grandly into the hall,

Only to catch their points beneath benches,

Yanking themselves to the ground with a crash.

At church,

One man kneels too deeply and cannot rise again,

His shoes wedged against the pew.

The congregation watches politely until two squires pry him free like a cork.

Even in duels,

The shoes make appearances,

Though it is hard to look intimidating when your opponent simply steps on your point and leaves you hopping.

Women adopt the fashion too,

Their points shorter but no less dangerous.

One lady sweeps into a dance,

Her shoes stabbing at the floor like tiny spears,

Scattering skirts and stepping on toes.

She smiles sweetly each time someone yelps,

Insisting it is all part of the rhythm.

You try to join once,

But your borrowed shoes twist under you and you collapse before the music even begins.

The laughter is mercifully brief,

Drowned by the sound of another noble tripping into the musicians.

Peasants shake their heads at the spectacle,

Muttering that only the wealthy could invent a shoe that prevents actual walking.

They cut their boots short,

Practical,

Sometimes with holes punched for air.

You eye your own cracked leather shoes,

Plain and sturdy,

And feel a surge of resentment.

Surely you too could stride about with half a yard of leather leading the way.

Surely you too could suffer fashion for the sake of admiration.

So you experiment.

You take a pair of boots and sew scraps of cloth to the ends,

Tugging them into crude points.

They flop and sag.

Less elegant spear,

More dead fish.

But you wear them proudly anyway.

The first step is fine.

The second catches under the table.

The third sends you sprawling across the floor,

Tangled in your own ambition.

By the time you crawl upright,

Your makeshift crackos are ripped and muddy,

And your dignity is somewhere beneath the bench.

Still,

You cannot help but admire the nobles' determination.

They fall.

They stumble.

They drown in velvet cloaks with their feet pointing to the heavens.

And still,

They insist this is beauty.

They turn their bruises into badges,

Their stumbles into choreography.

To wear crackos is to say,

I am so wealthy that I do not need to walk properly,

And so admired that even when I fall,

You will still envy me.

You sigh,

Looking at your ruined boots,

And wonder if perhaps the only real difference between you and them is the confidence to call a trip art.

That night,

You lie awake imagining yourself in perfect crackos,

Tips curled high,

Striding through the square without a wobble.

People gasp.

Dogs bow.

Children whisper of your grace.

You smile in the dream,

Radiant,

Untouchable.

Then you wake,

Stub your toe on the bed frame,

And decide that perhaps fashion is best left to those who can afford the fall.

Sumptuary laws are where beauty collides headfirst with politics,

And politics wins.

These are rules written by people who already own everything shiny,

Declaring that no one else may even look shiny by accident.

The idea is simple.

Your place in life should be visible at a glance.

Nobles wear velvet,

Silk,

And blazing colors.

Peasants wear wool,

Mud,

And shame.

If you dare to blur the line,

Men with ledgers appear to find you,

And if you are especially unlucky,

They find you in public,

So everyone else learns not to get ideas.

You first hear of it when the baker down the lane shows up at church in a red tunic.

It is not even the deep,

Noble red made from expensive dye,

But more of a faded,

Pinkish stain,

Probably from kneading too many raspberries.

Still,

A guard spots him,

Declares him in violation,

And slaps a fine so large he will be baking stale loaves for months to recover.

People whisper about it for days,

Not about the injustice,

Of course,

But about how daring he was to wear it in the first place.

The baker shrugs,

Insists he wanted to look festive,

And goes right back to his oven,

Poorer but briefly admired.

Colors are the most dangerous territory.

Red belongs to nobles,

Purple to royalty,

Blue to those who can afford the crushing expense of imported dye.

Peasants are supposed to stick with browns and grays,

Blending into the earth like background characters in someone else's story.

You look down at your own tunic,

The color of old porridge,

And feel the insult deeply.

What if you want to shine,

Just a little?

What if you want to be noticed,

But the law is the law,

And the penalties are steep?

A few brave souls sneak scraps of color into hems or linings,

Flashes of rebellion only visible when the wind catches.

These tiny acts of defiance pass for revolution.

Fabrics are policed too.

Silk is forbidden,

Fur is suspect,

And velvet is practically treasonous.

One farmer's wife was caught trimming her sleeves with squirrel fur and fined more than the value of the squirrel itself.

Another man was arrested for lining his cloak with lambskin on the grounds that he looked far too comfortable for his station.

Nobles insist this keeps order,

But everyone knows it is really about guarding the monopoly on glamor.

If peasants start looking beautiful,

How will anyone tell who to bow to?

You find yourself daydreaming about rebellion,

Not with swords or fire,

But with velvet socks.

Imagine slipping them under your boots,

A hidden luxury no one can see,

A secret victory against the rules.

You picture yourself walking through the village,

Nodding politely while the forbidden fabric hugs your toes.

No one would know,

But you would know,

And maybe that is enough.

Then you imagine the shame of tripping,

Boots flying off,

And guards discovering your treasonous hosiery in front of the crowd.

The fantasy dies quickly,

Leaving you staring glumly at your wool socks,

Which are already full of holes.

The most frustrating part is watching nobles strut through the square draped in colors so bright they look like tropical birds,

Sleeves dragging,

Rings flashing,

Fur collars sweeping the dust.

They sigh about how difficult it is to maintain such standards while you chew stale bread and try not to choke on envy.

When they catch peasants staring too long,

They smirk as if daring you to imitate them.

You clench your fists,

But the memory of the baker's fine keeps you silent,

And yet small rebellions survive.

A patch of bright ribbon sewn inside a cloak,

A secret bead braided into hair,

A pair of gloves stitched from curtains rather than wool.

They are not much,

But they are enough to remind you that beauty cannot be completely legislated.

One day,

You tell yourself,

You will find your velvet socks,

And you will wear them boldly,

Even if only for a single evening.

You will walk through the square with colors hidden at your ankles,

Defiant and ridiculous,

A tiny flicker of beauty in a world determined to stamp it out.

The beard is never just a beard.

It is a proclamation,

A banner unfurled beneath your nose.

One year,

A thick,

Wild beard signals wisdom,

Holiness,

And virility.

The next,

It brands you as savage,

Unkempt,

And suspiciously pagan.

Fashions turn as fast as the seasons,

And men scramble to keep their chins in line with the times.

A cleric with a full beard might be praised as saintly in spring,

Then mocked as a forest hermit by winter.

You watch the cycles and realize,

No man truly owns his face.

He rents it from fashion.

Beard oil is the newest obsession,

A mixture of herbs,

Fats,

And mystery liquids that supposedly makes whiskers gleam.

Men rub it in proudly,

Combing their beards until they shine like polished wood.

One man,

Eager to impress,

Oils his beard so heavily that when he leans near the forge,

It bursts into flame.

The sight of him sprinting through the square,

Slapping at his own chin,

Is so unforgettable that children imitate it in their games for weeks.

He survives with only singed pride,

Though now his uneven beard is hailed as rugged and sparks a brief trend of lopsided grooming.

You try to tame your own beard,

Though resources are limited.

Soap is rare,

Oils costly,

And combs precious.

In desperation,

You attempt trimming with a sickle borrowed from the field.

It goes poorly.

The blade is too large,

The angle too awkward.

One wrong twitch and half your beard vanishes in a crooked line,

Leaving you looking less like a wise elder and more like a goat with mange.

You stare into your reflection in a pot of water and sigh,

Debating whether to shave it all off or lean into the asymmetry.

Shaving,

Of course,

Is another ordeal.

Razors are dull,

Water scarce,

And mirrors warped.

Many men emerge with cuts,

Scabs,

And faces that look more punished than polished.

Others refuse altogether,

Claiming that beards protect them from illness or that shaving is a sin against nature.

A monk lectures that Christ himself wore a beard,

So who are we to scrape ours away?

Another monk argues that saints are clean-shaven in icons and beards are prideful.

The debate grows so heated that both eventually tug each other's chins until the abbot intervenes.

Among nobles,

Beards are trophies,

Long,

Flowing,

Perfumed,

Sometimes even braided with ribbons or beads.

Knights stroke theirs thoughtfully as if wisdom dwells in the whiskers.

Merchants let theirs grow wide,

Too,

To appear prosperous.

You watch one nobleman arrive at a feast with his beard tied into two distinct points,

Each capped with a tiny bell.

He jingles when he chews.

Everyone pretends to admire it,

Though half the hall looks ready to collapse in laughter.

He calls it avant-garde.

You call it ridiculous,

Though secretly you wonder how heavy it must feel.

Peasants,

By contrast,

Grow whatever their faces allow,

Practicality over fashion.

Some have patchy tufts,

Others thick thatches,

Others nothing at all.

They do not debate meaning.

They debate whether it keeps their faces warm in winter.

You envy their indifference,

But envy more the noble attention lavished on every whisker.

You want to matter that way,

Too,

To have people look at your chin as though it holds prophecy.

By evening,

You have made peace with your crooked sickle cut,

Convincing yourself it makes you look distinguished.

You practice stroking it in the mirror,

Hoping for wisdom,

But only manage to spread dirt across your cheek.

Still,

You keep the beard,

Better mocked for a crooked face than forgotten for a bare one.

And perhaps,

Just perhaps,

Next season the fashion will turn and uneven beards will be the rage.

Then you,

By accident,

Will finally be beautiful.

Holiness is not merely a state of the soul.

It is a state of the skin.

If you are pale,

Smooth,

And serene,

You are considered angelic,

Kissed by heaven itself.

If you are pockmarked,

Scarred,

Or ruddy,

People whisper about sin,

Curses,

And divine punishment.

It does not matter that half the village has faced the same plague.

Somehow your spots prove you are uniquely guilty.

Beauty and holiness are bound together so tightly that to look unblemished is to radiate virtue.

Whether or not your heart is remotely pure,

You see it during Mass.

The noble woman in her veil,

Her face as pale as milk,

Sits with her hands folded just so,

Glowing in the candlelight.

The priest praises her piety without mentioning her dowry paid for half the church roof.

Meanwhile,

A farmer's son kneels nearby,

Cheeks cratered from last year's sickness,

And the priest warns the congregation about sin's mark on the flesh.

You bite your tongue,

Knowing it is not really about God's judgment but about appearances.

Holiness here is painted on like makeup,

Not prayed into existence.

The pursuit of this glow is desperate.

Women powder their faces with lead until they shimmer faintly in the light,

Half beautiful,

Half poisoned.

Men scrub with vinegar,

Certain that stinging skin equals sanctity.

Some even starve themselves pale,

Cheeks hollow but properly ethereal,

As though heaven prefers the look of the nearly dead.

It is not enough to behave devoutly.

You must look devout,

The face itself a sermon no one can ignore.

You try it yourself one evening,

Standing in the square with a bit of smoke curling from a smoldering torch.

You angle your face so the haze softens your features,

And for a moment you believe you look otherworldly,

Luminous,

Saintly.

A passing villager coughs,

Waves the smoke from his eyes,

And mutters that you smell like burnt onions.

Your holy glow collapses into ash.

Still,

The obsession persists.

Mothers whisper that daughters too freckled will never find good marriages.

Men with scars grow long beards to hide them,

Praying the fashion stays on their side.

Remedies pile up,

Honey smeared on wounds,

Herbs pressed to cheeks,

Charms hung from necks in hopes of divine favor.

People pray for beauty as they pray for rain,

Certain that both come from heaven's hand.

At times,

You cannot help but laugh.

You imagine angels watching from above,

Baffled that mortals equate skin tone with salvation.

You imagine saints shaking their heads at powdered faces,

Muttering that true holiness smells less like vinegar and more like mercy.

But laughter fades when you catch your reflection and see your own blemishes,

Your own lack of angelic serenity.

You know the villagers will see them too and judge.

So you keep trying,

Dabbing,

Ash for shadow,

Rubbing herbs for brightness,

Turning your head just so in candlelight.

It is foolish,

But it is survival.

In this world,

Holiness is beauty and beauty is holiness.

And sometimes the difference between the two is only a trick of the smoke.

Saints do not merely guard souls in this world.

They also dictate cheekbones,

Hairstyles,

And skin tones.

The statues in chapels are less reminders of the divine and more lookbooks carved in stone,

Each one silently whispering,

If you want holiness,

Start with bangs.

Pilgrims kneel to pray,

Then rise to examine the curls on St.

Catherine,

The tilt of St.

Agnes's jawline,

The serene oval of the Virgin's face.

These figures become the beauty icons of the age and copying them is an act of both devotion and vanity.

You watch women return from pilgrimage with hair newly plaited in loops because they swear they saw a street Ursula sculpted that way.

Men suddenly grow beards trimmed square after glimpsing a statue of St.

Peter in the cathedral.

Even children are not spared,

Their mothers tugging them into shapes resembling cherubs,

Though the children squirm and howl in protest.

The statues do not move,

Of course,

But people swear they see meaning in every curl and wrinkle.

One woman insists the faint speckles on street.

Margaret's cheek proves she had freckles and declares this a holy blessing rather than a blemish.

For a few weeks,

Freckles are in fashion.

Then someone points out another statue with perfectly smooth marble skin and freckles fall out of favor again as quickly as they rose.

Relics,

Too,

Carry weight.

A lock of hair preserved in a jeweled box becomes not just holy but aspirational.

Pilgrims whisper about its sheen,

Its color,

Whether it is truly golden or merely faded straw.

Bones,

Too,

Are scrutinized as if the shape of a saint's skull might dictate the ideal contour of a noblewoman's jaw.

You overhear one knight praising a relic tooth as perfectly aligned,

Holding it up like a dentist,

Gone mad.

The crowd nods solemnly as if holiness and orthodontics have always been the same.

You are not immune.

One afternoon,

Inspired by the serene gaze of a stone Madonna,

You attempt to sculpt your own holy look.

You wash your face with vinegar until your eyes water,

Then dust your skin with flour to mimic marble.

For hair,

You try coiling it into a saintly halo,

But your fingers fumble and the strands collapse into a sticky mess.

You attempt a holy half-smile in the mirror,

But it looks more like you are passing gas than radiating divine grace.

By the end,

You resemble a bakery disaster rather than an icon.

Still,

The impulse is strong.

To look like a saint is not only to appear beautiful,

But to appear safe,

Chosen,

And righteous.

Every blemish can be blamed on sin,

Every flaw seen as divine judgment,

And so people cling to statues and relics for hope.

If St.

Margaret had freckles,

Then so can you.

If St.

Peter's beard was uneven,

Then yours may be too.

And if the Virgin's eyes gaze heavenward without noticing the mud on her sandals,

Then perhaps holiness and imperfection can coexist.

But tonight,

When the candles are snuffed and the statues cast long shadows,

You cannot help but smirk at your reflection in the water basin.

You tried to sculpt yourself holy and ended up merely human.

Perhaps that is the truest look of all.

Ugly here is not just unfortunate,

It is suspicious.

A crooked tooth,

A wandering eye,

A hunched back,

Even a mole in the wrong place can brand someone as marked by darkness.

Beauty is tethered to morality,

And anything outside the accepted lines becomes a possible sign of demons.

Villagers whisper as though their words can chase away storms,

Yet always their eyes flick to the odd one out,

The blemished,

The crooked.

If the weather turns or the crops fail,

Blame is as easy as pointing a finger at someone's freckles.

You watch it happen one summer when a sudden storm tears across the fields,

The clouds boil black,

Lightning forks,

And rain drowns half the barley.

A child,

No older than seven,

Stands shivering nearby,

His face speckled with freckles like spilled pepper.

By nightfall,

Villagers are muttering that his spots are the devil's footprints,

Calling him cursed,

The reason the sky cracked open.

His mother protests,

Clutching him close,

But suspicion hangs thicker than the storm itself.

For weeks afterward,

People cross themselves when he walks past,

And children whisper,

Which is child behind his back?

The freckles do not fade,

But the laughter in his eyes does.

Crooked teeth invite similar whispers.

A woman smiles too widely at market,

Revealing her uneven grin,

And suddenly half the square mutters about unnatural marks.

A bent nose might be forgiven as the result of a fight,

But teeth growing oddly?

Clearly some devilish twist of nature.

Moles fare no better,

Especially dark ones,

Especially if they sprout hair.

The demon's teat,

Some call it,

As if a blemish on the skin is proof of midnight feasts with Satan himself.

You hear stories of women tried for witchcraft,

Their so-called evidence nothing more than a wart on a shoulder or a scar on the back of a knee.

You feel the weight of it when you glance at yourself in still water.

Your own teeth,

Not perfect.

A small bump on your nose,

A blemish on your cheek.

You lean closer,

Cataloging every flaw,

Every imperfection that could be twisted into accusation.

Would your neighbors call you holy or cursed?

Would they squint at your reflection and see a person or a threat?

The thought unsettles you enough that you pull your hood low for the walk to the village,

As if shadows might protect you,

And yet you notice the hypocrisy.

Nobles with scars from jousts are admired,

Their crooked noses called bold.

A knight with half his teeth missing is still toasted at feasts,

Because his ugliness is earned in battle rather than born in silence.

The difference is not the feature itself,

But the story behind it.

One,

The man's mole is demonic.

Another's scar is heroic.

Beauty and danger are decided not by the mirror,

But by the gossip that follows.

One evening,

While the villagers sit around the fire,

A storyteller recalls a legend of demons who disguise themselves in fair faces only for their ugliness to leak through when night falls.

Everyone leans in,

Watching the firelight flicker across each other's features,

As though searching for the shadow of horns.

You tug your cloak tighter,

Heart racing.

Certain someone will notice your flaws glowing in the firelight,

But the moment passes,

They look away.

You breathe again,

Though unease lingers like smoke.

Later,

Alone,

You stare into the dark and run your fingers over your skin,

Tracing every ridge and mark.

You tell yourself they are human,

Ordinary,

Even harmless,

Yet still the old whispers ring in your ears,

Crooked,

Cursed,

Dangerous.

You laugh weakly,

The sound sharp in the silence,

And mutter to yourself that maybe tomorrow you will claim your freckles are holy constellations,

Proof not of demons,

But of stars.

Perhaps then,

At last,

Beauty will be on your side.

Astrology rules more than crops and harvests here.

It rules faces,

Hips,

And whether anyone thinks you're kissable.

To be born under Venus is to be declared beautiful,

No matter what your reflection actually insists.

Venus children are said to have charm in their eyes,

Roses in their cheeks,

And a certain glow that can distract from missing teeth.

Mars,

On the other hand,

Is doom.

Born under Mars,

And you're branded hot-tempered,

Ugly,

Or at best rugged in a way only goats admire.

The stars decide,

And everyone nods as if the heavens themselves are holding mirrors.

The village astrologer thrives in this system.

He wears his smugness like a second cloak,

Strutting through the square with a pointed hat too large for his head.

His favorite boast is the Venus mole on his cheek.

A dark little spot,

He insists,

Is the planet's mark of favor.

He strokes it,

Lovingly,

As though it were a gemstone,

And announces that women sigh when they see it.

You glance at the mole,

Which looks more like a crust of bread he forgot to wipe off,

And wonder if women sigh for reasons entirely unrelated to Venus.

Still,

No one dares argue with him,

Because to question him is to question the stars,

And that is dangerous ground.

Charts are drawn for every birth,

And gossip spreads from them faster than fire and hay.

A baby under Jupiter will grow prosperous.

One under Saturn is doomed to gloom and wrinkles.

A girl born on a Venus day,

Half the town is already preparing dowry offers.

You see mothers clutching their infants,

Praying the astrologer assigns them beauty instead of disaster,

And when he declares a favorable sign,

They nearly weep with relief.

The child has not even grown teeth,

Yet already their attractiveness is mapped across the heavens.

You,

Of course,

Cannot resist.

One evening,

You slip him a bribe,

A loaf of bread still warm from the oven,

To secure yourself a favorable horoscope.

He takes it eagerly,

Chewing with his mouth open,

Then declares in a booming voice that you are radiantly touched by Venus,

And destined to be admired across kingdoms.

The villagers nod,

Some skeptically,

Others with envy.

You stand straighter,

Glowing with pride,

Until a child points out that last week he said you were under Mars,

And cursed with a temper.

The astrologer waves this off,

Blaming a cloud that had hidden the stars at the time,

And insists the correction is more accurate.

You pretend not to notice his eyes fixed greedily on the rest of the loaf.

From that moment,

You catch yourself moving differently,

Shoulders back,

Chin lifted.

People glance your way,

And you convince yourself it is admiration,

Though it may just be curiosity about the bread you gave away.

Still,

The horoscope lingers in your mind.

Perhaps you are beautiful after all,

Not by mirror,

But by decree.

If the stars say so,

Who are you to argue?

Later,

In the quiet of your room,

You study your reflection again,

Searching for the Venus glow.

You tilt your head,

Squint,

Try on different expressions.

Nothing changes,

Yet somehow you feel more radiant,

Because belief itself reshapes the face.

You laugh softly,

Wondering if this is the astrologer's true magic.

Not divining truth,

But planting beauty in minds until it blossoms.

And maybe that is enough to let a loaf of bread buy you a moment of loveliness written in the sky.

The line between beauty and witchcraft is thinner than a strand of hair,

And twice as treacherous.

Any potion or charm that makes you look better too quickly draws suspicion.

If your cheeks suddenly glow after a dull winter,

People mutter about sorcery.

If your hair shines brighter than it did yesterday,

Someone will whisper that you have been dancing with the devil.

Improvement itself becomes incriminating.

Women brew little remedies in secret,

Rose water,

Honey balms,

Or ground herbs pressed into the skin,

But they never boast about them.

To admit you know too much about beauty is to risk being accused of knowing too much about magic.

The safest path is to claim your radiance is natural,

Or perhaps the result of pious living.

One woman insists her clear complexion comes from fasting and prayer,

Though you once saw her sneaking goose fat into a jar behind her house.

Another swears her hair shines because she never combs it,

When you know she rinses it in rosemary tea each week.

The trick is not the potion itself,

But the lie that conceals it.

You notice how the village watches.

A girl returns from a visit to her aunt in another town,

Suddenly prettier,

With brighter eyes and smoother skin.

People gather at the well to whisper.

Too quick,

They say,

Too sudden.

Clearly she has meddled with charms.

By the end of the month,

Three different neighbors claim they saw her shadow move strangely in the moonlight,

And the priest preaches about vanity as a gateway to sin.

You feel a chill watching her shrink into herself,

Beauty turned into a noose.

The danger makes even harmless remedies feel dangerous.

Honey mixed with oats for smoother skin,

Vinegar rinses for hair,

Powdered herbs rubbed into the cheeks,

All of it must be done quietly,

Explained away if caught.

A pouch of lavender in a sleeve is for the smell,

Not for beauty.

A paste of egg white on the face is to cool fever,

Not to soften wrinkles.

To survive,

Every beauty ritual must masquerade as health.

You attempt one yourself,

Mixing crushed mint and butter into a paste you spread across your cheeks.

The coolness feels divine,

The redness fades,

And for a moment,

You admire your reflection.

Then,

Footsteps crunch outside,

And you panic.

You scrub the paste off with such haste that you end up smearing butter into your hair.

When the neighbor pokes her head in,

You claim you were experimenting with a new cooking recipe.

She eyes your shiny forehead suspiciously,

But says nothing.

Still,

You avoid eye contact at the well for days after.

Terrified,

She has decided you are in league with something dark.

The irony is that true witches,

The kind sung about in fearful stories,

Are always described as ugly,

Hooked noses,

Warts,

Hunched backs.

Yet in the village,

Beauty itself can be evidence of witchcraft.

Too ugly,

And you are cursed.

Too beautiful,

And you are cursed.

You realize with a sinking heart that the only safe state is mediocrity,

The careful art of looking plain enough to avoid envy,

But not so plain you invite pity.

At night,

Lying in the dark,

You wonder if the devil really bothers with freckles and freckles.

You imagine him laughing at villagers terrified of butter on skin,

Herbs in hair,

Or the glow of youth.

Maybe,

You think,

The only real magic is confidence,

The power to walk to the well with a shining face and not care if people whisper.

But when morning comes and eyes glance too long at you,

You lower your gaze,

Clutch your bucket tight,

And remind yourself,

Plainness is survival,

Noble.

Ladies are painted into visions of perfection,

Powdered into pale angels,

Perfumed until the air around them smells like an herb garden collided with a wine cellar.

Their beauty is constructed daily,

Layer by layer,

Like masonry,

Except with more lead dust and rose water.

When they walk into a hall,

All soft hands and smooth cheeks,

People bow not just to their titles,

But to the labor of hours spent hiding the slightest hint of mortality.

To look at them is to be reminded that wealth means never having to show sweat.

Peasant women,

By contrast,

Are valued for very different qualities.

Broad hips mean children,

Strong arms mean survival.

Sun-darkened skin means you work,

And if you work,

You eat.

They carry hay on their shoulders,

Water on their backs,

And babies on their hips,

Moving with a strength that would shame a knight.

Their beauty is not powdered,

But proven,

Not perfumed,

But practical.

A peasant girl may never be called angelic,

But when a barn roof collapses or a sow refuses to budge,

She is the one everyone calls.

The two worlds glance at each other with envy and disdain.

Nobles whisper that peasants are rough,

Animal-like,

Their cheeks too red,

Their hands too hard.

Peasants mutter that noble ladies are useless ornaments,

Pale as flower,

Unable to lift anything heavier than a goblet.

Yet secretly,

Each side covets the other.

A noble woman gazes at a peasant's sturdy body and wonders what it must feel like not to faint at the sight of mud.

A peasant gazes at a lady's clean skin and wonders what it must feel like not to scrub soot from your pores.

You discover this divide the hard way one morning.

After hours in the field,

You arrive at market with hay still tangled in your hair,

Cheeks flushed,

And hands calloused from work.

You tell yourself the look is rustic,

Maybe even charming,

A countryside chic that will surely impress.

It does not.

People glance at you and smile politely,

The kind of smile given to a donkey that has wandered into the square.

One child points and says,

Look,

The haystack walks,

And the crowd laughs.

Your rustic chic collapses into rustic humiliation.

Later,

You watch a noble woman pass through the same market,

Her veil carefully arranged,

Her shoes spotless despite the mud.

She lifts a hand as though blessing the world,

And everyone sighs,

Even though she nearly faints at the smell of fish.

You sigh,

Too,

Not out of admiration,

But from the recognition that no amount of hay will ever make you look like that.

And yet,

In the quiet moments,

When you sit beside the fire and comb straw from your hair,

You realize that both kinds of beauty are traps.

The noble woman must choke on lead paint to keep her glow.

The peasant must break her back to keep her worth.

You look at your hands,

Rough but strong,

And laugh softly,

Because maybe real beauty lies not in being angelic or fertile,

Painted or practical,

But in surviving a world that demands both.

Regional standards of beauty are like a tournament no one asks to join,

And the rules shift depending on whose wine-soaked table you're sitting at.

In France,

Pale is perfection.

The ideal lady is so light,

She could be mistaken for a candle,

Glowing faintly as though she has never left the safety of her chamber.

The French whisper that sun is for peasants,

For workers,

For unfortunate souls who must actually do things.

If your face resembles parchment and your veins glow faintly blue,

You are adored.

They even powder themselves further,

Determined to outpale the moon.

Italy,

Of course,

Scoffs at this.

To Italians,

The sun is beauty's brush.

Golden tans shimmer across paintings.

Olive skin is praised in verse,

And women walk proudly with faces warmed by daylight.

The Italian poets sing about skin kissed by Apollo,

While French clerics mutter that Apollo's kiss looks suspiciously like peasantry.

You imagine the two sides meeting at a feast,

The pale French ladies glaring from behind their veils at bronzed Italians.

Each side convinced the other looks like death,

Just in opposite directions.

Then come the English,

Tall and stern,

Their beauty carved more from posture than palate.

They prize length of limb and a certain grave dignity,

As though every attractive person must also look capable of presiding over a trial.

Their women cultivate severity alongside elegance,

And their men tower stiffly,

Broad-shouldered,

Gazes fixed firmly on the horizon as if waiting to lecture it.

Compared to the French fainting into cushions and the Italians basking in sunlight,

The English look like stone statues set at the edge of the field,

Immovable and mildly disapproving.

Trying to keep up with these contradictions is exhausting.

Pale here,

Tan there,

Tall somewhere else,

Short nowhere at all.

You watch travelers pass through the market,

Each bringing their own standard,

And it feels like beauty is less about truth and more about geography.

If you are born in France,

Your freckles are shameful.

In Italy,

They are charming.

In England,

They are irrelevant,

Provided you can stand up straight and glare convincingly at livestock.

You try experimenting,

Just to see which region you could blend into.

One afternoon you stay indoors,

Dusting your face with flour,

Hoping for the French glow.

The result is chalky,

Your nose red against the powder,

More pastry than person.

The next day,

You stand in the sun for hours,

Hoping for Italian warmth,

But your skin burns pink and peels,

Peeling less like marble and more like a bad onion.

You attempt the English look last,

Standing tall with arms folded,

But within minutes,

Your back aches and a goose honks at you,

Unimpressed.

The contradictions gnaw at you.

How can beauty mean one thing in Paris?

It's opposite in Florence,

And something else entirely in London.

If it changes with the border,

Is it real at all?

You roll the thought in your mind,

Then laugh,

Because it doesn't matter.

The people in power decide what is beautiful,

And everyone else contorts themselves trying to fit the mold.

Today it is pale,

Tomorrow tanned,

Next week perhaps hairy like a bear.

By evening,

You settle by the fire,

Straw still in your hair,

Face neither pale nor tanned but a muddled in between.

You smile at your reflection in the pot's surface,

Crooked and imperfect,

And decide you are neither French candle nor Italian sunbeam nor English statue.

You are you,

Confused,

Mismatched,

And hopelessly human.

And maybe,

If the stars ever align,

That will be enough for its own region of beauty.

The North leaves its mark long after the long ships are gone.

Tall men with pale hair still walk the villages,

Their shoulders broad,

Their skin ruddy from winds harsher than most Southerners could stand.

They are the leftovers of the Viking age,

Echoes of raiders turned farmers,

Their beauty both admired and begrudged.

Women sigh when they see a blonde braid swinging in the sun.

Men grit their teeth and mutter that size isn't everything,

Though they glance down at their own shorter frames with something close to despair.

You hear stories of how these Northern men descend from giants,

Their ancestors carrying axes wider than most peasants' torsos.

The tales exaggerate,

Of course,

But the physical evidence lingers.

They tower over others in the tavern,

Reaching shelves no one else can touch,

Ducking under door frames as if houses themselves are too small to contain them.

Their hair,

Golden or pale as flax,

Gleams against the darker heads of the locals.

To stand beside them is to feel yourself shrink,

Not only in stature but in attention.

The jealousy runs deep.

Local peasants whisper that Northerners are simple,

Brutish,

Their height proof of gluttony,

Their hair proof of vanity.

Yet the same peasants push their daughters toward them at festivals,

Hoping for tall grandchildren with bright locks.

Songs are sung about their strength,

Their sea-colored eyes,

Their easy way with weapons.

A man might mock a Viking leftover with one breath and envy him with the next.

It is a contradiction everyone accepts,

Though no one admits.

You,

Eager to test the look yourself,

Decide to borrow a bit of legend.

One evening,

You strap a pair of horns to your head,

Imagining yourself a raider reborn,

Fierce and admirable.

You stride into the square with your helmet gleaming,

Expecting gasps of awe.

Instead,

The laughter is immediate.

Children point,

Adults chuckle,

And one old man wheezes that Vikings never wore horns at all.

Your confidence sags.

What was meant to be intimidation has become farce.

Still,

The allure of Northern beauty persists.

Even as you peel off the helmet,

You can't help but notice how people still look toward the tall,

Blonde men first,

How their presence shifts the air in the room.

Perhaps it isn't the hair or the height or even the history.

Perhaps it's the confidence of knowing that legend itself walks with you,

That your face carries echoes of sagas no one dares forget.

You sit by the fire that night,

Helmet discarded,

And wonder what it would feel like to belong to that lineage,

To stand without effort,

Admired without paint or powder,

Envied without trying.

You reach up,

Touch your own hair,

Darker,

Thinner,

Tangled from work,

And laugh.

Maybe beauty isn't in the horned helmet or the Viking shadow at all.

Maybe it is in finding the courage to walk into the square,

Mocked and grinning,

And still call yourself part of the story.

Peasant beauty is not powdered,

Perfumed,

Or sculpted into submission.

It is measured in survival.

If you can carry wood without collapsing,

Haul water without spilling,

And endure a winter without turning blue,

You are considered radiant.

Smooth skin and delicate hands mean nothing here.

What matters is a strong back,

Wide hips,

And teeth sturdy enough to bite stale bread without snapping in half.

Beauty is resilience,

Visible proof that you can weather hunger and still keep walking.

At market,

You hear it in the gossip.

A girl is praised not for her hair,

But for her ability to thresh grain faster than anyone else.

A boy earns admiration because he can lift a hog by himself.

Marriage prospects rise and fall on the sturdiness of bodies,

Not the paleness of cheeks.

When someone flashes a full set of teeth,

The crowd gasps louder than they do at jewelry.

Strong stock,

They murmur approvingly,

As though admiring livestock.

Compliments are practical,

Blunt,

Almost brutal,

But beneath them lies a real truth.

Survival is its own beauty.

You try to embody it yourself,

Flexing your arms in what you imagine is a display of strength.

Unfortunately,

The effort makes you cough,

Soot rising from your lungs after a morning spent at the hearth.

Your attempt at vigor is ruined by wheezing,

And one neighbor pats you on the back,

Muttering that you look more consumptive than powerful.

You grin anyway,

Showing as many intact teeth as you can,

Hoping that at least your smile distracts from your rattling chest.

Clothes,

Too,

Reveal this practicality.

Peasant garments are patched and repatched until they resemble quilts,

But each stitch is a badge of endurance.

Mud stains,

Calloused hands,

And sunburns are not flaws,

But proof of labor,

The closest thing peasants have to cosmetics.

Hair may be tangled,

But if it stays out of the eyes while carrying a bucket,

It is styled enough.

Jewelry is rare,

Replaced by tools hung at the waist,

Gleaming with use.

A man's axe can be more alluring than a noble's golden chain because it promises warmth in winter,

And yet,

Even among peasants,

Beauty is judged.

Too thin,

And people worry you cannot survive the cold.

Too heavy,

And they say you are greedy.

Too few teeth,

And whispers spread that your children will inherit weakness.

It is a harsher scale,

Stripped of romance,

But still inescapable.

You notice how people glance at your hands,

Your gait,

Your shoulders,

Tallying silently whether you are strong enough to be desirable.

You tally yourself,

Too,

Uncertain whether you measure up.

By evening,

You sit before the fire,

Sore from work but proud of the ache.

You run your tongue over your teeth,

Counting them like coins,

And flex your arms again,

Less for show and more to remind yourself you are still capable.

The cough lingers,

Smoke clinging to your lungs,

But your smile holds.

Perhaps,

You think,

That is the peasant's truest beauty,

Not flawless skin or angelic glow,

But the stubbornness to keep flexing even while coughing up soot.

Courtly love is less about love and more about poetry performed loudly enough to convince everyone that sighing counts as a noble pursuit.

Troubadours roam from hall to hall,

Stringing their lutes,

Describing beauty so perfect it might as well be carved from marble.

They sing of lips like roses,

Cheeks like snow,

Eyes like sapphires,

Always the same phrases,

Recycled endlessly,

Because apparently perfection comes in only three colors,

Red,

White,

And blue.

The noble courts eat it up.

Men bow dramatically,

Declaring themselves slain by a single glance,

While women pretend not to smile as their beauty is sung into legend.

Even the ugliest knight can sound divine if a bard compares his scars to constellations.

Words turn mud into moonlight,

Peasants into princesses,

And plain noses into miracles.

Beauty becomes less about reality and more about rhyme.

You experience this strange magic firsthand when a bard,

Drunk on ale and flattery,

Decides to compose a verse about you.

He begins with enthusiasm,

Praising your noble brow and your radiant presence.

But when he reaches your nose,

His inspiration falters.

He squints,

Strums a lazy chord,

And declares it rhymes best with goose.

The hall erupts in laughter as he belts out a ballad about your nose like a goose that honks at dawn.

You flush crimson,

Torn between horror and the absurd realization that,

Thanks to rhyme,

Your face has now become comedy.

Still,

The song spreads,

Children chanted in the square,

Neighbors grin when you pass,

And suddenly your nose is famous in a way you never asked for.

You try to be angry,

But deep down,

You recognize that being sung about at all is a kind of victory.

Many will live and die without a single verse attached to their name.

You,

For better or worse,

Have a goose nose.

In song,

Courtly ideals linger,

Even after the laughter fades.

You notice how people measure themselves against the troubadour's verses.

Women pinch their cheeks to imitate roses.

Men scrub their skin raw,

Hoping for snow-like pallor.

Everyone tilts their head just so,

Searching for the angle that makes them look more like a stanza.

And when they fail,

They sigh,

Comforted by the belief that beauty,

If not theirs,

At least exists somewhere in a poem.

That night,

As you lie awake,

You touch your nose,

Still sore from the laughter,

And smile.

Perhaps it is not rosy lips or snowy cheeks,

But it has been immortalized in rhyme.

Perhaps true courtly beauty is not about perfection at all,

But about being noticed long enough for someone with a lute to make it rhyme.

And if that rhyme happens to be goose,

Well,

At least it sings.

The panic sets in slowly,

Like a creeping draft under the door.

One day you notice a thinning patch when the wind lifts your hood,

And suddenly every mirror,

Every puddle,

Every polished goblet becomes a source of dread.

Baldness,

They whisper,

Is not just the loss of hair,

But the loss of virility,

Wisdom,

Dignity,

All the things a man clings to in a world already determined to mock him for lesser flaws.

And so begins the desperate parade of remedies.

The most popular involves pigeons,

Not feathers,

Not wings,

But droppings,

Collected,

Mashed,

And rubbed earnestly onto scalps by men hoping to sprout golden locks overnight.

The reasoning is unclear.

Perhaps pigeons,

Creatures that never seem to stop multiplying,

Were believed to pass on their fertility to human hair.

Perhaps some long-dead scholar declared it effective in a manuscript,

And everyone took his word as gospel.

Whatever the origin,

The stench is undeniable.

You kneel by the hearth,

A pot of warm paste before you,

And gag as you smear the mess onto your own head.

It drips down your temples,

Sticky and sour,

And you curse softly,

Though you remind yourself that beauty requires suffering.

Your neighbor sees you at it and nods approvingly,

Declaring,

The doves approve.

He says it with such solemnity that you almost believe him,

Though you notice he wears a cap pulled low,

His bald crown gleaming beneath.

You wonder if he's fooling himself,

Or if the pigeons simply never got around to blessing him.

Still,

His encouragement bolsters you enough to keep rubbing,

Even as your stomach churns.

Others try equally strange cures.

Onion juice is rubbed in until tears stream down faces,

Making everyone look both miserable and freshly heartbroken.

A barber swears by boiled nettles,

Slapping them against scalps until the skin tingles and burns,

Insisting the pain means it is working.

Some even tie strips of raw meat atop their heads overnight,

Hoping the essence of beef will seep inward and feed the follicles.

Dogs trail behind these men,

Hopeful for breakfast,

While wives complain about waking up to the smell of rot.

The church,

Of course,

Has opinions too.

Priests suggest baldness is a punishment for vanity,

A reminder that beauty fades and humility grows.

Yet even they wear wigs when their hairlines retreat,

Muttering about drafts and piety but fooling no one.

Baldness becomes a secret,

Tucked beneath caps and hats,

Each man pretending he is not terrified of being found out.

You,

Meanwhile,

Stare at your reflection in the basin,

Pigeon droppings crusted on your scalp,

And try to convince yourself you see sprouts of hair.

Maybe that shadow is a curl.

Maybe that itch is growth.

Hope clings as stubbornly as the smell.

But when a gust of wind blows and a child laughs,

Pointing at the smear dripping down your neck,

You know the truth.

Beauty has once again betrayed you.

Still,

You keep applying,

Because in a world where baldness means weakness,

Desperation is its own kind of courage.

And perhaps,

You tell yourself,

The doves really do approve.

The jars gleam like treasure in the candlelight,

Powders so pale they could pass for moon dust.

Nobles dab them carefully onto their cheeks,

Their foreheads,

The curve of their noses.

The effect is instant.

Skin so white it looks like porcelain,

Flawless,

Serene,

Otherworldly.

They glow,

And everyone gasps in admiration.

They also cough,

Faint,

Or vomit quietly into handkerchiefs,

But no one mentions that part,

Because beauty demands silence as much as sacrifice.

You watch a lady prepare her face for the feast,

Each layer of lead paint pressed down with care.

Her maid mixes vinegar and chalk into a paste,

Smoothing it across skin that,

Beneath,

Is already raw and tender.

By the end,

She looks divine,

But you know her cheeks burn and her lips tremble from the poison sinking slowly inward.

Still,

She smiles,

And everyone agrees she has never looked lovelier.

It is the cruelest trick of all.

The more deadly the paint,

The more dazzling the result.

Men join in,

Too,

Especially those at court who must outshine rivals.

A baron powders himself until he resembles a statue,

Then winks with confidence,

Pretending not to sway on his feet.

Another noblewoman boasts that she has found a new mixture,

Lead with a touch of mercury,

That gives her skin the sheen of angels.

She says this while clutching the arm of a servant to keep from collapsing,

Yet the room admires her still,

Whispering that she has the glow of heaven.

In truth,

It is closer to the glow of the grave.

You try it yourself,

Just a dab,

Curious if the transformation is as swift as they say.

The powder cakes on unevenly,

Settling into the cracks of your skin,

Making you look less like porcelain and more like a cracked jug.

You sneeze halfway through and smear a streak across your cheek,

Giving yourself the expression of a haunted clown.

The burning sensation arrives soon after,

Tingling first,

Then stinging,

And you wonder aloud if beauty is truly worth this pain.

The silence that follows suggests it must be,

Though your instincts scream otherwise.

At supper,

You notice how the painted faces shimmer in torchlight,

How the unpainted ones look dull by comparison.

It's unfair,

You think,

That health is hidden while poison is praised,

Yet the illusion is so complete that you feel yourself shrinking without it,

Invisible among angels.

You rub at your cheek,

The paste already itching,

And debate whether to scrape it off or endure.

Every noble eye is on the glowing figures,

None on you,

And then one collapses.

A countess,

Radiant as moonlight,

Sways,

Mutters a prayer,

And falls face-first into her venison.

Gasps echo,

Servants rush,

And yet the admiration lingers even as they carry her out.

She was so beautiful,

Someone sighs,

So divine.

You shiver,

Realizing that in this world,

Beauty is not only pain,

But a performance that ends in silence.

Back in your chamber,

You scrub your face raw with a rag,

Leaving behind red streaks and a faint taste of vinegar on your lips.

You catch your reflection in a darkened window,

Flawed,

Uneven,

Alive.

You touch your cheek,

Still burning,

And wonder if perhaps the truest glow is the one that comes not from lead or mercury,

But from simply surviving long enough to laugh at the madness.

Perfume in the medieval hall is less a scent and more an assault.

Nobles arrive drenched in concoctions of musk,

Rosewater,

Ambergris,

Or whatever else could be extracted,

Steeped,

Or stolen from a passing merchant.

The result is a cloud so thick that entering the room feels like stepping into a battlefield of smells.

Eyes water,

Throats tighten,

Even the dogs sneeze,

Yet everyone insists this is the height of refinement,

The fragrant mark of wealth and good taste.

You watch as a lord douses himself with such vigor that the floor glistens beneath him.

He leaves a trail of aroma strong enough to cover the reek of manure from the cante.

Courtyard,

Which is no small feat.

Servants cough behind their sleeves while ladies flutter fans in desperate self-defense,

But he struts proudly,

Confident that his overwhelming bouquet proves his superiority.

When his perfumed sleeve brushes too near a torch and bursts briefly into flame,

The crowd panics,

Then claps,

Declaring it the most dazzling entrance of the season.

Perfume hoarding is a game of escalation.

One noble boasts of importing rare oils from Venice.

Another counters with musk from the east.

Bottles are lined like trophies,

Their owners bragging that the rarer and more pungent the smell,

The more elevated their beauty.

Sometimes the mixtures sour in the heat,

Turning from floral to rancid,

Yet admirers pretend to swoon anyway,

Unwilling to admit that their noses have been assaulted.

A noble woman once fainted in the chapel,

Not from piety,

But because her neighbor's scent was so potent it suffocated her.

People still talk of it as a romantic tale.

You decide,

Just once,

To join the perfumed elite.

You dab generously at your neck and wrists,

But the vial slips,

Spilling half its contents across your tunic.

At first you cough,

Then you wheeze,

The scent pressing into your lungs like smoke.

For an hour you wander the village in a haze,

Unable to breathe,

Your eyes watering as though in grief.

Children giggle,

Dogs whimper,

And one old woman swats you with a broom,

Accusing you of hiding a dead goat beneath your clothes.

By nightfall the smell still lingers,

Clinging to your hair,

Your bedding,

Even your dreams.

You roll restlessly,

Wondering if the nobles ever sleep,

Or if they too lie awake,

Prisoners of their own perfume clouds.

Perhaps beauty in this case is not about delight,

But about domination,

About smothering all other scents until yours alone remains.

You sigh,

Pressing your nose into the pillow,

And promise yourself you will never try perfume again.

Though deep down you know,

If another vial were placed in your hand tomorrow,

You might just reach for it.

Because in this world,

Even suffocation counts as elegance.

Spectacles begin not as a tool for sight,

But as a performance.

They are the newest trinket to show off in the court,

An invention so rare and peculiar that merely balancing a pair on your nose makes you look wise,

Even if you can barely spell your own name.

Monks wear them while copying manuscripts.

Scholars perch them proudly as they mutter about Aristotle,

And nobles steal the look for themselves.

A face framed by glass and wire instantly seems more intelligent,

More refined,

More holy even.

The illusion is so strong that half the wearers don't bother with actual lenses.

Empty frames will do.

You notice this quickly.

At gatherings,

Men squint harder through their spectacles than without them,

Yet everyone nods with respect.

A lord misreads a charter because the words swim before him,

But no one dares laugh.

They assume he must be interpreting a deeper truth.

Another man,

Who has never read a book in his life,

Struts with glassless frames,

Lecturing on philosophy until he stumbles into a bench.

Still,

The crowd murmurs about how learned he must be because only wisdom could justify such awkwardness.

The glasses themselves are clumsy,

Little circles of polished crystal pinched together,

Perched on noses that are not quite built to hold them.

They slip,

They fog,

They distort faces in comical ways,

But these flaws are overlooked in favor of the aura they provide.

A woman whispers that she finds spectacles alluring,

Not because she likes the way they look,

But because they make men seem like they've read something besides tavern walls.

You wonder if this is the first time in history that bad vision has been recast as a form of beauty.

Curiosity gnaws at you until you can't resist.

You borrow a pair left on a bench by a monk and slip them onto your face.

At once the world tilts,

Shapes bending,

Floorboards twisting like waves.

Your stomach lurches,

Your eyes ache,

And you stumble forward into a pillar.

The monk returns just in time to see you clinging to the wood like a shipwrecked sailor.

He frowns,

But the onlookers cheer.

They think you're meditating on divine mysteries,

Dizzy from visions granted by glass.

You nod weakly,

Pretending that your blurred sight is holy rather than nauseating.

As the dizziness fades,

You realize the danger of the trick.

To appear wise is one thing,

But to live blinded by someone else's lenses is another.

You peel them off,

Nose sore,

Eyes watering,

And wonder if this is what beauty always demands,

Trading comfort for appearance,

Function for illusion.

The monks call spectacles a gift of God,

But you suspect God laughs every time someone wears them upside down.

Still,

You glance back at the crowd,

Noting their impressed stares.

Perhaps wisdom is less about seeing clearly and more about looking the part.

Perhaps a pair of spectacles,

Even without lenses,

Is worth the vertigo.

You tuck the frames into your sleeve,

Already plotting the next feast where you might perch them on your nose again,

Wobble convincingly,

And let the whispers rise.

Learned,

Holy,

Radiant.

Pregnancy is not just a condition but a fashion statement,

One more way to broadcast beauty and wealth.

A plump figure suggests health,

Abundance,

And the ability to produce heirs.

Unfortunately,

Not everyone has the luxury of natural roundness,

So the trend emerges.

Padding.

Women stuff their gowns with cloth,

Pillows,

Or whatever can be concealed beneath heavy fabric,

Presenting themselves as glowing vessels of fertility.

The larger the swell,

The louder the whispers of admiration.

At court,

The sight becomes common.

Ladies waddle gracefully,

Bellies protruding,

Cheeks powdered,

Insisting they are radiant with maternal glow.

Servants bow deeper when passing them,

Pretending to sense the sacred future contained within.

Men write poems praising the roundness,

Comparing it to the moon,

The earth,

The fullness of God's bounty.

No one mentions that the moon is actually a lump of cloth tied under a bodice,

Shifting slightly whenever its wearer bends.

The illusion holds until it doesn't.

You see it unravel spectacularly when a noblewoman strides down the aisle of the chapel,

Her gown rustling with importance.

She glows,

Yes,

But it is the glow of pride at her successful deception.

Then she stumbles,

Tripping on the hem of her skirts,

And her belly rolls forward,

Tumbling like a runaway cheese wheel.

Gasps ripple through the pews as a stuffed cushion bounces across the stones.

She freezes,

Pale as chalk,

While others scramble to retrieve the evidence.

The priest mutters about demons,

And you,

Biting your lip,

Cough loudly to mask the laughter threatening to burst free.

Rumors swirl after the incident.

Some say she was bewitched,

Others that she sinned by faking God's blessing,

But still more copy her trick,

Stuffing carefully,

Learning to secure their bellies better so no cushion ever betrays them.

A false pregnancy may bring scandal,

But it also brings attention,

And attention is worth the risk.

Better to be admired and whispered about than ignored altogether.

You toy with the idea yourself,

Slipping a blanket beneath your tunic only to discover the burden is heavier than expected.

Walking feels clumsy,

Sitting impossible,

Sweat gathers quickly,

And instead of glowing with fertility,

You reek of wool.

Still,

When someone glances and murmurs,

How radiant,

You understand the lure.

For one brief moment,

You are no longer ordinary.

You are an icon of abundance,

A symbol of beauty wrapped in cloth.

That night,

Peeling off the padding,

You consider the absurdity.

A body becomes beautiful not by its reality,

But by its illusion,

And people would rather praise a cushion than accept a natural frame.

You chuckle to yourself,

Imagining a future where pillows,

Not people,

Win the highest compliments.

Perhaps beauty has never been about truth at all,

Only the courage to stuff a gown and pretend.

Aging arrives in.

The village,

Not with trumpets,

But with the slow shuffle of feet and the creak of joints.

Wrinkles spread across faces like well-trodden maps,

Each line recording winters survived,

Harvests endured,

And secrets kept.

For some,

Those lines are admired,

Proof of wisdom,

Living scripture carved into skin.

For others,

They are warnings,

Signs of decline,

The first step toward irrelevance.

Beauty in old age becomes slippery.

Praised one day,

Mocked the next,

Depending on who is looking and whether they owe you money.

Old women in particular walk a dangerous line.

One moment they are revered as keepers of knowledge,

Their wrinkles called crowns of experience,

Their gray hair likened to silver threads spun by God himself.

The next,

They are accused of witchcraft,

Their same wrinkles seen as cracks where demons slip through.

A crooked back becomes a curse,

A mole turns into proof of devil's touch,

And a loud laugh is taken as evidence of consorting with spirits.

Respect is fickle.

Admiration can flip to suspicion with a single rumor whispered over bread.

Men do not escape the double edge either.

An aged knight with scars earns praise for his valor,

But an aged farmer with the same scars is dismissed as a worn-out relic.

A long beard can be seen as a sign of patriarchal authority or a filthy nest for crumbs,

Depending on how neatly it is combed.

You make the mistake of complimenting one elder's impressive beard,

Noting how noble it looks in the sun.

She,

Being a woman with a proud sense of humor and no patience for flattery,

Punches you squarely in the arm,

Sending you stumbling.

Laughter echoes as you rub the bruise,

Realizing too late that in praising the beard,

You implied she looked more man than woman.

The contradiction of aging beauty gnaws at you.

On one hand,

Every crease and white hair is a trophy earned honestly through survival in a world that swallows many too soon.

On the other,

Those same marks become grounds for exclusion,

Muttered jokes or fearful glances.

Young nobles smear their faces with lead to preserve youth.

Peasants hide gray hair beneath caps,

And everyone fears the moment admiration turns into suspicion.

It is a gamble no one can win,

Only postpone.

And yet,

In the candlelight of an evening gathering,

You notice something unexpected.

The elders sit in a circle,

Their eyes crinkling with mirth,

Their laughter deep and unashamed.

They carry their age not as a burden but as armor,

Proof that they have outlasted famine,

Plague,

And gossip alike.

Their beauty does not shimmer or glow.

It settles heavy,

Steady,

Like the roots of an oak.

You,

Bruised arm and all,

Watch them with awe and envy,

For while youth may dazzle,

Age commands.

And perhaps that is the most dangerous kind of beauty,

The kind you cannot fake,

Only endure,

The fairground smell of roasted meat,

Spilled ale,

And ambition.

Beauty contests are announced with trumpets that sound suspiciously like kazoos,

Drawing villagers from miles around.

Banners flap,

Drums pound,

And contestants line up,

Each convinced they embody the finest vision of loveliness the Middle Ages has ever produced.

Painted cheeks glow under the sun,

Hair is combed,

Cloaks freshly patched.

Men flex calves until they cramp,

Women totter under the weight of borrowed jewelry.

The crowd cheers,

Though you sense they are here less for admiration and more for entertainment,

Because beauty,

Once paraded,

Often slips into comedy.

The judges take their roles seriously.

They squint at teeth,

Pinch arms,

Even sniff sleeves in search of lavender rather than sweat.

Bribes appear in the form of pies,

Chickens,

Or promises whispered under breath.

Mothers shove daughters forward,

Insisting their freckles are divine,

While fathers elbow sons to stand taller,

Broader,

Bolder.

It is less a contest of beauty than of desperation,

A grand theater where illusion collides with farm dust.

And yet,

The contests are unpredictable.

One year,

A noblewoman dazzles with pale skin and velvet gown,

Winning the crown of ribbons and a basket of pears.

Another year,

A blacksmith takes the prize for his shimmering beard,

Oiled until it blinds the judges.

But the most infamous victory belongs not to man or woman,

But to a goat.

The animal wanders into the ring,

Its coat brushed to a gleam by children with nothing better to do.

Its eyes shine,

Its horns curve elegantly,

And before anyone can object,

The crowd roars approval.

The judges,

Cornered by enthusiasm,

Declare it winner of fairest hair.

You are there that day,

Clapping politely as the goat is led to the podium.

The poor creature looks bewildered,

Munching on its ribbon crown while admirers coo.

Some laugh,

Others grumble.

But all agree the goat has set a new standard.

People still reference it at every festival.

Yes,

She is lovely,

But is she goat lovely?

The phrase becomes both insult and compliment,

Depending on tone.

You think about beauty's absurdity as you clap.

If a goat can win,

Then perhaps the whole game is less about appearance and more about the spectacle of showing up,

Gleaming,

Ridiculous,

And willing to be judged.

Maybe the villagers cheer not for perfection,

But for the courage to parade under the sun,

Knowing you might be compared to livestock.

You leave the fair grinning,

Wondering if next year you should oil your beard,

Shine your boots,

And take your chances.

Worst case,

You lose to another goat.

Best case,

You and the goat share the pears.

Death is not the end of beauty in the village,

Only its most absurd stage.

When someone breathes their last,

The rush begins.

Not to mourn,

Not to pray,

But to arrange the corpse into something suitably picturesque.

Skin must look pale,

Composed,

Saintly if possible.

Mouths are closed,

Eyes pressed down,

Hands folded in reverence.

If rigor mortis sets in at the wrong angle,

A relative will wrestle the limbs into something more elegant,

Muttering that it is what the deceased would have wanted.

The room fills with incense,

Flowers,

Candles.

Less for holiness and more to mask the smell.

You watch as neighbors adjust the face of an old man who died scowling.

His jaw clenches stubbornly,

Refusing to relax,

So two cousins pinch and tug until he wears a grimace that could almost be mistaken for serenity.

Someone declares that he looks peaceful,

Though to you it is closer to constipated.

Still,

Everyone nods solemnly,

Comforted by the illusion.

Beauty clings even here,

Insisted upon by those who remain.

Stories abound of nobles insisting on their deathbed glow.

Ladies order powders applied to their cheeks,

Even as their breath rattles.

Knights demand their armor polished,

Their hair combed,

So they might look heroic for eternity.

Priests murmur that appearance is meaningless,

But even they dab holy oils on foreheads until they shine.

Death is treated like the final portrait,

The last chance to be admired.

To look plain in life is forgivable.

To look plain in death is a disgrace.

You,

Unnerved by this,

Decide to practice early.

Before bed you lie on your pallet,

Folding your hands neatly,

Tilting your chin toward heaven.

You try different expressions,

The soft half-smile,

The pious upward gaze,

The restful serenity of one who has accepted eternity with grace.

Unfortunately,

Your attempts keep slipping into something closer to a grimace.

You resemble a startled carp more than a saint.

The more you rehearse,

The worse it looks,

Until finally you burst into laughter at the absurdity of it all.

Still,

You keep practicing.

You know that someday,

Distant or near,

Relatives will gather to pinch and pose your face,

Muttering about serenity,

And you would prefer to make their work easy.

Beauty,

It seems,

Is demanded not only in life,

But in stillness.

You close your eyes,

Hands folded,

And try again,

Wondering if perhaps the trick is not to imitate holiness,

But to simply accept that in death,

Even the most ridiculous expression will be forgiven.

After all,

No one dares laugh at a corpse,

At least not.

Loudly.

Everyone has lice.

Everyone smells faintly of onions and goat.

No one has all their teeth.

And yet,

Somehow,

Everyone is still trying,

Trying to be beautiful,

Desirable,

Saintly,

Marriageable,

Immortalized in church mural or drunk bard song.

The standards make no sense,

Fluctuate wildly,

And involve substances like frog bile and powdered bone.

But they persist.

There is comfort in it,

In the ritual of striving,

In the idea that if your nose is the wrong shape or your legs are too short,

You can just smear on some duck fat and no one will notice.

You once saw a woman paint her forehead blue to appear more celestial.

She nearly fainted from the fumes.

She said it was worth it,

That she could feel men's eyes lingering on her like she was the Virgin Mary come to life,

If the Virgin had mild poisoning and walked with a wobble.

Another time,

A baker's wife used wax to smooth her brow until it gleamed like polished stone.

But the wax melted by noon and took her eyebrows with it.

You all pretended not to notice.

Then there's the man who dyed his beard with crushed beetles to impress a merchant's daughter.

The beard came out orange.

She liked orange,

Fortunately,

But not him.

He still kept the beard,

Saying it gave him a mystical aura.

Someone whispered it made him look like a damp fox.

You yourself once tried whitening your face with flour,

Which worked fine until it rained.

Children screamed.

A goat head-butted you in panic.

You spent the rest of the day splotchy and humbled,

Hiding behind a market barrel,

Questioning your life choices and your stash of illicit flour.

You later learned that real nobles use lead-based paste for that ghostly glow.

They also sometimes die because of it.

But no one talks about that part.

Dying pale is still seen as elegant.

Somehow,

Through all the chaos,

Warts sliced off with kitchen knives,

Wigs crawling with secrets,

Shoes designed by people who clearly hate feet,

There is something unshakably human about the inner stage,

Whole thing,

The striving,

The failing,

The doing it anyway.

Everyone wants to be seen.

You want to be seen.

You want someone to look across a muddy square and think,

Yes,

That is the face of someone who scrubs with moss.

When a noble passes through town,

All ridiculous sleeves and glinting teeth,

You feel a pang of longing,

Even though you know she probably smells like damp lace and anxiety.

She has a servant just for brushing her hair.

You have a stick you share with your cousin.

But still,

The envy creeps in like lice in a poorly sealed wig.

You hear someone say freckles are now considered angel kisses.

Last week,

They were signs of demonic corruption.

You nod like you always believed in the angel version.

It's easier that way.

Somehow,

A villager gains popularity for having an aura.

No one knows what that means,

But she wears layers of ash and sings near the well at odd hours.

People say she looks ethereal.

You try singing by the well once and get mistaken for a ghost.

Two boys throw stones.

You give up and eat a turnip.

The standards change with the wind,

Sometimes literally.

A traveling friar says beauty lies in modesty.

A wandering poet insists it lives in confidence and open cleavage.

A merchant from the coast claims tans are exotic and alluring.

The priest shouts from the pulpit that tanned skin is proof of sin and over-fondness for outdoor labor.

You try to stay moderately freckled and avoid extremes.

You once stuffed moss in your sleeves to mimic noble padding.

Someone mistook it for fungus and tried to burn your tunic.

You extinguish the flames with sour ale and cried,

Not because of the burns,

But because you genuinely thought you looked stylish.

Even when you fail,

You laugh.

Everyone laughs.

The beauty rules are nonsense,

But they're shared nonsense.

That matters.

It's easier to endure winter's gloom when someone's experimenting with beetle lip balm beside you.

It's easier to accept your own crooked teeth when someone else is gluing beads to theirs and calling it a trend.

You see a child with soot smeared under her eyes.

She says it makes her eyes look bigger,

Like a fairy queen's.

You nod solemnly and compliment her smoky look.

Her mother beams.

It's ridiculous.

It's charming.

It's all you.

One man paints symbols on his cheeks before courting.

He says they are protective runes.

They are actually bread stamps,

But no one corrects him because he's very earnest and brings good cheese to gatherings.

The festivals continue.

Prizes are still given to prettiest chickens,

Best-groomed pigs,

And most symmetrical moles.

You win once for most decorative shoelace,

Which is a rag dyed with onion skins.

You keep it in a jar,

Label it legacy.

Later that year,

Someone invents decorative mole paint.

Suddenly,

Your friend with the naturally speckled shoulders is a local icon.

She handles it with dignity,

Which is to say she starts charging for glances and struts through town like a duchess.

You feel inspired.

You consider dotting your ankles with ink,

Then decide to wait for a trend less close to the ground.

And when you catch your reflection in the puddle behind the butcher's stall,

Mud on your chin,

Hair windswept,

Eyes squinting from the smoke,

You think,

Not bad,

Not beautiful perhaps,

Not ethereal,

But surviving,

Upright,

Coughing a little,

But alive.

In a world of rat tails as fashion accessories and vinegar as perfume,

Survival is beauty enough.

Eyebrows in your village are less a feature of the face and more a political statement.

Too thick,

And you are called wild,

Untamed,

Possibly harboring wolf blood.

Too thin,

And you are accused of vanity,

Likened to a plucked chicken,

Entirely shaved off and redrawn with soot or ink.

Now you are either an avant-garde beauty icon or one sneeze away from looking permanently surprised.

Every region insists their version is correct,

But none agree,

And the arguments get heated enough that someone once challenged another to a duel over.

The definition of a noble arch.

The French lean toward delicate brows,

Thin as threads,

Whispering that anything bushier belongs to peasants.

Italians praise the bold dramatic sweep,

Claiming it frames the soul,

Though their methods often involve scorching or singeing.

In England,

Restraint reigns.

Moderate,

Stern brows that look as if they could pass judgment without words.

The Germans admire thickness,

Associating it with strength,

While the Spanish celebrate expressive arches that move like theater masks.

When travelers meet,

The debates are endless.

A brow admired in one region becomes a laughingstock in another.

You try to keep up with the trends,

But quickly discover that hairlines and brows are not forgiving canvases.

One afternoon,

Armed with a dull razor and overconfidence,

You attempt to refine your arch.

The first pass goes well,

Shaving a neat edge.

The second pass slips,

Removing half the brow in a crooked sweep.

You stare at your reflection in horror.

One side arched regally,

The other side vacant as a bald egg.

In desperation,

You smear soot to fill the gap,

But the line wobbles,

Giving you an expression that alternates between shock and suspicion depending on the angle of the candlelight.

When you appear at the market,

Reactions are immediate.

A neighbor blinks too long,

Trying to decide if your face is mocking him.

A child giggles,

Asking if you lost a fight with a mouse.

You cough into your sleeve and declare it a new trend,

A foreign style from Venice,

Where all the enlightened scholars shave half their brows to symbolize balance.

The lie spreads faster than you expect.

By evening,

Three other villagers are trimming theirs to match,

Each convinced they are on the cusp of sophistication.

The debates grow louder.

One old woman insists full brows keep away evil spirits,

While a priest thunders that shaving them off invites vanity.

A barber advertises himself as an eyebrow specialist,

Wielding tweezers like sacred instruments,

Though he often plucks so aggressively his clients weep.

A noblewoman parades with brows painted in gold leaf,

Blinding in the sun,

And though people mutter it looks absurd,

They still bow in awe.

You continue your half-shaved experiment,

Leaning into it as though it was always intentional.

Soon,

Admirers appear.

So daring,

Someone whispers.

So intellectual,

Another says.

You nod solemnly,

Though in truth,

You are simply waiting for the hair to grow back.

The irony,

Of course,

Is that by accident,

You have sparked a fashion.

For months,

The town walks around with lopsided faces,

One brow arched high,

The other faint or gone,

Until eventually the fad fades into ridicule.

But by then,

No one remembers you were the origin.

One night,

Lying in bed,

You touch the uneven hairs growing stubbornly back and laugh.

Beauty,

You realize,

Is less about symmetry than confidence.

If you carry it well enough,

Even a mistake can be reframed as a movement.

And perhaps that is the true lesson of the eyebrow debates.

No one really knows what beauty is,

But everyone desperately wants to look like they do.

Courtship is a battlefield,

And your armor is tragically limited.

You own exactly one tunic,

And it smells perpetually of fish,

Thanks to the unfortunate combination of storing it near the river and wearing it to help gut carp.

The scent clings with religious devotion.

No matter how many times you rinse it in vinegar or leave it hanging in the smoke of the hearth,

You convince yourself it's faint,

Tolerable even.

But the moment you step into a crowd,

Someone always wrinkles their nose and asks who brought the herring.

Nobles,

By contrast,

Treat clothing like a weaponized performance.

They change outfits not once,

But five times a day,

Each ensemble tailored for a different mood.

Hunting,

Feasting,

Praying,

Sulking,

Their fabrics shimmer,

Sleeves drag on the ground like banners,

And embroidery gleams in the torchlight.

They twirl in silks and velvets that could feed your family for a warm year if sold.

To them,

Clothing is a declaration of beauty and power.

To you,

Clothing is a damp tunic that threatens to mildew if you don't dry it fast enough.

The crisis becomes urgent when you hear that a feast will be held and eligible partners will be present.

You picture yourself walking in,

Your fish tunic steaming faintly in the candlelight while troubadours pause mid-song to cough.

Desperation forces you to borrow your cousin's doublet,

A garment that once belonged to someone richer before being sold down the social ladder.

It is far too tight in the shoulders,

But you convince yourself that squeezing into it is worth the chance of appearing respectable.

You never make it to the feast without incident.

On the way,

You attempt a shortcut over a fence,

Confident the doublet will hold.

It does not.

With a sound like a goose being strangled,

The seam bursts,

Splitting wide down the back.

You freeze halfway over the fence,

One leg dangling,

Backside exposed to the wind.

Two children walking past shriek with laughter and point.

By the time you tumble down,

The doublet is ruined,

Its once proud stitching unraveling like old rope.

You press the flaps together and mutter that it is the newest Venetian style.

Ventilated fashion,

They do not believe you.

Arriving at the feast,

You try to carry yourself with dignity.

The nobles sweep past in gowns that glitter like molten jewels,

Their perfumes cloying but impressive.

You stand straighter,

Hoping no one notices the jagged tear trailing down your back.

A troubadour announces each guest with flowery descriptions,

And when your turn comes,

He pauses too long,

Then clears his throat and calls you the rustic innovator of air-cooled doublets.

Laughter ripples through the hall.

You grin tightly,

Bowing as though it were intentional.

Still,

Not all is lost.

Fashion,

You realize,

Thrives on boldness.

People whisper about your strange attire,

Some mocking,

Some intrigued.

One lady remarks that your confidence almost redeems the disaster.

Another asks if your cousin will sell her a doublet so she can replicate the look.

You nod sagely,

Pretending this was always your plan,

Though the truth is you can feel the cold draft along your spine every time you move.

Later,

When the feast dwindles and you limp home,

You peel the borrowed doublet off and stare at the ragged tear.

It looks less like Venetian innovation and more like a butchered pigskin.

Still,

You laugh to yourself.

Clothing may betray you,

Seams may split,

And fish may haunt your tunic forever,

But beauty is not in fabric alone.

It is in surviving humiliation and somehow pretending it was elegance.

You collapse onto your bed of straw,

Reeking faintly of both fish and desperation,

And think that perhaps tomorrow you will try patching the tunic with scraps.

Perhaps you will even cut the other side of the doublet to match,

Making the ruins symmetrical.

After all,

If nobles can invent new fashions by accident,

Why not you?

In the end,

What is beauty but confidence stitched together with lies and hope?

You have never trusted mirrors,

Mostly because they don't exist in the way you imagine.

There is no neat pane of glass to catch your reflection,

No gentle oval frame where you can adjust a lock of hair and smile at yourself approvingly.

Here,

A mirror is a slab of polished bronze or tin rubbed so obsessively with cloth that it gleams just enough to return a faint,

Warped version of whatever dares peer into it.

And when you peer into it,

Your face comes back not as you know it,

But as a melted vegetable,

Half turnip,

Half potato,

Staring blankly from a ripple of distorted light.

The first time you confront one,

It is in a noble's chamber.

You stand there while your bettors arrange their collars,

Smoothing their sleeves with the confidence of people who see only what they want to.

The noble woman,

Running her hands through her hair,

Stares into the wobbly surface as if she beholds an angel.

Though to you,

She looks like she is melting into a puddle.

Nobles have mastered the art of pretending mirrors flatter them.

They nod as though reassured,

Never acknowledging the twisted lines or the stretched mouths.

You watch,

Baffled,

As they beam at their reflection,

As if confronted not with a funhouse specter but a divine reassurance of beauty.

When your turn comes,

You lean in,

Expecting to see yourself and immediately regret it.

The surface warps your nose to the left,

Bends your eyes downward until they appear to drip and smears your mouth across half your cheek.

You blink rapidly,

But the melted turnip creature continues to mimic you.

For a terrifying moment,

You think this is what everyone else sees when they look at you.

Panic prickles down your spine.

What if this is your true face,

Hidden until now by the lies of water's reflection?

You tell yourself it's only an illusion,

A trick of polished metal,

But the thought won't let go.

You prod your own cheek,

Watching the warped version ripple in lagging mockery.

Your mind spirals in circles.

Do you really know your own face?

Has anyone ever truly described it honestly?

Maybe when they said handsome enough,

They were hiding laughter.

Maybe comely was actually shorthand for slightly cabbage-like.

The mirror has betrayed you,

Yet you cannot tear yourself away.

You stand there longer than is socially acceptable,

Nose nearly pressed to the surface,

Squinting from different angles,

Hoping for one fleeting glimpse of the real you.

Instead,

You see a succession of horrors.

In one tilt,

Your forehead balloons until it could host a festival.

In another,

Your chin doubles and triples into a tower of flesh.

Your reflection laughs silently,

An endless mockery.

Behind you,

Someone clears their throat.

You jump,

Nearly dropping the mirror.

Others in the room notice your fixation.

They chuckle,

Not at your face exactly,

But at your naivete.

Everyone knows you should never take a mirror too seriously.

They are meant for signaling wealth,

Not for honest truth.

To own one says you have the leisure to care.

To gaze too hard into one says you lack the wisdom to look away.

Nobles keep them on their tables like caged birds,

Beautiful but never acknowledged for their squawking distortions.

Only the insecure.

And now,

Evidently,

You fall into their trap.

But you cannot stop thinking about it.

Days later,

You find yourself staring into water buckets,

Puddles,

Even the slick sheen of fat cooling in a pan.

Every surface reflects something slightly different,

And every version unsettles you.

Are you the sharp-nosed man of the rain barrel,

Or the broad-cheeked peasant of the copper pot?

You begin to distrust all surfaces.

The identity you once carried lightly now feels unstable,

Fragile.

The crisis peaks one morning when you catch sight of yourself in a particularly well-polished dish at the inn.

The light strikes just right,

And there,

Looking back at you,

Is a stranger with hollow eyes and a crooked jaw.

You jolt,

Nearly knocking the dish to the floor.

Others glance at you in confusion as you mutter under your breath.

By then,

You're not sure if you're avoiding your reflection or chasing it,

Desperate for reassurance.

In truth,

No one else cares.

They see your face as they always have,

Average enough to pass unnoticed in the crowd,

Occasionally interesting if the light favors you.

But to you,

The distorted turnip image lingers.

You remember how the nobles smiled at their melted reflections,

Serene in their delusion,

And you almost envy them.

To look at nonsense and believe it whispers compliments.

That is a power you do not have.

Eventually,

You make peace in the only way possible.

You declare,

Half aloud,

That mirrors lie.

They are tricksters,

Polished slabs designed to unsettle.

Water,

Metal,

Glass.

It makes no difference.

You decide your true face is not something to be seen but something to be lived.

When people laugh at your jokes,

Perhaps your mouth looks good then.

When they lean close to hear you,

Perhaps your eyes shine in that moment.

Perhaps beauty is not in the turnip reflection but in the fleeting impressions you leave behind.

Still,

When you catch yourself again in the wobbling surface of tin,

You shudder.

The melted creature grins back knowingly,

As though it knows a truth you never will.

You look away quickly,

Telling yourself survival doesn't require knowing what you look like.

It only requires believing against all evidence that you belong.

And maybe that is the secret nobles have always known.

The mirror matters less than the confidence with which you face it.

Even if,

In the polished metal,

You are forever a melted turnip.

Your teeth have never been a source of pride.

They are what they are.

Functional,

Mostly present,

And capable of biting through bread hard enough to stun a horse.

But in the medieval theater of beauty,

Teeth are not simply for chewing.

They are statements.

Nobles parade their mouths as though each incisor were a jewel to be polished,

Painted,

Sharpened,

Or blackened according to whatever passing whim convinces them it is desirable.

You discover this one evening at a feast when a young nobleman leans across the table to grin,

Revealing teeth stained pitch black.

He beams like a chimney sweep and announces it is the latest fashion imported from distant lands where darkness in the mouth signifies wealth and mystery.

You stare,

Unsure whether to admire or recoil.

Across the hall,

Another noble bears pointed teeth filed down into delicate fangs,

A look he insists is irresistibly flirtatious.

When he smiles,

Women titter nervously,

And one actually faints.

You cannot tell whether it is from attraction or from fear that he might bite her arm off.

In this world,

Beauty has never settled on a single standard.

It veers wildly from soot-black grins to gleaming pearls,

Each extreme carrying the promise of status and allure.

The pressure builds.

You glance at your own.

Reflection in a cup of ale and sigh.

Your teeth are ordinary,

A mixture of slightly yellowed and slightly crooked,

Nothing that would inspire a bard or terrify a rival.

You decide something must be done.

Whitening seems ambitious,

Involving crushed pearls,

Powdered bone,

Or mercury,

None of which you have.

Blackening requires soot,

But you fear choking on ash.

Instead,

You reach for the only option within arm's reach,

Berry juice.

The logic feels sound.

Berries stain lips and fingers in pleasing shades of red and purple,

So surely they will do the same for your teeth.

Adding an exotic vibrancy that will set you apart,

You mash them into a paste,

Spitting and smearing until your gums tingle.

When you check your handiwork in a puddle,

The effect seems promising,

Bold,

Daring,

And possibly even charming.

You march to the feast with new confidence,

Bearing your berry-stained grin at everyone you pass.

The reaction is immediate,

But not what you hoped.

Instead of gasps of admiration,

There are stifled laughs.

Someone mutters,

Did he just gnaw a wounded squirrel?

Another swears you've come from the battlefield with blood still stuck between your teeth.

A child points and screams,

Certain you have devoured a rat hole.

You try to insist it is a new fashion from the South,

But your words are drowned by giggles.

In the glow of the torches,

Your mouth does not look exotic at all.

It looks carnivorous,

As though you are one meal away from becoming a local horror story.

Undeterred,

You lean into the role.

If they think you have eaten a squirrel,

Then so be it.

You tell a tall tale about hunting in the woods,

About bravery and blood,

Until your audience half believes it.

Strangely,

This earns you a smattering of respect.

People step aside as you walk by,

Wary of crossing the beast tamer with the crimson grin.

The noble with the blackened teeth scowls,

Jealous that your disaster has stolen his thunder.

But the admiration is fleeting.

By the end of the evening,

The juice begins to rot,

Leaving your mouth sticky and sour.

A lady leans close to whisper something,

Then recoils with a gasp,

Fanning herself dramatically.

Someone offers you vinegar water to wash away the squirrel remains.

By the time you stumble home,

Your stomach churns with the taste of berries gone rancid,

And your teeth ache from the sugar lodged between them.

The next morning,

You wake with a tongue dyed purple and a mouth that feels like a battlefield.

Scrubbing with straw does little.

You begin to worry you will be known forever as the squirrel eater,

Condemned to laugh with lips pressed tight.

Still,

A strange pride stirs in you.

For one night,

Your teeth were noticed.

You were talked about,

Pointed at,

Remembered.

In a world where beauty is fleeting and arbitrary,

Perhaps even failure can be fashionable,

Provided you wear it boldly enough.

So you practice your new smile in secret,

Half feral,

Half amused.

You imagine the legends that may spring from it.

The villager with the stained mouth,

Feared and admired in equal measure,

Who devoured fashion itself like prey.

And though your experiment with berry juice has ended in sticky humiliation,

A part of you savors the absurdity.

Nobles may polish,

Stain,

And file their teeth to please the crowd,

But you have discovered another truth.

Sometimes,

Beauty is not about looking flawless.

Sometimes,

It is about leaving people unsure whether to laugh,

Swoon,

Or run away.

Accessories in your village are not simply adornments.

They are declarations,

Rivaling sermons in how seriously people take them.

To walk into the market without something dangling,

Jingling,

Or fluttering is to announce yourself as plain and uninspired.

Girdles cinched with elaborate knots,

Ribbons trailing in colors so bright they nearly blind,

Bells sewn onto sleeves so every step is a performance.

Hats alone have become an entire battlefield,

Sprouting towers of fabric,

Veils so long they sweep mud like brooms,

Even taxidermy mice,

Posed in heroic stances atop brims.

Nobles parade them like trophies,

Smirking as peasants crane their necks for a better view.

You are not immune to the pressure.

After watching a man receive actual applause for fastening a polished spoon to his belt,

You realize you cannot keep appearing in public as nothing more than yourself.

The trouble is that accessories cost money,

And you have little.

Bells are pricey,

Ribbons tear,

And mice do not volunteer for permanent hat duty,

So you improvise.

While others prepare for the feast by layering themselves in furs and gilt chains,

You pluck a single feather from a passing goose and tuck it into your cap.

Subtle,

Dignified,

A quiet gesture of refinement,

Or so you think.

At first,

You stride into the square with newfound confidence,

Chin high,

Ready to endure the murmurs of admiration.

Heads do turn,

But the expressions are not quite what you hoped.

Some eyes widen,

Others narrow,

And a few jaws actually drop.

You catch snippets of whispers.

Bold choice,

Someone says.

Does he even know what it means?

Asks another.

You frown,

Adjusting the feather,

Convinced they are overreacting.

Surely a feather is only a feather.

Then the rooster spots you.

Out of nowhere,

The bird hurtles across the yard like a feathered cannonball,

Wings flapping,

Beak aimed directly at your hat.

It screeches with the fury of the damned,

Launching itself onto your shoulder and pecking with the precision of a trained soldier.

You stumble,

Swatting wildly,

As villagers roar with laughter.

By the time you tear the feather free,

Your scalp stings,

Your dignity lies trampled,

And the rooster struts away in smug triumph.

Breathless,

You demand an explanation,

And someone finally leans close to clarify.

That feather,

The exact shape and color you proudly displayed,

Was not just decoration.

It was a signal,

An emblem borrowed from knightly tournaments signifying you were publicly declaring love for someone already betrothed.

In other words,

Your innocent attempt at fashion had been read as a scandalous challenge.

The rooster,

Apparently,

Belonged to the offended family and had been trained to attack such gestures.

You gape,

Horrified.

The whispers now make sense,

The laughter tinged with outrage and delight.

To half the village,

You are an audacious romantic,

Brazen enough to insult a rival.

To the other half,

You are a fool who dressed like a troubadour without knowing the tune.

Either way,

You have become spectacle.

People nudge each other when you pass,

Murmuring about the feather incident.

The following days only deepen the humiliation.

Children chase you with makeshift hats,

Waving sticks adorned with weeds,

Chanting that you woo hens instead of ladies.

An old man advises you to carry a stick of your own in case the rooster seeks revenge.

Someone offers to sell you a proper ribbon,

Hinting that it might restore your reputation,

But you have neither coin nor courage to risk another mistake.

For now,

You go bareheaded,

Muttering about practicality and pretending it was all intentional performance art.

Still,

There is a lesson in the chaos.

Accessories,

You realize,

Are not harmless ornaments.

They are a language,

A battlefield of hidden meanings and social codes you never learn to read.

To wear a ribbon,

A bell,

A feather,

Is to declare allegiance,

Status,

Or desire.

A noble draped in jingling girdles announces wealth.

A woman with a hatmouse signals wit and daring,

And you with your lone goose feather accidentally declared war.

Late at night,

Lying in bed,

You run a finger across your sore scalp and laugh despite yourself.

The absurdity is almost comforting.

In a world where beauty standards change with the wind,

Perhaps the trick is not to keep up but to stumble loudly enough that people remember you.

You may not have dazzled with ribbons or bells,

But you left an impression,

Etched forever in the town's gossip.

Perhaps that,

In its own crooked way,

Is fashion.

And so,

Though you swear never again to accessorize without research,

You also smile when you think of the rooster.

Because while others wore baubles and veils,

You were the only one who managed to make fashion draw blood.

The potion seller arrives with the kind of confidence only a liar or a saint could carry.

His cart rattles into the square,

Covered in jars and bottles,

Each glinting as if they contain captured miracles.

He calls out to the crowd with a voice that could charm coins from a stone,

Skin-clarifying tonics,

Hair-restoring elixirs,

A fountain of youth in every drop.

His hands move so quickly,

Gesturing,

Uncorking,

Waving,

That you begin to believe him,

Despite the stench drifting from his wares.

It smells faintly of vinegar,

Strongly of barnyard,

And unmistakably of desperation.

The villagers gather,

Eager for hope.

One woman demands something for wrinkles.

He hands her a vial with solemn assurance that it contains the essence of eternal spring.

She drinks,

Makes a face as if she swallowed fire,

But nods bravely.

Another man asks for baldness,

And the seller rubs a paste of questionable color into his scalp,

Promising hair thick as a horse's mane.

The man beams,

Though his head now shines with something closer to goose grease.

Every transaction ends the same way.

Coins disappear into the seller's pouch,

Promises linger in the air,

And the customers wander off clutching bottles that smell like the wrong end of an ox.

You tell yourself you're above it,

You know better.

Yet the whispers gnaw at you.

Her skin glowed after the tonic.

Someone insists.

He looks younger already.

You glance at your reflection in a bucket of water,

Muddy,

Tired,

Your forehead marked by too many frowns,

And your resistance crumbles.

Perhaps just one bottle.

Perhaps a small miracle wouldn't hurt.

The seller greets you warmly,

Already guessing your intent.

He presses a vial into your hand before you even speak.

Skin clarifying,

He whispers,

As though it is a holy,

Secret,

Vinegar for cleansing,

Urine for purity,

Herbs for strength,

And,

He lowers his voice further,

Hope,

Distilled.

He says the word hope like it costs extra,

Which it probably does.

You nod,

Hand over more coins than you should,

And clutch the bottle like treasure.

Back home,

You unstopper it with reverence.

The smell escapes instantly,

Sharp enough to make your eyes water.

Vinegar dominates,

But beneath it lurks something worse,

Something unmistakably human.

Despair,

You decide,

Has a scent,

And it is this.

You hesitate,

Then tip the bottle to your lips.

The liquid hits your tongue with the fury of spoiled wine,

The bitterness of regret,

And the unmistakable tang of a poor decision.

You gag,

Swallow anyway,

And sit very still,

Waiting for transformation.

The minutes pass.

Your skin does not glow.

Your wrinkles do not smooth.

What does happen is more subtle and far less divine.

Your stomach churns like a storm at sea.

Your tongue feels coated in metal.

The room seems to tilt.

You stumble to your bed,

Clutching the empty bottle,

Praying the potion doesn't try to claw its way back up.

By morning,

You are alive,

Though your mouth tastes like you've been chewing despair.

Villagers gather in the square again,

Chattering about the miracle cures.

The bald man still gleams like a polished onion.

The wrinkled woman looks no younger,

But insists she feels radiant inside.

And you,

Too embarrassed to admit defeat,

Declare loudly that the potion has changed you.

You don't specify how.

People nod,

Impressed,

And the seller smiles knowingly,

Already moving to his next victim.

In truth,

Nothing has changed except your conviction that beauty in this world is as much about performance as reality.

The potions may be vinegar and urine,

But they are also hope bottled and sold,

And perhaps hope alone is enough to brighten a face.

You watch as the seller leaves town,

Cart rattling,

Coins clinking,

Promises trailing like perfume.

The crowd waves,

Already dreaming of the next miracle.

You touch your own cheek,

Still the same,

And laugh quietly.

Beauty,

It seems,

Is not found in a bottle.

It's found in the willingness to believe,

Even when belief tastes like regret.

And though your purchase was foolish,

You feel strangely comforted.

After all,

If everyone else is willing to drink despair for a chance at radiance,

Then perhaps you are not alone.

In this world,

That is its own kind of glow.

The war begins,

As wars often do,

With a smell.

On one side,

The incense faction gathers,

Dousing themselves in resin,

Rose water,

Myrrh,

And anything else that can be lit,

Smoked,

Or steeped.

They walk through the streets,

Leaving trails of fragrance so thick it's like wandering inside a cathedral that has caught fire.

Their hair glistens with oils,

Their sleeves perfumed until the very fabric gasps with every movement.

They believe true allure is heavenly,

Sweet,

Floral,

Divine.

To them,

Garlic reeks of poverty in kitchens.

On the other side stands the garlic camp.

They chew cloves raw,

Hang braids of it around their necks,

Rub it on their skin until their pores emit the fragrance of a thousand kitchens at once.

They insist it is the secret to health and desire,

A smell of vigor and strength.

Better than roses,

They say,

Flexing proudly.

Even as passersby flinch,

Their kisses,

One suspects,

Could fell oxen.

You are caught between them,

An unfortunate soul who wants nothing more than to pass through the square unnoticed,

Yet fate is cruel.

The two camps have chosen this very morning to display their philosophies in a contest of presence.

On the left,

Incense bearers wave censors,

Clouds rising in scented puffs that sting your eyes and choke your lungs.

On the right,

Garlic champions stomp forward,

Chewing noisily,

Exhaling in unholy gusts,

Their breath enough to wilt nearby cabbage.

You step into the middle without realizing the danger and immediately regret it.

One nostril fills with roses and frankincense,

The other with garlic so strong it feels like a physical punch.

Your senses collide,

Your vision blurs,

Your knees buckle,

You clutch your stomach,

Swaying as incense warriors chant and garlic warriors howl.

The world tilts,

Half temple,

Half kitchen,

And you wonder whether fainting will be seen as devotion or insult.

The villagers cheer as though this is normal.

The perfume camp raises banners embroidered with lilies while the garlic camp hoists braids like trophies.

Someone shouts,

Choose your side.

You wave your hands weakly,

Insisting you want neither,

But both groups press closer.

One smears rose water on your forehead,

Declaring you radiant.

The other thrusts a clove at your lips,

Insisting you'll never know love without it.

You gag,

Half from smell,

Half from panic.

Desperate to escape,

You claim sudden illness,

Which is not entirely a lie.

Your stomach twists violently,

Your head spins,

And your mouth tastes like despair.

You stagger away,

Collapsing behind a cart.

From there,

You watch the scent war rage.

Each side convinced the other embodies ugliness.

The incense folks sneer,

Calling their rivals goat eaters.

The garlic devotees laugh,

Calling theirs perfumed corpses.

And you,

Sandwiched between,

Realize that beauty is once again a battlefield where truth matters less than conviction.

For some,

Allure lies in roses and smoke.

For others,

In garlic and grit.

And for you,

Survival lies in fresh air,

Far away from both.

Later,

Safe at home,

You scrub your skin with moss,

Trying to rid yourself of the duel that clings to your pores.

But no matter how hard you wash,

The memory lingers.

The sweet suffocation of incense,

The brutal assault of garlic,

The way your body nearly gave up between them.

You laugh,

A little bitterly,

And vow never again to underestimate the politics of smell.

Beauty,

You decide,

Is not always about looking right.

Sometimes,

It is about smelling wrong in exactly the way that makes sense to your people.

And sometimes,

If you are unlucky,

It is about choking in the middle while everyone else cheers.

It begins,

As most idiotic things do,

With an insult shouted too loudly at the wrong time.

Two noblemen,

Both bearded,

Both fond of stroking their chins with excessive drama,

Face one another in the middle of the square.

The first accuses the second of dyeing his beard with walnut juice,

Declaring that such vanity is unbecoming of a man of honor.

The second responds with outrage,

Swearing his beard is naturally that rich chestnut shade blessed by God and heredity.

Words turn to shouts,

Shouts to threats,

And before you can blink,

A duel is declared.

The town erupts in excitement.

People cheer and place bets not on swordplay or valor,

But on which color will win,

Natural chestnut or fraudulent walnut.

Children climb onto barrels to watch.

Old women sharpen their commentary like daggers.

You,

Unfortunate and unlucky,

Attempt to blend into the crowd,

Only to feel a hand clamp down on your shoulder.

You,

One of the noblemen,

Bellows.

His eyes gleam with righteous fury.

You look neutral.

You shall bear witness.

The other nobleman agrees too quickly.

Yes,

His tone is impartial.

He looks like a man who has never formed an opinion in his life.

The crowd laughs,

And before you can protest,

You are shoved forward,

Conscripted into service as the witness to beard-related destiny.

You nod dumbly,

Praying they'll forget about you,

Already plotting your escape,

But there is no escape.

The duel is scheduled for noon,

And you are now essential,

The pillar of fairness upon which this ridiculous battle must rest.

By noon,

The square has transformed into a theater.

The noblemen arrive in embroidered doublets,

Each beard oiled,

Combed,

And glistening in the sunlight.

The accuser brandishes a sword,

Pointing dramatically at the chestnut strands of his rival's chin.

Died,

He cries.

Artificial,

A fraud of follicles.

The accused clutches his beard with both hands,

As though protecting a child.

Never,

This color is pure lineage.

You are blinded by jealousy,

Your own beard patchy and pale.

Gasps ripple through the crowd.

The insult cuts deep.

To call a man's beard patchy is to challenge his very existence.

The swords are raised,

The duel begins.

You are shoved into position at the edge of the clearing,

Forced to nod at the crowd like a solemn judge.

Inside,

You are screaming.

Swords clash,

Sparks fly,

And the audience roars with delight,

Yet no one seems to notice that both noblemen are panting within minutes,

Their footwork clumsy,

Their thrusts wide.

It is less an elegant duel and more a violent dance of two men desperate to preserve facial pride.

At one point,

The walnut accusation seems to gain traction.

The accuser swings and shouts,

See how it drips in the sweat,

The dye reveals itself.

The crowd leans in eagerly,

Squinting.

Indeed,

The accused's beard looks darker,

Shinier.

But he roars back,

Tis oil,

Not dye.

Walnut juice is for peasants.

He spits for emphasis,

Though the spit lands awkwardly on your shoe.

You grimace,

Reminding yourself you are neutral.

Minutes drag on.

The crowd chants,

Coins change hands,

And the noblemen grow increasingly desperate.

Each slash of the blade is accompanied not by lethal intent,

But by shouted arguments about genetics,

Heritage,

And grooming habits.

You realize this duel is not about victory,

But about convincing the crowd that one beard is more authentic than the other.

Then comes the critical moment.

The accused stumbles,

Nearly losing his balance,

And his opponent lunges forward.

The blade slices not skin but beard,

Shearing off a tuft of chestnut hair.

Gasps erupt.

The lock of hair falls to the ground,

Where an eager child scoops it up and holds it aloft like a holy relic.

The crowd swarms,

Sniffing,

Touching,

Arguing.

Some swear it smells of walnut.

Others insist it smells only of sweat.

One man licks it,

Then declares he tastes honesty.

You are dragged forward to render judgment.

Both noblemen kneel,

Panting,

Beards disheveled,

Eyes wild.

Well,

The accuser hisses.

Died or not died,

The accused pleads.

Speak truth,

Witness.

Tell them my beard is natural.

The entire village waits.

You clear your throat,

Stalling for time.

What can you say?

The tuft of hair looks brown.

It smells like hair,

Perhaps walnut,

Perhaps oil,

Perhaps the general stench of desperation.

You feel sweat bead on your forehead.

At last,

You nod gravely and declare,

The beard is a beard.

Silence falls,

Then laughter erupts,

Spreading like fire.

The absurdity breaks the tension.

Even the noblemen pause,

Swords drooping,

As the crowd doubles over with howls of amusement.

Someone claps you on the back,

Declaring your neutrality divine.

The duel fizzles,

Not with death,

But with ridicule.

Neither man can press on when their sacred battle has become a village joke.

By evening,

Bets are returned in garlic cloves and ale.

The noblemen retreat,

Muttering about honor,

But neither emerges victorious.

Instead,

The tale of the beard-dye duel becomes legend,

Retold with embellishments.

One side swears you called the beard holy.

Another insists you fainted at the sight of walnut juice.

Regardless,

You remain forever tied to the day two grown men nearly killed each other over color theory.

When you finally sneak home,

Exhausted,

You collapse onto your straw bed and cover your face.

You never asked to be neutral,

Never asked to stand between pride and walnut juice.

Yet somehow,

You did.

And perhaps that is your legacy,

Not as a fighter,

Not as a noble,

But as the unfortunate soul who confirmed that sometimes a beard is just a beard.

The monk arrives with little warning,

His robe patched,

His sandals worn thin,

His satchel bulging with parchment and paints.

He introduces himself as an artist of souls,

Traveling from village to village to capture likenesses for posterity.

Nobles have portraits of themselves hung in grand halls,

He explains,

So why should not common folk too?

His voice carries the gravity of scripture,

And you,

Caught in the moment,

Begin to imagine your own face immortalized in pigment.

For a modest fee,

He promises,

Your features will outlast you,

Gazing wisely from a wooden panel long after your bones turn to dust.

The idea seduces you all your life.

Beauty has been judged by fleeting glances,

Warped mirrors,

And gossiping mouths.

But a painting,

Ah,

A painting is eternal.

You picture it already,

Yourself in noble pose,

Chin raised,

Eyes smoldering,

Jaw square as castle stone.

Perhaps future generations will hang it above a hearth and nod reverently.

Perhaps ballads will be composed,

Inspired by your immortal likeness.

You hand over the coin before caution can intervene.

The monk sets to work immediately.

He seats you on a stool in the tavern's corner,

Instructing you to sit still,

To hold your face as though gazing at the horizon of destiny.

You attempt a look both humble and commanding,

Somewhere between saint and knight.

Hours drag on.

The monk's brush scratches parchment,

His tongue poking from the corner of his mouth in concentration.

Villagers wander in and out,

Snickering at your stiff posture.

You ignore them,

Confident the final product will silence all mockery.

At last,

The monk leans back,

Satisfied.

He blows gently on the ink,

Then turns the panel toward you,

And you die a little inside.

Your nose dominates the portrait like a potato squatting in the middle of your face.

Your eyes,

Once thought soulful,

Peer unevenly,

One higher than the other,

Giving you the expression of a startled goat.

Your lips,

Which you had hoped would be drawn firm and proud,

Sag into a wet line that suggests constant confusion.

The chin vanishes entirely,

Lost in a blur of shadow.

The overall effect is less saintly,

More farm produce left too long in the sun.

You gape in horror.

That is not me,

You protest weakly.

The monk shrugs,

Serene.

It is you as God sees you,

He says,

Which is the kind of excuse that cannot be argued against.

You want to grab the panel and smash it,

But the villagers are already gathering,

Giggling,

Pointing.

Someone shouts,

He's captured you perfectly,

And the tavern erupts in laughter.

Before you can stop them,

The tavern keeper hangs the portrait above the hearth.

Now every drinker in town raises their mug beneath your potato-nosed likeness.

Patrons clink cups,

Toast to your expression,

And invent nicknames.

Some call you Sir Turnip.

Others prefer Saint Spud.

A bard even improvises a song about your tragic beauty,

Each verse more humiliating than the last.

You bury your head in your hands as the tavern howls.

Days pass,

But the torment continues.

Travelers entering the village are immediately ushered into the tavern,

Shown the portrait as though it were a holy relic.

Children sketch crude versions in the dirt,

Shouting that they too can be artists.

Even the local goats seem to regard you differently,

Tilting their heads as though recognizing kinship.

You try to avoid the tavern altogether,

But gossip travels faster than feet.

No matter where you go,

Someone inevitably smirks and asks if you've had your likeness blessed lately.

At night,

You dream of the painting looming over you,

Its potato nose expanding,

Its goat eyes following your every move.

You wake sweating,

Vowing to scrape the panel clean,

But each time you approach,

The tavern is full,

Laughter loud,

And you cannot bring yourself to snatch it down.

It has become larger than you,

No longer just a portrait,

But a story,

A joke the whole village shares.

To destroy it would be to challenge their joy,

And you are not brave enough to fight the power of communal laughter.

So instead,

You adapt.

You begin to joke about it yourself,

Calling attention to the likeness before others can.

You cross your eyes,

Puff your cheeks,

Mimic the painted fool.

The laughter softens when you join in,

Turning mockery into camaraderie.

Strangely,

People begin to treat you with affection.

Our potato saint,

They call you,

Not with cruelty now,

But with endearment.

The portrait that once haunted you becomes a banner of sorts,

A reminder that beauty is fleeting,

But laughter lasts.

One evening,

As the tavern roars and mugs clatter,

You catch your reflection in a jug of ale.

For a moment,

You glimpse yourself as you are,

Ordinary,

Uneven,

Flawed,

And then glance up at the painted version above the hearth.

You sigh,

But you also smile.

Perhaps the monk captured more truth than you wish to see.

Perhaps beauty is not in the jawline or the symmetry,

But in the ridiculous persistence of being remembered at all.

And so you lift your cup,

Nodding solemnly to the potato-faced stranger on the wall.

The tavern erupts in cheers.

For better or worse,

You have been immortalized,

Not as a saint,

Not as a knight,

But as the village's greatest joke.

And perhaps,

In its own crooked way,

That is a kind of glory no portrait could ever improve.

You hear the rumor whispered in the tavern,

Carried on the same breath as tales of dragons and saints.

If you sleep on silk,

They say,

Your face will remain smooth,

Youthful,

Untouched by time's cruel hand.

The words slip into your ears like honey,

And you believe them immediately.

Why wouldn't you?

Nobles swathe themselves in silks and velvets,

And their portraits always show them ageless,

Unlined,

Serene.

You imagine yourself lying upon silk,

Rising in the morning with skin so radiant villagers would shield their eyes.

The trouble,

Of course,

Is that silk does not exist in your home.

Your bed is a straw mattress that crunches with every shift.

Your pillow is a sack filled with something you suspect is mostly mice.

But desire makes fools of everyone,

And so you seek out the traveling merchant whose cart brims with fabrics.

You eye the scarves,

Thin and shimmering,

Whispering promises of youth.

The merchant smiles,

Sensing weakness.

He names a price,

Fit for a king's ransom.

You balk,

But in the end,

You barter your boots,

Your belt,

And a week's worth of bread,

Clutching the scarves as if they were relics.

That night,

You spread them across your straw bed,

Smoothing the silks as though preparing an altar.

You undress reverently,

As though the fabric might punish disrespect,

And lay your head down.

At first,

It is bliss,

The cool glide of silk against your cheek,

The gentle rustle that feels like wealth itself.

You close your eyes,

Picturing yourself transformed.

By morning,

You think,

You will wake as luminous as a saint,

Skin taut,

Youth preserved forever.

Sleep,

However,

Is less divine.

The scarves shift constantly,

Slipping from under your head,

Twisting around your throat.

The slick surface makes your pillow behave like a mischievous eel,

Sliding one way as you roll the other.

You wake multiple times,

Flailing,

Clutching at the fabric as if it might flee.

By dawn,

You are less refreshed than you have ever been,

Your neck kinked,

Your eyes swollen,

And your dreams full of suffocating scarves.

Still,

You hold hope.

Beauty is never easy,

You tell yourself.

You stumble to the bucket of water to check your reflection.

You expect radiance.

What greets you is something else entirely,

A red rash across your jaw,

Puffy eyes,

Hair plastered to your forehead.

You look less like a saint and more like someone who has lost a fight with laundry.

You try to convince yourself it is only temporary,

That beauty requires patience.

Then,

You scratch your scalp and pause.

Something moves.

At first,

You dismiss it as paranoia,

But the itching spreads,

Insistent.

By midday,

It is undeniable.

Lice,

They march across your head in tiny armies,

No doubt smuggled in from the merchant's dubious silks.

You claw at your scalp,

Horror mounting,

While villagers edge away as though you are cursed.

Children giggle and chant about your silk crown of lice.

Desperate,

You drag yourself back to the merchant,

Scarves clutched like evidence of betrayal.

You demand a refund.

He shrugs,

Unimpressed,

And instead hands you a parchment fine for damaging his wares.

Apparently,

In your frantic night of twisting,

You tore a seam.

Now,

Not only are you infested,

But you owe money you do not have.

The villagers howl with laughter as you stagger through the square,

Scratching,

Humiliated,

Bankrupt.

The scarves,

Once imagined as keys to immortality,

Now hang around your shoulders like a punishment.

You burn them in the hearth that evening,

Smoke filling the room,

The smell a mix of disappointment and singed vermin.

You collapse back onto your straw mattress,

Itchy but honest,

Vowing never again to trust beauty myths whispered over ale.

Yet,

As the flames die down,

You admit something to yourself.

The myth of silk may have been a lie,

But the dream it carried was true.

People will always reach for it,

Always believe that one secret,

One scarf,

One potion,

One feather will keep time from touching them.

And maybe that dream is what makes them human.

You scratch once more,

Grimace,

And laugh bitterly.

If silk means youth,

Then you have become the oldest person alive.

Still,

You survived,

And in the village,

Survival itself is beauty enough.

In your village,

Beauty is rarely judged by daylight.

Daylight is too honest,

Too blunt.

Sunlight reveals everything.

The scars,

The pores,

The faint greenish tinge of someone who has eaten more onions than vegetables.

No,

True radiance,

According to nobles and their imitators,

Must be seen in candlelight.

Flickering shadows soften the lines of the face,

Blur the blemishes,

And,

If you believe the chatter,

Transform even the homeliest peasant into a vision of mystery.

Entire gatherings are held by flame alone,

Nobles arranging themselves so the light strikes just right,

Cheekbones glowing,

Eyes glimmering,

Lips gleaming,

As if painted by divine hand.

You hear this often enough that it gnaws at you.

You imagine yourself stepping into a hall,

Candles casting you in,

Romantic silhouette,

Villagers gasping,

Convinced you are some nobleman in disguise.

The more you imagine it,

The more you crave it.

Why should you not glow like saints in illuminated manuscripts?

Why should shadows not adore you as much as they adore them?

And so,

One evening,

You decide to test the theory.

You collect every candle you can find,

Half-melted stubs from the church,

Beeswax cylinders borrowed,

Without asking,

From a neighbor.

A few dubious lumps of tallow you discover in a cupboard.

You arrange them carefully around your bed like a monk preparing for ritual.

In your mind,

You see yourself as a figure of allure,

Framed by golden light,

Shadows playing lovingly over your features.

You strike the flint,

Light the wicks,

And sit down,

Ready to behold your own transformation.

At first,

It is magical.

The room fills with glow,

Warm and alive.

The shadows dance across your cheeks,

Softening the lines,

Giving your eyes a sparkle they never knew in daylight.

You tilt your head this way and that,

Marveling at how mysterious you look when half your face is in shadow.

You feel noble,

Even saintly.

You whisper to yourself,

Yes,

This is allure,

But candlelight has no loyalty.

One moment it flatters,

The next it betrays.

As the flames waver,

Your noble cheekbones melt into hollows,

Your smoldering eyes turn ghoulish,

Your lips vanish into darkness,

Replaced by an unsettling grin you did not make.

You shift your head again,

Desperate to restore the effect,

But the shadows mock you,

Where once you saw romance,

Now you see menace,

Where once you saw allure,

Now you see a demon preparing to leap from the dark.

You lean closer to inspect,

And that is your mistake.

The feather from your cap,

Forgotten still perched above your ear,

Brushes aflame.

In an instant,

The feather ignites,

A brilliant flash of fire so close you smell your own hair singe.

You yelp,

Slap frantically,

Stumble backward into the circle of candles.

Wax splashes onto your tunic,

Scalding,

Sticking,

Burning like glue from the underworld.

You hop,

You flail,

You curse,

And in doing so,

You knock over three more candles,

Each rolling across the floor like fiery soldiers of chaos.

The neighbors rush in at the sound of your screams.

They find you stumbling in a circle,

Half your sleeve smoking,

Your hair frizzed into a scorched halo,

Wax dripping from your chest in grotesque patterns.

In the half-light,

You do not look like a saint at all.

You look like a warning,

A figure in a miracle play meant to terrify children into confession.

The laughter begins hesitantly,

Then grows until the whole crowd shakes.

They point,

Clutching their sides,

Gasping that you are radiant indeed,

Radiant like a bonfire,

Radiant like a torch,

Radiant like a man about to combust.

Someone shouts,

Look,

He's glowing.

Another adds,

Our very own candle saint.

They howl as you stand there,

Dripping wax,

Hair half gone,

Your pride smoldering as badly as your sleeve.

You try to explain,

Mumbling about allure and noble gatherings,

About beauty revealed by shadow,

But your words only fuel their amusement.

Yes,

They agree,

Shadows love you.

You look best hidden entirely in them.

Someone snuffs out the last candle,

Plunging the room into darkness,

And the laughter swells again.

By morning,

The story spreads.

Children chase you with candles,

Chanting that you should pose.

The tavern keeper greets you by bowing with exaggerated reverence,

Calling you our radiant one.

The local priest mutters that fire is punishment for vanity,

Though his smirk betrays his enjoyment.

Even the rooster crows louder when you pass,

As though mocking your singed hair.

You spend the day peeling hardened wax from your tunic,

Sighing.

You wanted romance,

Allure,

The glow of mystery.

What you achieved instead was spectacle,

The kind of beauty remembered not for charm,

But for chaos.

And yet,

As you scrub your sleeve and catch sight of yourself in the bucket of water,

You chuckle.

You do look changed.

Not youthful,

Not noble,

But unforgettable.

Maybe that is the truth about candlelight.

It does not lie so much as reveal different versions of you,

Sometimes saint,

Sometimes demon,

Sometimes fool set aflame.

Beauty is not in controlling the shadows,

But in surviving them.

You pat down the last smoldering tuft of hair,

Laugh,

And decide that perhaps the neighbors are right.

Radiance,

After all,

Is simply being bright enough that no one forgets.

The whispers start small,

Carried between market stalls and whispered at wells,

Always with the same promise.

There are charms that guarantee love.

You hear them in fragments,

Half-truths traded for gossip.

One woman insists you must swallow rose petals at dawn,

So your breath carries the scent of romance.

A shepherd swears by carrying frog bones in your pocket,

Each rattle summoning desire.

Others whisper of honey rubbed on the lips,

So every word sounds sweet.

None of it seems believable,

But when you hear it enough,

It begins to fester like hope.

The village peddler is the one who convinces you.

He arrives with his cart of trinkets and bottles,

Eyes glinting,

Voice smooth as butter.

A beauty sachet,

He says,

Lifting a small cloth pouch tied with twine.

Worn around the neck,

It lures admirers as surely as the moon pulls the tide.

Herbs,

Blossoms,

Spices,

Rare and exotic from lands far beyond.

He shakes it,

And you imagine perfumes drifting across the square,

People turning their heads,

Hearts thumping in sudden fascination.

You picture yourself walking through the tavern,

Men and women alike leaning closer,

Whispering about your irresistible aura.

You buy it without haggling,

Handing over coins that should have gone to bread.

The peddler ties it around your neck himself,

Nodding in satisfaction.

By morning,

They will swoon.

His words feel like a blessing,

Like prophecy.

You strut away,

Sachet thumping lightly against your chest,

Already rehearsing the aloof smiles you'll give when admirers gather.

The reality is less divine.

Within an hour,

The sachet's scent leaks through the cloth.

It is not perfume,

It is not spice,

It is onions,

Strong,

Sharp,

The kind that make eyes water even from a distance.

Mixed in is something damp,

Something sour,

Something unmistakably moldy.

You wrinkle your nose,

But tell yourself perhaps this is how exotic herbs are meant to smell.

Perhaps allure is an acquired taste.

Then come the goats.

At first,

One lumbers after you,

Bleeding.

You wave it off,

Embarrassed.

But soon,

Two more join,

Then five.

Their noses quivering,

Eyes locked on your sachet.

They follow you into the market,

Tugging at your sleeves,

Jostling for position.

Villagers laugh,

Pointing.

Someone shouts,

He's found his true admirers.

The goats butt heads over you,

Convinced you are their shepherd.

You try to retreat,

But they chase,

Nipping at your tunic.

As if goats were not humiliation enough,

The bees arrive.

Drawn by whatever sweetness lingers in the moldy mess,

They swarm around your head,

Buzzing,

Furious.

You swat wildly,

Flailing through the square,

Sachet swinging like a cursed bell summoning every insect in the county.

Children squeal with delight,

Running after you as if it's a festival game.

"'Catch the bee,

Saint,

' they shout,

Laughing until they choke.

And then,

Just as you think it cannot worsen,

The pig appears,

Large,

Pink,

Eyes gleaming with unsettling intent.

It charges at you,

Snorting,

Tail whipping like a flag.

The crowd roars as it presses its nose into your hip,

Grunting with affection,

Refusing to let go.

You stagger,

Trapped between goats,

Bees,

And a pig that will not leave your side.

The sachet thumps with every step,

The smell rising stronger,

Cloying,

Unbearable.

By nightfall,

You collapse into your bed,

The sachet damp against your chest.

Sweat,

Onion juice,

And pig slobber mingle into a stench so vile you gag.

You untie the pouch,

Hoping to throw it out,

But it has soaked through your shirt,

Leaving a stain-like soup gone wrong.

You bury it under straw,

But the smell clings,

Seeping into your skin,

Your hair,

Your dreams.

Morning brings no admirers,

At least not the kind you hoped.

Villagers crowd outside your door,

Jeering.

"'How fares the pig's true love?

' they call.

"'Careful,

He'll steal you from us.

' Children parade with onion garlands,

Pretending to swoon in exaggerated drama.

Even the priest smirks as he passes,

Murmuring that perhaps onions are holy after all,

For they have revealed the vanity in your heart.

You trudge to the well,

Dunk your head in the cold water,

Scrub until your skin burns.

Still,

The smell lingers.

The sachet has marked you,

Branded you as a fool,

And yet,

As you lift your dripping face from the water,

You begin to laugh.

It is bitter,

But also freeing.

You wanted to lure admirers,

To be irresistible.

You succeeded,

Just not in the way you dreamed.

For a time,

You were the center of attention.

Goats,

Bees,

Pigs,

And people all turned their eyes to you.

They may not have loved you,

But they noticed you,

Remembered you,

Made you legend in their laughter.

Perhaps that is what all charms really do.

Not grant beauty,

But grant a story,

And yours will be told for years,

Of the fool who bought onions wrapped in cloth and ended up adored by animals instead of people.

You shake your head,

Still smiling despite the humiliation.

The sachet may be gone,

But its lesson lingers.

Beauty is fickle,

Charms are lies,

But mockery,

Mockery is eternal.

And perhaps,

In its crooked way,

That too is a kind of allure.