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,
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 powders 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 knight 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 clam shells as holy eyebrow removers and business booms.
Children pick at their mothers' 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 noble woman 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 swans' 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 rose water,
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 sixty 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 twenty-nine.
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,
Red 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,
Ten,
Even twelve 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 twelve 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 glamour.
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' 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 noble woman'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 wholly 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,
Witch's 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 demons 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 flour,
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 were 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,
Its 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 left over 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 noble woman 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 hear and 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 pinch 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 fairgrounds 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 faire 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 pairs.
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 headbutted 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 noble woman 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 betters 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-allowed,
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 roll.
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 nightly 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 contained 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 wished 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 frogbones 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,
Sachets 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.
