A Work Of Art
Dedicated to Rachel, who has red hair and green eyes too.
Based on an idea by Isidora Glisic

Green. A colour lively and vivid like an emerald submerged in clear water. Set in the midst of this green, a black circle, perfectly round and by contrast supporting the quality of the green. Yet the green, too, knew borders of its existence, and around it, there was a clear, simple white, shaping the green into a circle. It was not a homogeneous, undisturbed green, but much rather displayed a delicate texture of little imperfections, different hues of green strewn into the larger entity, just to add to its perfection. A pair of eyelids unmovingly communicated shyness and purity. They did not blink, they were too polite to hide the green for even a second, and maybe, just maybe, there was another reason as well. From the eyelids sprung lashes, standing orderly next to each other, long, dense, as if drawn. There was another orb of green, a perfectly mirrored copy of the first, set apart from it by a slender nose. The eyebrows described part of an oval, which by itself seemed to be a very natural part of a set of circles, ovals, and parallels coming together in some form of greater design, like an artist would sketch many circles into an empty face to properly position its features. These eyebrows seemed like leftovers from such a design, strangely random and yet compellingly natural. It was as if they could be this way and no other. The circle of the face was a natural extension of the circles and arcs inside of it. Yet the lines of its round were distorted, wavy, as if reflected by a rippling water surface. In all their stillness, the eyes seemed clearly focussed on something, projecting mental clarity and concentration. A neck beneath the delicate chin, long and pale and flawless. It flowed so softly into the shoulders that one could almost see the circles spawned from the face continue, multiply, and extend into these curves. A wide cut dress hardly covered the extreme ends of the shoulders. These lines, too, were wavy. The body continued downward in the same manner and ended abruptly above the waist, cut off suddenly by the land. Kneeling by the lake shore was the girl whose face was home to such perfect green. Her gaze seemed fixed upon something in the water. Something beneath the surface, certainly, as a body of such undeniable grace and beauty could not conceivably be host to an imperfect, vain soul. In fact, so beautiful and perfect was her body that one could believe to be looking at a painting. Under our observing eyes, the liveliness of the scene froze, the texture of canvas was applied to it, and indeed, even the frame of this painting was perfect. It was cut from a dark wood, with just enough ornamentation to make it interesting, but little enough decoration not to distract from the beautiful picture of the girl kneeling by a lake. The frame rested on a little tripod, next to which the artist stood, back turned toward the onlooker, head lowered in awe. Next to the tripod and artist, in unnaturally large size, hovered the face of the girl depicted in the picture. She was a little more real in real life, but no less beautiful. Awe-inspiring one could say. Her eyes looked straight ahead, maybe a hint to the side to which the picture stood. She blinked, the green insulted for every instant it was shielded from the world, and worse yet, the world from it. Then, were we to take another step back, we could see her back and her flowing red hair. And finally we would see the large mirror in front of which she stood, and through which she had been looking at the picture and the artist's back. One could still not tell if she looked at herself in the mirror or at the reflection of the picture this artist had spent the last year of his life creating, recreating, improving, and admiring.

"The least you could do was turn around and say thank you. Have your mother and I failed entirely in our attempts to teach you any manners?"

Her father was a noble lord in his fifth decade, his face a logbook of many battles fought, won and lost, the stomach a logbook of yet even more feasts celebrated, a greying full beard covering the lower half of his chin. Next to him in the corner of the room, arms folded in front of her chest, stood his wife. A relatively young woman, hardly three and thirty winters behind her. She had conceived this wonderful daughter at the age of fourteen, which was entirely not atypical in this land. What with the law, you could never have your child too early. Be on the safe side. Sorrow had carved its unmistakable lines into the young mother's forehead as she looked at the man who could have been her son in law. Had she dared to hope this time? After so many times? Her daughter did not think so. And in the mirror, the daughter's eyes moved back from her parents to the picture. Or maybe to herself? Who could say.

"Yes, dear father, you have. And beware of dabbling in parental education now that it is almost over. Save your breath and time."

Her eyes moved to the reflection of the man who still had his back turned to her.

"You. Man. Your picture is pretty. I will keep it. After they do to me what they do, you may have it back. Should my father be a pain and not give up the painting, I hereby make it my dying wish that the picture be returned to its creator, for he and only he has the final right and say over destruction or preservation of his work. Do you want anything for your art? Do you want to look at my face, mayhap?"

It was not without a certain cynic undertone that she said this; she knew very well what they said about her face, about her beauty, in the taverns by night. If night be late and tankard deep enough, men will swear that others died beholding her face, their hearts stopped. Awe was not the only motivation for the artist not to look at the face of this girl. He had asked her parents for her hand in marriage, and it was in this context that he had brought her the picture that day. There was something ritualistic in this, as if it was a sacrifice to appease an unhappy goddess.

"I... have seen many renditions of your face, Princess. I have read all the descriptions I could find, studied all the portraits..."

The irony of this was not lost on him - it was said that only one of her portraits had been painted by an artist for whom she posed. That artist never took a paintbrush into his hands again after he finished the portrait.

"The likeness is quite appropriate I must say; I am pleased. Well then, if there is nothing else, I have a friend to see."

The artist turned around, his eyes fixed at the floor. He bowed low, three times. Then he looked at the mirror in front of him and caught a glimpse of her face, if only a reflection on the cold silver behind the polished crystal. His eyes widened and he hurried out of the room.

She turned around. Her hair swung in a perfect arc, hugging her side briefly before falling back into order.

"I don't understand you."

Her father looked at her with a deeply worried expression on his face.

"You will go see Claudette now and you know what will happen to her at midnight. How can that not be a warning to you? This was a fine, intelligent young man, handsome too I would say, and from a good upbringing. How can he not be good enough for you?"

"You would never understand, father. You have not been afflicted with such a curse as I have been. You would not know what it is like to be not a person, but a... god, almost. Feared, revered, worshipped."

"You speak of it as if it was a burden, while all other girls of your age would dream of being like this."

"They don't understand either."

* * *

When light hits small dust particles, it is scattered, and depending on the amount and size of the particles, we are given the impression of a certain colour of light. One could say God is painting a sunset. When light enters certain materials, the particular frequencies are bent to varying degrees, resulting in a spectrum of that light. One could say that God’s palette is revealed to us.

Sunlight shattered on unseen dancers of dust, denizens of the evening atmosphere, red light fell lightly on a tear, and the bent surface of the tear-drop served as a makeshift dispersive prism. But God’s palette was the only thing revealed by the tear; the girl imprisoned behind the chubby face had left sadness behind a long time ago. Her eyes’ prolonged exposure to the sun was all the explanation there was for her tears.

"There she goes."

Her voice, too, was unbecoming. Nothing about Claudette could have attracted a man to her. She was quick to anger, low on self esteem, and very well equipped on body mass.

The sun was low enough that her rays no longer reached the stones by the old mill house. It was there that Claudette's friends had been meeting for as long as they could remember. One by one, they had taken their husbands, given birth to their offspring, and household chores had made women out of all of them. All, save Claudette and the last friend that remained to her. Ironically, the most and the least beautiful girls were left in the end.

"Have you thought of running away?" said the perfect mouth of the princess.

"Haven't you heard the stories? It must be so much worse to be hunted down by their wrath. They say the sacrifice is in your interest. It destroys your body, but gives absolution to your soul."

"You mean 'fruitless' body." At moments like these, when she quoted the priests teaching them about their role in society, the green of her eyes shone like poison.

"Yes, fruitless indeed”, continued Claudette. “But what was I expecting. Boys never even played with me. I have made my peace a long time ago. I did not go to see the priests today, to have a last examination. It would be a hopeless endeavour. I could but pray that a man had forced entrance to both my room and my body at night and was gentle enough to let me sleep through it."

"I have 4 months to my birthday. Which translates into 2 months until conception, so they can properly do their detection incantations. Which amounts to nothing at all, for there shall be naught to detect within me."

"It should matter none to me now, seeing that the hour of midnight draws near so quickly, but I must ask you once more... do not let me die curious... what is it with you? Why do you shun men so?"

"Oh but Claudette, it is the other way around! They shun me."

"Just take one then, no matter how much he worships and covets you. All you need is something he shall be willing to supply you with aplenty."

"I know, have you thought it never occurred to me? But I shan't mock love in such a way... rather would I die."

"Then die you shall, my dear. It is as inevitable as the gods' judgement."

* * *

Midnight came swiftly. A small crowd had gathered on the marketplace, and a bonfire burnt brightly, illuminating the faces of many parents who had dragged their marriage-reluctant daughters there to demonstrate to them what fate had in store for those who would not fulfil their duty to society by the time twenty years had come and gone. The flickering flames threw their light on the frightened, the fascinated, and the indifferent. Claudette stood on a makeshift stage, right next to the bonfire. She had been dressed in a mock wedding dress so that she would wear one at least for once in her life. Those who had in fact been married but still stood where Claudette then stood were sacrificed together with their unproductive husbands, but such a case had never been documented in the king's chronicles. The elder priest stood before her, dressed in the ceremonial robes reserved for this very type of night. He read the scriptures out aloud.

"As it has been passed on from times of old..."

Lips, as perfect as the eyes above, silently formed every word. She had been studying this verse ever since she knew what it would mean for her.

"...bore no fruit, no son nor daughter, into this world and shall..."

Torches, set into the pillars supporting the roof over the balcony of her family's city residence, overlooking the marketplace, threw a flickering, warm light upon her face, which by contrast made the green of her eyes appear all that much colder. As if she was the portrait offered, sacrificed to her earlier that day, her lids would not blink. She looked at her old childhood friend trying to retain her composure. She looked at Claudette, trying to retain her composure..

"...separated from you by fire, so that your soul shall be burnt free of the shame it has..."

Separated from you. The priest was talking of Claudette's womb, as if it was a demon which against her had turned. He was speaking in a way that seemed to suggest, here, here, we shall remove your womb from your body with a red glowing iron and when we are done, you may go home. Death was never directly mentioned as punishment; Only that in case of death the subject's body was to be sacrificed to the gods who demanded children.

"...and may the gods have mercy on your soul and see the fault of the flesh, but not the spirit."

And green was shielded from the world, the world from green, as the princess closed her eyes. The sudden onset of silence from the audience said more than a hundred screams of protest or disgust could have said. For a moment, the princess thought to hear the sound of flesh burning; then, Claudette's unbecoming voice was heard one last time. The throaty, gurgling sounds in her scream were without doubt caused by the bile she was spitting out. One slimy ball of disgust with the people she lived with, not one of them standing up for her, another gooey chunk of anger at the gods designing such an unbecoming form for her and making survival practically impossible. The princess fought the urge to open her eyes. No matter how bad the mental images, she was certain the real images would be worse. The scream broke, faltered, silence for a second. Only the sounds of the fire. Then, Claudette drawing in breath in a great sob. Another scream, then  begging, crying. Every sob became softer, until in a final rearing up she screamed her last scream. The princess's knuckles turned opaque white.

* * *

Three days later, all of this seemed a bad, distant dream to her; yet the present looked not much better. In fact, the present looked like the face of a rat which had crawled underneath the veil covering her face. She pressed her cheek closer to the planks under her cheek and tried not to scream. The rat poked the princess's nose with its own to find out if that human was dead already or if it would take a little longer until this feast was ready. Voices of sailors were heard in the close proximity. They were still in the storage where she had hidden away behind bags of grain. The rat licked her nose. It was in moments like these that she liked to escape what was going on around her by closing her eyes. As she had done three nights ago.

The silence after Claudette's last scream was the worst part. It took her forever to open her eyes again. She lay in bed, revisiting the sacrifice over and over again. She had escaped the fear of this end which had seemed so inevitable to her by making it an abstract thing in her mind. It was the sacrifice, the execution if you will, but that was just a word. A set of letters come together randomly to form nothing at all. After she had ear-witnessed Claudette's demise, cruel meaning was given to these letters. She thought of all the options she had. Running was not one of them. If an unknown girl who appeared to be close to the dangerous age was found anywhere, she had three days time to state her province of birth and prove that she either was well below twenty years of age or had already given birth to a child. Was she to fail this proof, she would be preventively sacrificed. She knew she could not hope to survive a single week out in the wilds, on her own. Such skills were not among the set of skills taught to a girl destined to become the ruler of a kingdom. Thus, after she had come to the conclusion that running away was not an option, she decided to run away. A ship had left the harbour early the next morning, and this brought her back to the rat.

* * *

A warm, dark, and smelly galley. Four sailors were sitting on crates of different shapes and sizes around a barrel which they used as makeshift table. A dirty hand slammed a play card down onto the barrel.

"Got ye by the balls now mate." The sailor who had said this was a fat man, wearing only a pair of dirty trousers, filth making a good enough shirt for him. He spat onto the floor. A considerably older sailor, slim, wearing a monocle on the one eye that was left to him, coughed, then cackled. The transition was marked by the smoothness of habit. He laid down a card that obviously beat the fat man's card.

"Ye'll have to mate with some'n else, sonny."

"An' I say ye cheat like a devil, grandpa." The fat man reached for the knife hanging by his belt.

"Speaking of mating..." This voice belonged to a man sitting on another barrel by the side of the galley, scraping food rests out a serving bowl. He had a leather hat on, distinguishing him somewhat from the rest of the sailors in the room.

"... they had some quality meat on the market in the last harbour. All of you pack should peruse the entertainment service sector of the cities we stop in more, helps with the stress'n all."

"Aye cap'n, but I says we should buy ourselves a whore that we'll take on board. Then us pack can all peruse'er till she breathe no more. And then we can still eat her to make up for the provisions she'll be usin' up."

"That's one hell of a plan there. Given the added advantage that she'll be all salted up and tenderized by then", said the cook, who just got done cleaning a pan.

The captain laughed for a moment, but then regained his playfully serious face.

"Have you all forgotten then that it's bad luck to have..."

At that exact moment, the door to the galley was opened, and two sailors shoved the princess inside. She was wearing a luxuriously tailored pink blouse with a matching wide cut pink trousers. Her face was covered in a veil, matching colour, and her hair kept in a piece of cloth wrapped around it.

"... a woman on board."

"We found 'er hidden away in the storage cap'n. Figure she snuck in three nights ago. She been stealing from our grain."

The captain got to his feet in a sudden motion, dropping the serving bowl carelessly to the floor. He took a few steps toward the door, but the fat card player was leagues ahead of him. His greasy fingers grabbed her tender upper arm like a butcher would size up a handsome piece of meat.
"Looks to me like the gods listen to us sailors after all."

One of the other card players had moved quietly next to the fat man and pulled the knife by the fat man's side from the shabby leather sheath it stuck in. The knife graciously moved toward the sweaty throat and sat down like a humongous mosquito, ready to bite.

"But since I'm the gentleman here, my dear Wilson, I'll have the ius prima noctae. Seeing how you got second choice with chins and hands, I don't think you'll mind much being second in line here as well."

"I'll have no such thing on my ship!" the captain finally exclaimed. "Everyone on this ship will be treated with the same respect until he deserves otherwise. Even a stowaway."

"Aye cap'n but you see... this isn't just a stowaway... it's a...", and in the middle of his sentence, Wilson forcefully pulled the veil from the princess's face.

For a long while, there were no sounds; only the tired creaking of the ship's wood underneath and the winds in the sails. The two men holding the princess were rather unsettled about the sudden silence of their companions. One of them turned the princess to face his way. He looked her into the face and his eyes widened. His hands went numb as he let go of her arm. The princess's other captor was considerably crept out and decided to flee up the stairs that led from the galley to the deck of the ship. When his footsteps could not be heard any more, everything went back to silence, until a clear sound marked the impact of the old man's monocle on the floor. As if reminded of gravity, the knife fell out of the hand that was holding it. The princess straightened her clothes, turned around, and walked upstairs.

* * *

The first thing she saw when she came on deck was a large man bound to the central mast of the ship. The skin of his face was burnt into a dark hue by years and years of constant exposure to the sun. He was wearing white clothes, arms and legs tailored to end in large, bag-like forms. He smiled at the princess in a benevolent way. For some reason, she felt compelled to look into the ocean.

A few minutes later, when the captain approached her, the princess was standing by the railing. He informed her that it was his good right to cast a stowaway over board, and that in fact it was common nautical practise to do so in these days of expensive provisions and low prices paid for transportation. The princess looked at the captain's face, thinking to herself that he was quite a handsome man in his own way, rugged and with a few traces of his physical work, but rather young for a captain. However, he continued, he felt merciful today, and would not have her walk the plank. She wondered if somewhere in some harbour town an exotic beauty waited for him. She also wondered if in that case he was the kind of man that was honourable and true to the one who loved him. Also, he said, she would have to stay in his cabin. He then hurried to assure her that he would sleep with the crew so she would not have to do that. Then he hurried to clarify the sentence he had just uttered, and stumbled over his own words again. She sighed and looked at the strange man bound to the mast still. When she looked deeply into his eyes, time returned.

"I mean, no offence milady, but I can't have you roughen up the crew and cause undue.. confusion and you know. Fightings and all that and..." Looking at his boots, the captain gave up trying to finish that sentence. If only he could look at her face for a single second.

A hand, soft, pure, wrapped in seemingly flawless skin, started to move upward from perfectly tailored pink trousers. The air caused motion in the tiny, invisible hair on the hand, which in turn sent impulses to the brain set behind this perfect mask, informing the beautiful girl that her hand moved upward through a space filled with air. This he knew, and he smiled: The knowledge of the working of all things gave him great satisfaction.

She touched the captain's unshaven chin, barely with the tips of her middle and index fingers. Softly, but with some determination, she moved his head upward.

"Weren't you taught to look a lady in the face while you're speaking to her?"

Men did not look her directly in the face. She never urged them to; too well did she know the reactions. Yet at that moment she felt as if she had to do something, reach out in a desperate attempt, convince herself that this man fulfilled her aesthetic demands.  

When their eyes met, Kashif thought of a contraption in his laboratory. Pieces of metal stood out of bubbling baths of acidic liquids, bright sparks of light flew between the exposed ends of the metal. No, he had not understood this yet, but he was given no time. When his hands had touched the invisible spirit that must have sprung from these metal rods, they would move, contract, and jump away so much in fact that it hurt him. He thought of the way that the captain's face distorted, and found it all too similar to this reaction.

The captain had been sure that he had looked at her before; after all, could one talk to someone for several minutes without looking at their face at all? Yet when he looked at her it was to him as if he saw this face for the first time. His mind tried to compare it to something it had memories of, but to no avail. There had never been anything this flawless before his eyes.

The princess fixed her eyes on him.

"Say something."

"You..."

"I know I am beautiful. Say something else."

"... have probably seen Kashif." Upon pronouncing the name, the captain looked over to the man bound to the main mast of the ship, almost as if relieved to look away from the princess. His jaw muscles contracted and his eyes looked back into hers.

"He is somewhat odd, but should be mostly harmless."

"Is that why he is bound to the mast?"

"Well... maybe you'll walk over there and ask him about that yourself. Then see if you can make sense of his story. I will be uh... minding the rudder... navigating. I mean..."

* * *

Ten minutes later.

"This is because I want you to know, that I was doing what I do, on a ship the captain of this ship went to conflict with."

The princess had been about to walk back to the railing after Kashif had answered her question with nothing else than silence.

"Do what you do? You mean stand tied to a mast?"

"Which is more of a temporal doing. I am in between doings now if you will. You will know that it had then been my doing to supply the captain of that ship with a secret powder, the instructions for the mixture of which I had copied from a very old scroll of unknown origin."

He fell silent again, stared into the sun, unblinking. The princess had the impression that this information should suffice for her to understand exactly how he ended up like this. She looked into his face, confusion disturbing the perfect lines of hers.

"Oh, but you are not really confused", he continued, "it is only your reflection in my mind that tries to tell me of your confusion. Know that I had felt like taking a swim. It was shortly before the powder should have been put to test. The scroll was in fact so old that I could not have been sure about the position of a comma or two."

The princess continued to gaze the strange man's face, until suddenly a few factors of the story came together in her mind and understanding dawned like a distant day over the ocean.

"Know that light is truth, young one, and the purer an object or a person, the more of the truth they shall reflect onto their surroundings, thereby making that truth a part of what we refer to as reality. Which is nothing else than a large reflection. Or very many of them, as there are very many truths. Truth escaped with great sound from the middle of the ship I had served on, as it appeared that I had once again been too effective for my own good. How very fortunate that the sudden urge for swimming had overcome me before."

The princess almost laughed. The strange man only stared into the sun and smiled softly. Yet as hard as she tried, she could not get another word out of him that day. One of the old sailors told her later that day, while staring at the planks under him intently, that they had fished the man out of the wreckage of that other ship. The crew was convinced that he was an evil magician as they had heard many stories of. They based this mostly on his bright clothes and dark skin. Some little voice in the princess's head noted that indeed light seemed to hold truths for these sailors. A moment later she wondered where that thought had come from. It was definitely not like her to think in such odd ways.

* * *

"... and they were convinced that with but the wave of a hand or a well pronounced formula he could turn them all into toads, or make it so their children will only ever buy horses that are going to die of some strange disease. Simple people are good for simple tasks. While I try very hard not to let their simple opinions influence the way I am managing my ship, I could not completely ignore their worries. Fortunately for me, the whole waving hands around business seemed to be an central to their toad-yielding transformations, so binding the sorcerer to the mast seemed to solve the problem, even though they still avoid looking into his eyes."

"Am I a sorceress then?"

She was sitting on the edge of the small bunk bed in the captain's room. The captain himself was sitting behind his table, as if the table was some sort of protection, nervously shuffling around little books, pencils, and navigational tools on the table.

"That's not what I..."

"I know." She sighed. "Go on."

"Well, you have heard the story then. According to the right of the sea, his life belongs to me: he was signed on for a ship which attacked my ship. I don't much believe in slavery, but if I hear a good bid as soon as we reach the harbour of Tingesse, I won't be opposed to selling him."

"Yes, I see; that will be because the order of paladins in this kingdom doesn't much believe in slavery or slave traders either. In fact I have heard it told that they so diagonally oppose the belief in slave traders that they violently remove any they find just so their belief is not shaken."

"Well, I will need to rise early tomorrow..." the captain said, getting up from his chair.

"Wait..."

Half on his way to the door, the captain turned around and looked at her. The moonlight coming in through the little windows illuminated his face from the side in a very favourable way.

"Yes?"

A moment came and lasted forever. The moon took the liberty of remaining motionless, the ocean held the ship in a quiet place between all waves, and the air dared not stir. No movement indicated the passage of time. The captain looked into the princess's eyes. After what seemed like two and a half eternities, she asked herself when she had last taken a breath. She decided it did not matter.

There was a decision slowly forming in the princess. Over her head hovered the possibility of another life: An island, a farmhouse, three children. A simple life led amongst complacent sheep and meadows of grass so green.

The moment went by.

"Nothing. Good night."

The next morning, the princess stepped out of the captain's chambers. Kashif smiled at her.

"There is something the knowledge of which shall help you on on your way", he said to her as she walked past the mast.

She looked back at him. As always he smiled, the sun glittering on the silver discs on his clothing. She had to think about what he told her concerning truth and purity.

"Yet I have not told you anything about my way, Kashif."

"But the one above has given me eyes, and I have observed many animals of different species during their respective rituals."

She blinked, still confused by the man who would look at her while talking to her, and for lack of a better answer she inquired as to what knowledge he had.

Later that day, many people would wish she had not asked that question.

"There are men plotting on this ship, and what they seek to cause is reflected as mutiny by your language."

"How do you know?" she asked, standing closer to him. She could clearly feel that he had been out there in the searing sun for a good number of days.

"At night they have been speaking, by the railing, eyeing me as if that alone gave them secrecy. They spoke in a language known as rogue-speak, an exceedingly simple construct. You may need further details..."

It was close to midday when she approached the captain. He stood by the rudder, looking out from this elevated position onto the deck of the ship, his crew busying themselves in front of his eyes, nothing but the wide ocean beyond the railing.

It was an evening when she once again stood next to the captain by the rudder of a ship at anchor. There was no longer a crew busy on their chores, only Kashif standing alone bound to the mast, and a harbour took the place of the wide ocean beyond the ship's railing.

"And I assume that means I owe you something. So if there is anything on this ship that you desire for yourself..." For a moment his face looked as if he offered himself to her. "...for know that this ship is all that I possess."

And this was how the princess came into the possession of Kashif.

The next morning, the princess walked along the beach with Kashif next to her. They had been talking for most of the night, and she had found more questions than answers.

"Kashif, there has been a moment on the ship where I could have had what I had thought impossible to find. How..."

"I do not believe that you travel to get somewhere... you seem to travel for travelling's sake. Your quarrel with the gods is the aim you have set for yourself. Like a man dying in the desert, who tries to keep himself going, you cannot set the horizon as your destination. You tell yourself that you'll go to that next palm tree only. And that is what your overcoming of the law is, in its purest reflection. What you tried to do when you set out on this journey was not to find yourself a mate, or beat the mockery of love the gods have thrown at you; you aimed to find the limitations of the gods, for you cannot allow yourself to believe that this world would have been created by entities cruel enough to subject their creations to such torment. And you have chanced across the answer."

"What are you telling me?"

"I am not telling you anything, I am giving you two things. I am giving you a task: Dig a hole in the beach. And I am giving you this. Eat it and it shall strengthen you for the way ahead of you."

Kashif held a simple green leaf in his extended hand. The princess took it and smelled it. It smelled sweet, fresh.

"Yet I will need to leave you now."

Involuntarily, the princess nodded, like a servant who had been given a command. Contradicting Kashif never occurred to her.

"Remember what I have told you of purity."

With these words, Kashif left the beach. And the princess started digging a hole in the sand with her bare hands. After a while, she started chewing the leaf Kashif had given to her.

She lifted another handful of sand out of the growing hole. What would she find? A chest? Enlightenment?  The hole grew deeper. She tried to watch it grow as she worked, but found herself unable to see a difference in depth after any single handful of sand she retrieved. Her mother had told her about wrinkles once. They are stealthy thieves. They come so slowly, you can never watch them forming.

Another handful of sand. Water seeped into her hole, slowing her progress down. But no matter how much water, no matter how often the walls collapsed, her hands steadily moved on. Life went on.

Thirst came and went, hunger came and retreated to a quiet corner of her stomach, the sun drew a lazy arc over her into the sky. As she took a break for a moment, she witnessed the walls of her creation slowly running down into the pit she had dug. She realized that if she went away, if she passed on, the hole would soon be indistinguishably part of the beach again. She could try very hard: Dig very deep, leave a big imprint behind, but time would eventually wash that away as well.

While she dug, a beach turtle lazily crept into view.

"What are you doing there?", asked the turtle.

"I am digging a hole; I'm digging it deep and I don't know what I'll find", answered the princess.

"Why are you doing it?", replied the turtle, still moving very slowly on the sand of the beach.

"It is what I am doing; I am what I am doing. I have been told to do this, and it gives me great comfort to know that I am fulfilling some kind of purpose. The purpose needs not be transparent to me; I content myself with knowing that there is one."

To this, the turtle said nothing. It only kept moving.

"You see", the princess continued, "it has only recently become clear to me how important our gods are."

The turtle lifted its lizard head a little and looked at the princess. She still lifted handful after handful of sand out of the growing hole. The edge was by her shoulders. Again, the turtle said nothing.

"The peasants in my father's realm, they dig for treasure. They know that in the end, or beyond the end of this life, lies the afterlife, in which the gods will recompense them for their hardships. I have found out that there are no gods; there can be no gods so cruel and wanton. I must forget this; I must un-remember this discovery, or else..." She looked at the sand in her hands. "Else I'm just digging because someone told me to."

"That is very inconsiderate of you", replied the turtle.

"How so?"

"Turtles have a very good memory." And with this, it seemed to walk just a little faster.

The princess thought she could feel the lid of a chest through the sand.

All of a sudden, the princess turned around. Had someone just whistled? She wiped the sweat of her forehead and realized that it was her hand that whistled. She smiled, inhaled deeply, and enjoyed the light-headedness this caused her. Both her hands whistled in harmony as they moved. On the edge of the hole sat a head; her head in fact.

"Hello, head." she said, realizing that the other head's lips moved a little bit before her own. Out of the forehead of the head on the edge grew another, smaller copy of her own head. They both smiled, but said nothing in reply to her. She found this terribly amusing and let out a soft laugh. With the laughing escaped tiny, multicoloured fish, outfitted with butterfly wings. The fish seemed very scared and hid behind her other head. In response to that, the heads started humming, and soon she realized this hum was in perfect tune with the whistling of her hands.

She was a swan. Her feathers fluttered through the air. A tingly sensation along her belly reminded her of the tentacles she had sprouted a mere four seconds before. Momentarily she wondered if anyone else had ever been so meticulously aware of their mutation's timing.

She felt a deep urge to bury her head deep in the sand and find out how loudly she could shout into the sand, but decided to delay herself that pleasure for a little bit. Climbing out of the hole she gradually re-assumed her human shape.

The movement of the ocean caught her eye, caught her whole being. In two abrupt displacements, she materialized closer to the surf and stared into it. No two waves were the same. The careful motion, forth and back, seemed almost a dance, maybe a tentative approach to her. Maybe the ocean was shy? She wanted to find out.

A ray of the sun slowly impacted into the ocean and was reflected upwards into the sky. It was a very hot day, and doubtlessly that very heat turned the ray languid: It never made it farther than an arm's length from the ocean's surface, and then it just stood there. The princess smiled once more and reached out for the ray. Carefully she broke it off and admired it in her hand.

"The more light an object reflects, the purer it is", said Kashif, who no longer wore the form of a turtle. She nodded in approval and knelt down.

The ocean was shy indeed. The closer her hand came to it, the slower the waves moved.

With the solar knife, the princess cut the ocean in half and stepped through.



Stale piss. Crude cobblestones under her hands. She tried to stand, but immediately felt the vomit rising through her oesophagus.

Around her, foolishly tall buildings made from a uniform grey stone. The little alley was filled with filth. A few steps ahead was a larger street: Noisy things moved at unnatural speed. Two young boys stood at the corner of the large street with this alley. They both wore torn cloths. One had his head shaved save for a stripe of hair in the middle. They had little sticks in their mouths, which they were moving in and out with a certain rhythm. One of them spat a small ball of foam onto the street, and the dog they held by a leash walked over to lick whatever it was off the floor.

She finally managed to get up. To her left was a window, opened wide. Two girls sat around a table, each with a glass of beer in front of her.

"... so basically she's god-damn pretty. Really unnaturally beautiful and all that shit. Maybe magically. I don't care. Anyway, that place she lives in is obviously run by men, so they came up with this great rule: If you haven't given birth by the time you hit 20, you get killed. Obviously, our girl's getting close to twenty, and there's no offspring in sight. That's basically it, no idea what he'll do with it, but I really hope she'll die in the end."

"Yeah, they should always die in the end. Makes for good endings. What will you have him call her? Mum?"

"Haha, very funny."

The princess took a step away from the window. She felt like someone had just told her everything about her life, only in clearer words. It was as if this was the very essence of all the sermons and scriptures her country's clergy had ever produced. They took this, she realized, and clad it in different words. But what...

A man bumped into her.

"Fucking watch where you... hey, you're pretty."

A butcher, from the look of the leg of beef in his hands. He threw the hunk of meat into the dirt and got closer to the princess.

"Swear I've never seen such a pretty thing in my life." With one greasy, smelly hand, he lifted her face up by her chin, while the other hand went to his fly. The dog pulled on its leash to get to the piece of meat, causing his owners to turn their attention to the scene unfolding in the alley.

"Help!" screamed the princess, suddenly sobered by the imminent threat.

"Fuck, let's get out of here", said one of young boys. The other one was already running.

Everything became very confusing to the princess. Even more confusing than when she was a swan. There were stabbings, screaming, probably her own, blood, loud lights that turned in many directions, men dressed in funny costumes dragging her along to a place where they asked her the same questions over and over again. She was sitting on a small chair in front of a table with many strange looking devices. There were cells in this room, like she knew them from her father's dungeons. In one of them, a rugged looking man sat, banging a metal cup against the bars in an enchanting rhythm. The man in funny costume who had dragged her up there was hitting his fingers onto the table as if he was playing a zither and looked at a box in front of him for results of his silent music. And still the cup hit the bars, in a rhythm that seemed to call out to her. Since everything else had ceased to make sense to her, she concentrated on the rhythm. The world went black.

She woke up on a bed made of straw. Next to her, Kashif was hitting a metal stick against a triangle in a rhythm that somehow seemed familiar to the princess. Her head felt at least three times as big as it should be and her teeth pulsated in a bad way.

"You are feeling the weed's bite. Many people who bite it the first time are bitten in return. I have contacted the captain of the ship we both happened to be passengers on. I assumed you will want to get back in touch with him after what you have seen?"

"No, in fact I do not."

"Then you have truly understood."

The End



Note from the author: This story is a reflection. It is a beautiful picture, with a storm brewing overhead, mirrored into an unsteady lake. Yet I marked it clearly where the reflection begins and where it ends. Only if you had the foolishness to travel beyond this clear mark, you may have had the misfortune of some confusion. To help you along a bit, I may mention that the princess nowadays lives happily with a certain painter. And that he still does not look at his wife's face when he speaks to her. Yet she is happy.

Please also note that the last word of the story does not seem to be green.