Visiting hours soon came to an end. Piyumi held her smile as her friends bid their goodbyes, but it waned the moment the pair was no longer in view. The news wouldn’t hopefully reach them before the party. The last thing she wanted to do was to derail Hunter’s celebration, but she had a feeling that if she did not do it now, she would lose her nerve entirely. 

Her mind flashed to their visit to Keith Watson’s grave all those years ago.

Will they miss me? I hope they miss me. Not too much, but at least a little. Enough to visit me each year, enough to put me amongst the flowers. I would be sleeping under the sunlight. No more worries. No more strife. Wouldn’t that be nice? I would finally be able to just…rest. Quietly. Peacefully.

Feeling the cold chill of metal bounce against her hip, Piyumi made her way back to her cell. Peering at her sleeping cellmate, a mute older woman whose crimes Piyumi neither learned nor cared about, she walked towards the sink and looked into the mirror. She needed to be able to see herself if she wanted to make this quick and painless.

Well, relatively painless. 

Taking a deep breath in to centre herself, Piyumi pulled out the pair of scissors she had tucked in the band of her pants, quietly thanking the inmate who had smuggled it into the prison for her. She squinted at herself in the mirror as she brought the scissors to her throat. The carotid artery, located at the side of the neck just 1.5 inches below the surface of the skin. If severed, she would be gone in around five to fifteen seconds, long before medics would be able administer any type of first aid. It was funny how Miyuru’s ramblings during nursing school had come in clutch in a situation like this. As if her father was beckoning her from beyond the grave. 

One year. Piyumi had given herself one year. 

Time was up. 

The blade nicked her skin. Slightly. 

Time was up. 

Time…was up.

Time…was… 

Time… 

Metal clattered against porcelain as Piyumi slammed the scissors onto the sink, sweat drenching her forehead as she tried to catch her breath. She wanted to do it, but she just… couldn’t. No matter how much she willed it to do so, her hand refused to deliver the final blow. Her life had been ripped away from her, and yet, she lacked the courage to end something that already, in essence, had reached a conclusion.

Piyumi wanted to stop existing but she did not want to die. 

Taking a few moments to recollect herself, she looked at her face in the mirror only to realise that her face was the mirror — a mirror of everything she hated, a mirror of everyone she loathed. With each passing year, with each passing day, her red hair grew longer, her features became sharper and she looked less and less like herself. She knew this face, but this face was not hers. It belonged to a woman she only knew from her father’s second-hand accounts, from the framed photograph on her mantleplace.

A sob tore through her throat, but she bit it back by punching her teeth into her lower lip. She swiped the scissors up once more and glared at the face that stared back at her. 

This no longer was her face? Fine. She would make it her face again.

A clump of hair fell. Then another. And another. They fell like rain. They fell like asteroids. They fell like twenty-one years of rage and anguish. 

Fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall, fall-

And then they fell no longer. 

“Piyumi Perera?” 

Piyumi spun around. The prison guard who had called out to her gasped, taking an involuntary step back. Piyumi could not fault her for her reaction. She knew how crazed she must have looked. Her feet were engulfed by a sea of red that resembled blood and her hair was coming out of her scalp in patchy and sharp angles. A true, veritable monster. 

“Piyumi Perera,” the guard said again after she had gotten over her initial shock and confiscated the scissors. “Please come with me. You have some good news.” 

Exactly a year after she had begun serving out her life sentence, Piyumi’s conviction was overturned.

She was free. 

“Sir, would you like-”

“If I could just have a second of your time, ma’am-” 

“Please, if you would just look-” 

Abhipadma was right, the girl realised as she clutched the garment against her chest. She had been trying to talk to passers-by all day, but no one had deigned to even look at her. The wealthy people of Orion had been largely untouched by the war, using their money and influence to buy off any opposing soldiers who might attack. To them, the girl may as well have been invisible, no more significant than the sand they kicked her way as they walked on by. 

But the girl desperately needed them. She desperately needed them, because there was a boy at home who desperately needed her. 

And yet…

I can’t even do this much.

The sun was setting, but the heat continued to be relentless. The girl slid down the length of the building behind her, faintly registering the fact that her masterpiece was being dragged against the ground, but the roaring in her ears made it hard to concentrate. 

I’m sorry. Your big sister tried. She really tried.

“Are you okay?” 

The girl could only look up at the middle-aged woman who had spoken to her in a daze, the heat beating down on her skull like a hammer. The woman clearly understood her predicament, unfastening the canteen from her belt and pushing it into her hands. 

“Thankyou,” the girl said gratefully after a few fervent gulps.

The woman didn’t say anything as she grabbed the canteen back. It was only then did the girl realise who this woman was. With her black and silver uniform and familiar complexion, it was a wonder why she had not noticed it sooner. 

“You are a soldier from Palaedia.”

“Not everyday I see one of our clanspeople all the way out here,” the woman grunted, helping the girl to her feet. “What are you doing in Orion?” 

The girl bit her lip and looked down. The soldier thankfully picked up on her reluctance to speak on the topic and shifted gears. 

“What is that? In your hands?” 

The girl sighed and passed the garment over to the soldier. The woman cocked a curious eyebrow before she unfolded the material. She drew a sharp breath. “This is…” 

“Stupid.”

And that is what she had been, right? She had used what little remained of their savings to buy the best fabric and beads possible in a last-ditch effort to claw their way of poverty by trying to wrangle money out of plentiful pockets. Her fingers still ached from the memory of the all-nighter she had pulled to create something so hopeless, and shoddy, and meaningless-

“It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” 

The girl could hardly believe her ears, but the faint smile on the soldier's face told her that she hadn’t been mishearing things. The woman held the unfurled garment higher towards the sun. The deep crimson of the saree caught the light, giving it an outworldly glow. The small lotus flowers formed out of the thick silver and black beads placed carefully along the edges shimmered as the fabric swayed. 

“How much?”