The Sixteenth Winter
At sixteen, Ataya’s neck is long and thin, like his fingers, and like the rest of him. His jugular stands out like a chord of rope under the skin there and his Adam’s apple is a severe lump on the way down to where his collar bone shows prominently between his bony shoulders. In front of the mirror in his room, he trails the tips of his fingers down the line of his throat, tracing the ragged line between the two tones of his skin. Like the edge of a continent on a map, marking the border between land and sea. Like a tear.
Door shut, locked, and sealed with silencing spells, he tips his chin up, lowering his lashes and staring down his reflection as he parts his lips. What does it mean to be appealing?
He threads his fingers back through his hair like the teeth of the brush that sweeps through it every morning and every night, gathering it up high in his grip and holding it atop his head to study the effect. He tilts his head. This way, and then that. He allows some to drape loose, like black curtains only partly gathered, pushes a pout onto his lips, and then drops it all at once: deep purple ink that stains his shoulders and hangs well beneath his waist now, licking at his hips and over his arse. He sneers at the result in the reflective glass.
“Nothing is wrong with you…” he insists to that reflection. “
This is the body you have to live with.” Drawing his fingers up, he traces the line of his lower lip while he watches, flicks his tongue out and traces the seam between two fingers before taking the tips of both in his mouth. Uninvited heat clamors for his face at the scene, but he scowls and ignores it, letting his hand drop from his lips instead in order to stare down his image. “******** me…?” he asks, and then grimaces, squaring off his shoulders and gripping either side of the dresser beneath the mirror. “******** me,” he repeats, demanding this time, but it feels off still, and he purses his lips immediately after. “‘Please’ ******** me?” He sneers. “No. Absolutely not. If this requires begging, it’s…”
A withered and weary sigh escapes his lips, shoulders sinking in his frustration.
“Not happening. This is not happening.”
Shaping his lips into a small ‘o’, he blows, frosting up the mirror until all of his reflection is masked but for the pale beige fraction of his face, the ice carefully lining up to each edge of it so that — if he holds perfectly still — he can imaging that he is staring back into the face of a dovaa. After a lingering moment, his brow furrows and he blows again, covering the entire mirror and blotting everything out of sight before turning from it.
It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. He doesn’t
want anyone who cares about such things, anyway. He’ll find someone who doesn’t. Or no one at all.
Stepping over to his bed, he unclasps the pin of his cloak as he goes and lets it slip from his shoulders before layering it over the back of his mattress. He sits on the edge, unfastens his boots and removes them, unbuckles his belt, unlaces his tunic, and unbuttons his trousers before shucking each in turn, folding, and setting them aside. When he is in nothing but his undergarments, he collapses back onto his bed, eyes shut and hair a blanket beneath him. His exhale coils upwards like a white spirit.
“You’ll find someone Ataya. I’m sure of it.”As his sister’s words ring through his mind, he wishes he believed them with the conviction she apparently did.
Word Count: 633
