sciamachy
“We know that the hardest work is to keep yourself open to the world that technology hasn’t tamed.”
Little White Goat in A Room.
The pale color of mourning woke the girl from slumber. She was in a white room with a lavender skyline. The sunlight transformed the windows into mirrors, and the girl knew she would see herself as soon as she opened her eyes.
She chose to keep them shut a little bit longer.
A deck of cards sat on the wooden chair beside her bed. The sheets and stool were also white. The girl’s hair was loose and dark against the bedding. Before she fitted the blanket to each of the bed's four corners, she'd take that time to pluck the black strands from each pillowcase.
It was her habit to be fastidious.
Soothing her nightgown with a palm, the girl remembered her dream. She was in a high-ceilinged room with long curtains and wooden floorboards. She wore slippers with a heel embossed with jewels. Her steps echoed as she wandered the room and peeked through the curtains. It was dark outside, and the room was lit up by candlelight. Mirrors lined the walls with miniature paintings of blue and red flowers.
Who holds the brush, the girl spoke. Her voice carved a piece of the landscape into her own. An expert in navigating new places, the girl molded space with sound. She clapped her hands twice to send a shockwave into the dwelling.
No one responded.
As the girl wandered slowly from the north to the south side of the long chamber, a man’s face appeared in one of the oval mirrors. He wore dark glasses and had deep brown eyes. He was wearing a hard helmet over a ball cap. Sunglasses hung from a string around his neck over a blue tunic.
He was smiling just for the girl.
Or, that is what the girl preferred to think.
The girl looked at the man and saw her face reflected through his. As she continued to look, hard grey mountainscapes appeared behind the man. So he was climbing somewhere, mused the girl. The longer she looked, the more the portrait opened to reveal the subtle textures of the environment. Trees with dark leaves and light bark, tiny yellow flowers tucked in tall grasses, sand bleached white by the sunshine.
A little goat was in the corner of the image. The goat was white with black hooves and horns curled inwards towards its neck. As the girl moved closer to the mirror, the man blinked. The girl pressed her hand to the wall and touched the mirror's surface with a fingertip. It was hard and cold. She looked at the reflection of her hand in the glass and saw that the man had moved, so his face was turned away from her. She could see his profile; he had a delicate nose, though she could not look into his eyes.
He was hiding in plain sight.
And the goat was gone, too.
Photo source.
