Fortune Favors the Bold

32

The Thysían winner remained silent in her chair, her eyes set on the mirror to follow the movements of the lady who split her hair and dabbed a brush coated in white cream at her roots. She tried to follow along with each hair the hairdresser individually brushed to make sure her appearance wasn't as flawed as the girl felt within.

No matter how hard she tried, Kalani's gaze continuously slipped to her own eyes. Her cheeks were far thinner than she remembered, her cheekbones bearing a more pronounced structure, and her eyes were surrounded by an ill shadow.

Kalani wondered how long it had been since she'd looked in a mirror. Had she really changed so much in time that felt so little?

"This color is beautiful," the older lady spoke, running a thin-toothed comb through a collection of a dozen hairs on the right side of Kalani's hair. "It compliments your complexion nicely; gives your tone quite the glow," she smiled when she caught Kalani's eye in the mirror.

The girl didn't answer her. This wasn't her glow. In fact, Kalani observed a dimness within she'd never seen on herself. It was as if there had been a candle burning inside her body that had been blown out, leaving her as a pale ghost. Looking at herself in the mirror now, she felt like she was only a body –the vessel of the girl she once was.

The vessel of Kalani.

Her thoughts remained silent when she looked down at the ground between her feet and the base of the mirror. There was nothing worthy enough to take up her thought processes as the hairdresser continued working on her hair.

She left her for a white, letting the cream do its work. Kalani didn't complain about the slight burning of her scalp. The tingling sensation offered a weird comfort in becoming something to focus her mind on. When she came back, she rinsed Kalani's hair, combed it then spent the next hour running each section between a flat iron.

"Perfect!" The lady finally smiled, after spending a little over a few moments cutting the tips until the hair on her back fell in a precise horizontal line.

Kalani hardly looked at herself while waiting in her place for the other women to enter. When they began working on her face, she let her eyes fall to a close, savoring the tranquility that came from the emptiness of her thoughts. They spoke around her in hushed voices like they were afraid she would hear. Kalani did in fact hear, but she didn't care enough to grip onto their words.

What slipped through her ears slipped out just as easily.

She zoned out and only zoned back in as they zipped the back of her dress. Two women and one man surrounded her, placing pins in locations that needed to be tightened, correcting the neckline's dip, and trimming the edges that rolled too long on the ground.

When she looked in the mirror, Kalani didn't recognize the girl looking back at her. With hair that neatly laid against her shoulders before parting and falling down her back. It parted in the center of her head, circling her face like curtains that had been pulled apart and rolled outwards upon reaching her chin, joining the other hairs.

Her complexion had become even, none of the dips or shadows evident. Instead, her eyes had been surrounded by a shade of concealer that made her "glow" as the hairdresser had said. One golden line began at the inner corner of her eyes and followed the dip of her eye upwards before fading near the edge; the other began at the center and flicked up smoothly. A white wing had been drawn along its base, only noticeable if one were to step too close to her.

A white shadow followed her cheekbone, curling up to her temples. It reflected the light in beautiful shimmers when she turned her head to a certain angle. Her lips were a natural nude shade.