Tao of the Broken

Chapter two

Two

            Sorrel stood on her chair once again looking out her basement room’s window.  She was taller now, she no longer had to strain on her toes to see her father exercising.  She stood flat footed on the chair’s cushion and leaned her forehead against the windowpane.  She hadn’t worked up the courage in two years to ask her father to teach her what he was doing.  She didn’t think she ever would.

            She tried to mimic him when she wasn’t tending the garden or preparing their meals.  She wasn’t very good though.  She had learned to follow his speed, however.  He no longer looked like a blur of limbs when he worked.  Sometimes he would spar with men she knew he did business with.  Usually it appeared friendly, sometimes she could hear angry shouts afterward though.  Men.

            She often tried to guess what sort of strike her father would use against an opponent.  She rarely guessed correctly.  She also didn’t have any names for the style he used, or the attacks she watched him repeat.  She knew enough about fighting styles that it wasn’t a form of karate like the neighbors’ children would practice.  She also knew that her father wasn’t a samurai, for she knew he never used the blades he kept in his office.  She assumed he knew precisely how to use them if he needed to, however.

            When he was no longer moving in a flurry of attacks he began to stretch and Sorrel dropped down from her perch.  She sighed, glancing to the mirror on her desk.  Her father had asked if she would prefer a vanity to a desk now that she was growing into womanhood.  The question had embarrassed her, and she still thought of the piece of furniture as a desk with a mirror.

            Sorrel didn’t wear makeup like the girls she sometimes saw on the road by her home.  She knew it was a futile effort to cover her scars.  Makeup would only draw attention to her face and that was exactly what she didn’t want.  Her eyes seemed like a deeper green than Sorrel remembered and she leaned closer to look at herself.  Usually she avoided the mirror, she even had a sheet on the desk to cover it.  Today she looked at herself.  She had grown, she could feel it.  She was still skinny and it was visible even in her face.  Her cheekbones were high and pronounced, the left side had a long almost chocolate colored line that trailed from her brow to her jaw.  Her cheeks were shallow and there was a smaller scar that went from the center of her right cheek across her nose and stopped just before her left eye.  Her lips were fuller looking than they felt and marred by a thicker, meaner scar on the right side that trailed to her chin.  The final scar on her face was a cruel X shape across her forehead.  That was the easiest to hide with her hair, so was the fact that the lobe of her right ear was missing.

            Because of her weight Sorrel had only recently started her monthly cycles and she hated them.  They were painful and usually came unexpectedly, leaving her to scramble with bloodied laundry before her parents woke.

            Aster had told her about her body.  She had been kind and tried to make Sorrel comfortable with the idea of being a woman.  After their conversation she began to look up to Aster, she wished she could be like her.  It had still been embarrassing and she didn’t like asking for advise about it.  Aster always knew though, and would usually take on some of Sorrel’s chores with a gentle smile and a comforting hug.  Sorrel loved and hated that.  She felt guilty when she couldn’t do her own chores because her body ached so much she wanted to curl into a ball and cry.

            No sense wallowing in it.  She got to her feet and flung the sheet over her mirror.  She didn’t have to worry about her cycle, it had just ended and she had the whole month to feel comfortable and work hard at her duties.