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I could feel Diora’s serious eyes on me, but couldn’t make eye contact.
One of the reasons I’d insisted we all needed to split up to hunt down our kings was because I knew she needed to get away from me. I had kept her alive for a long time, and I was proud of that. But I was broken, and tired, and… exhausted.
Exhausted by everything.
I was ready to move on, to join my family in the sky.
And I wanted Diora to live. To live a life bright enough and happy enough that the stars would sing her praise, the sun beaming for her.
That wasn’t a life she could have lived beside me, and I accepted that.
It still hurt, though. And I still didn’t want to burden her with the shit I carried.
A few minutes later, Lavee’s hands were on my shoulders. “Are you sure about this?” She asked. “Hair grows back, but it takes a while. And yours sort of…”
“Glows?” I drawled. “I noticed.”
She snorted. “Yes, it glows.”
“Sounds like even more of a reason to be rid of it to me.” I shrugged lightly.
“Alright. I’ll cut it to your shoulders first, so you have time to change your mind,” she said.
I wasn’t going to change my mind, but I nodded anyway.
A few snips of her scissors later, my head was already feeling much, much lighter.
“Alright, look in the mirror and see how you feel about it,” she instructed.
I did as she said, standing up and turning around.
My hair fell healthy and straight to my collarbone, looking softer and smoother than I had seen it in two decades. Of course, it had been long enough to hit my lower back the last time I’d seen it shiny like this.
It looked pretty, but I still wanted the rest gone.
“Let’s chop it,” I told her, turning and sitting back down.
“Yes ma’am,” Lavee teased me lightly.
A few more minutes passed, and my head grew lighter and lighter with the loss of the strands that had weighed me down for so long.
When she finally had me check it out in the mirror, I’d gotten exactly what I wanted:
I barely recognized myself.
The woman in the mirror looked like a pixie. Small, and slim, and fragile. My hair was cropped close to my skull around the sides of my head, just long enough at the top to be mussed up a bit. It looked soft and silky, and when I lifted my hands to it, it felt even smoother than I’d imagined.
“Well?” Lavee’s expression was contemplative as she watched me.
“It’s perfect,” I said, completely honestly. “I love it. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” Lavee waved it off. “Even if I accepted money, you’re Diora’s family, and I love it when people chop their hair off.”
My lips curved upward a bit. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
“I have a few pairs of non-hairy clothes you can take,” Diora told me, from where she stood leaned up against the wall. “So you don’t have to wear pants as a shirt, too.”
