Feathers Painted by Soot

It was many years ago, those days in the factory. I was a young girl then. I had been in the shadows all my life and knew better than most the slow, agonizing death of dreams. I was close friends with hate. Hopelessness was my fine acquaintance. Pain was my dancing partner.

It was in my fifteenth year when we met. I had been working in the factory for ten long years by then. No longer was I a child, but beaten and molded from cruel work into the gnarled mind of an old woman. Light had all but disappeared from my days. She changed all of that.

It was an August day when she came.

The work was hot and grueling. Tired and starved that I was, I let my hand stray into the path of the machine. There was a moment of realization. There was the heavy warmth of dark blood. Then there came the pain.

Despite my best intentions, I cried out. It was too much, the blood and the hurt and the knowledge that this one moment could ruin me, that this was the end of all hope. And there, in my despair, she came.

A dark-haired girl raced to my side without hesitation. "Are you alright?" She asked, her voice lilting and heavily accented. Before I could piece together an answer the girl took my injured hand in her own and, ripping off a strip of her apron, wrapped it as gently as a mother's touch.

I should have warned her. The life of the poor cannot afford mercy or compassion.

"What do you think you're doing, wretch?" The voice that haunted my nightmares pierced the red fog of pain. The girl turned, and I could tell then that she was not of the broken species that mourned among the shadows, those girls that had run their will into the ground working. She straightened, lifting her eyes to the foreman's, and answered steadily. “Helping one in need."

He scoffed. "That is not of your concern, unless there has been an amendment in the job description that I have not been informed of?" His voice presented a challenge. She rose to accept it.

"Such a commandment can be found in the Lord's book," the next word was very nearly spit out, "sir."

His rat-like face lowered to her angelic one. “Think you're smart, aye? I'll show you where a woman like you belongs." And with that, his hand snapped out to grab her.

Yet his dirty fingers never reached her. My uninjured hand found its way around his grimy wrist, grip strong from years of hard work. “A woman like her,” I told him coolly, trying not to meet the girl’s eyes, “belongs nowhere near you.”

The foreman’s beady eyes widened, red rims darkened from years of alcohol abuse showing. “You little…”

“Best hold your tongue, monsieur.” She supplied smoothly, fingers coming to rest on the crook of my elbow.

He jerked his hand out of my grasp then, slapping her with the force of a gale. I growled, dropping all pretenses of ladylike conduct, but before I could react she slugged him with enough strength to throw the unstable drunkard back into the unyielding metal of a machine.

“Bitch!” he screamed, surging back to his feet. “You think you’ll get away with that? I’m gonna…”

“Sorry to inform you of this, sir, but whatever plans you may have must be postponed until further notice,” I said, shifting closer to the girl’s proud shoulders. “As we promptly resign.”

Had I not been quite shocked at myself, the sight of this huge man stuttering probably would have been comical. “You…” A blood vessel throbbed painfully in his forehead.

“Resign,” She smirked indelicately. “Perhaps you prefer the word ‘quit’?”

“I would like to say I enjoyed your company,” My voice rolled out of my lips without permission, years of spite and bitterness barreling out. “But I have most certainly not. Goodbye.”

Perhaps he was too startled to pursue us, or perhaps just too drunk to find the doorway, but we walked out of the factory without obstacle. Once free of the dank walls, standing together in the watery sunlight, we laughed. The sound was rusty from years of disuse, but never had I enjoyed it more.

Her name was Sophia.
That was the year the shadows began to recede.