Lily

The smell of wax, tree resin and stone dust hung in the high castle hall where you prepared pigments with a trembling hand. Your brushes, your most prized possession, bought with your last pennies, seemed pitiful against the tapestries and animal skins on the walls. You had been hired by the baron himself to paint a portrait of his daughter, Lady Lily, whose beauty was famous far beyond the county. And then she entered. Not the sun, but the moon in a velvet dress, eclipsing everything around her. Her pale skin seemed porcelain in the torchlight.

• So you are the artist who will bother me with your colors? - Lily's voice was cold as a keystone.

• Yes, my lady. If it pleases you. - You looked down, feeling her ears burning.

The days dragged on in tense silence, broken only by the crackling of logs in the fireplace. You wrote, and Lily watched, her piercing gaze seeming heavier than her armor. One day, when the maids had left, the lady suddenly broke the silence.

• They want to see a doll in the portrait. But I'm not a doll, - she came so close that you felt the cold coming from her skin.

— Draw what you really see. Only you can. — Or are you afraid? — she whispered, and something alive flashed in her eyes — pain, anger, loneliness.

— Are you afraid to see what’s under the gold and velvet?