7: A New Woman
Sarka went back to her own house as soon as she could. She did not shrink from the task of tending her own wounds. After all, the danger from her fever was past, and she could not bear to be doted on any longer. She needed her solitude, her space.
Now that she was back in her own place, Sarka had no one to stop her from looking at her face. She'd seen her mangled shoulder, and the scratches on her leg and other parts were deep, but everything was healing as well as could be expected. There would be scars, but Sarka could live with scars on her body.
Her face, however...
Sarka had never been an attractive girl. She had a nest of wild, tangled dark hair and a face that was not friendly or sweet. Her unkempt brows and thin slash of a mouth always met in a scowl unless she made a conscious effort conjure a more pleasant expression. The lack of healthful sunlight gave Sarka's deep skin tone an ashen pallor.
But with good looks Sarka had never concerned herself; who cared? The pretty girls and handsome men suffered just as much as the ugly ones in Kogoren. Now, though, thinking that the face she'd always known had been ruined, she waited to look. One day passed. Then two.
When she decided to see her new face, she did it casually, picking up her looking glass as she changed her bandages one day as easily as she would have before. She did not allow herself time to think or shy away from the sight that would greet her.
The wildcat had marked Sarka with four vicious claws from her brow down to her chin. One of the marks was longer than the others, starting nearly at her hairline and dragging down through her eyebrow and her eye. Studying the damage, Sarka knew without a doubt that her eye might as well have fallen out; it would never serve her now. The other claws had wrought their own damage, scoring her nose and slicing into her cheek with livid red marks. With that half of Sarka's face so swollen, she could not divine what she might look like once the wounds had hardened into scars. But she knew she would not like it.
Sarka set the looking glass aside and stayed there for a moment, her hands folded in her lap, wondering what to feel. Nothing came.
Finally, as she reached with her good arm for the clean bandages so she could wrap her face again, Sarka thought, I have a new face. I suppose I must be a new woman.
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