Mask

It hung half in, half out of a battered black shoe box. Someone had twisted two lengths of wire into large almond shapes - eye holes, and then covered the wire with delicate black stitching, delicate black knots that expanded outward in a complicated swirl of rings and chains, picots and clovers, a bridge for over the nose, peaks from which to hang crystals, holes to string through a ribbon. Lying there it looked incongruous, the blank eye holes and the medallion of clovers where the forehead would be, like a target to taunt an assassin. But when the ribbons were taught, knotted, high in a girl’s hair, and the mask was settled in place, it was mysterious and haunting, and turned any girl into an unspeakable beauty.

(127 words)