This is an image post. Inspiration for this sketch came from this image.

The woman whom they’ve named Isabella (ironically — a queen’s name; meaning, traitor, patrona, historically God’s oath; their little joke) watches herself in the mirror, watches them flicker and fade out on the walls of the room. They won’t reveal themselves to her directly anymore, but she can still see them. When they are listening, watching she sees them, their long black shadows cast on the wall. “Who knows what evil lurks,” she murmurs, a phrase new to her vocabulary, learned from the radio, spaced between the numbers and the melodies. “The shadows know.” The shadows reach for her with bony hands, but they can’t touch her, no, not really, only listen and watch and judge.

It pleased them to call her pretty, to reassure her that she was lovely, and wasn’t that a gift? They told her she was powerful, a weapon needing to be used, that the others would be weak against her, weak as they were not (no, though of course they could recognize what would inspire weakness in the others, they knew the others so well, of course), that she had a mission. She burns with their words, brought to life by the words they’d put in her mouth, written on her forehead. Isabella, among others. A joke — “god’s,” and there were no more gods, “oath,” and there were no more oaths. Only the inevitable, infinite revolution of the wheel, promising violence, freedom and change.