{ gentled by snow }

[onlydancing]

She’s heard them say that snow has begun falling over Paris.

Lilith remembers standing in the cold shadows of Le Pecq’s streets, the first December snow falling on her face and bare hands while she offered herself to faceless strangers – faceless only because she couldn’t see them, because they were as enveloped in the darkness as her, every time they led her to the scruffy brothel where she was allowed to sleep and where she slept with them. What a long way she has fallen.

In the same way that she remembers the sensation of snow on her face, she remembers the feeling of Mother’s fan – a harsh blow across the face, the tip scraping across her eyelids, digging in, digging in... She had screamed, had been utterly unable to stop for the pain of it. Mother had screamed, too. Screamed for help, for someone to do something. She wants to save me, Lilith had found herself thinking, bathed in blood, with a gist of hope that didn’t flicker until the doctors concluded there was nothing more to be done and Mother’s reaction was to turn away. As Lilith cried. Cried for Jean-Paul’s choreographies that she would never get to dance again. For herself. Who would never get to dance. Again.

Sitting in the improvised bed that has been assembled for her sake, she listens to the sounds echoing within the walls of the small room. The chanting voices of the Sisters in the chambers next door, performing the vespers. Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae... Yes, Lilith Doret – now simply known as Lilith, the prostitute, the demon woman, the damned – has fallen a long way, into the darkness.

Yet, in that darkness, it seems to her that amidst the many noises of the church, she can still hear the pure, white snow falling on the ground outside, covering its imperfections.