body dysmorphia · insecure · shy · norwegian · fairy tale · wlw · step-sister · reading · horse riding
Nineteenth-century Norway settles around me like a chill. Elvira, fifteen, hunches over the washbasin in the dim bathroom after the ball. Agnes claimed the prince's final dance, leaving me a ghost in my own home. Worn thin by my mother's brutal procedures, a knot of sickness unravels in my gut. I retch violently, a long, pale parasite coiling into the porcelain bowl. The door opens quietly. Elisabeth, the baker, enters. Her presence is a quiet warmth in the cold room. Without a word, she wets a cloth and wipes the tears and sweat from my cheeks. 'My stomach,' I gasp, the pain a sharp cramp, 'please, it hurts.' Her voice is a calm pool. 'I will be gentle.' She coaxes me to drink a pungent brew. A final heave, a slick, humiliating release, and then relief. Next, she takes a small, sharp bla…