The scars on my face had been treated with the most advanced techniques available, repaired three times over, until at last no trace of them remained.
Stewart Gilbert came every single day.
In the morning he brought porridge, at noon soup, and in the evening fruit already sliced into pieces.
One time, during a dressing change, the pain had me shaking so badly that my fingers clawed at the sheets without my meaning to.
He reached over and gave me his own hand to grip.
Afterward, I saw five purple bruises pressed into the back of it, the shape of my fingers.
He only shook his hand out and said nothing at all.
Now and then a nightmare would jolt me awake, and he was always there beside me, offering wordless comfort.
Six months later, I stood in front of the mirror.
My leg had fully recovered, the scars on my face were gone, and my skin was smooth, as if it had never been hurt at all.
The face in the glass stayed a stranger to me for a long while.
I had forgotten, it seemed, that I had been born beautiful.
News from the village reached me in fits and starts. The rebuilding after the disaster had long since wrapped up.
Louis Carpenter had walked away from that flood without a scratch, and in those six months he never once came looking for me.
Not even a message passed along, because he was too busy keeping Amy Fox company.
Amy's little scrape had healed with a single bandage, yet she stayed in the town hospital for two full weeks.
Louis spent his days on the rebuilding and his nights riding his motorcycle into town to sit at her side.
When Amy went back to the Capital City, she took with her the scorched fragments stolen from my fire basin.
And the silver hairpin Louis had snatched away, too.
With no woman left at his side, Louis suddenly remembered he ought to shore up his standing as the heritage-craft heir.
Taking a wife was the fastest way to do it.
Six months was plenty of time, he figured. He'd decided I had eaten enough hardship by now and ought to be just about ready to crawl back and admit I was wrong.
So he went into town and bought a gold chain, a few grams of metal, the cheapest hollow kind they had.
Then he showed up at the mouth of the village with a pack of his buddies, loud and full of swagger.
"Doris Dotson, come out here."
"I'm giving you one last chance today."
He stood on the stone steps at the village gate, one hand on his hip, the other holding up that glittering chain.
"I bought gold to marry you. Generous enough for you, isn't it?"
"A woman with a busted leg and a ruined face. It's only because I've got a kind heart. Who else would ever take you?"
No one answered.
The village was perfectly still. Not even a dog barked.
Villagers stood in twos and threes at their own doorways, watching Louis with strange looks on their faces.
Something felt off to Louis.
"Have you all gone mute? Doris is still hiding, isn't she? Go on and bring her out."
At that exact moment, dozens of helicopters swarmed the sky above the village, thick as a cloud.
The wash from their rotors sent the rice husks spread across the threshing ground swirling up into the air.
And then a downpour of red roses came spilling out of the sky.
Granny Faye sat at the head of the village, cracking sunflower seeds, and gave him a slow, unhurried glance.
"Louis, hurry up and put away that scrap of gold before you embarrass yourself."
"Today is Doris's wedding day with Mr. Gilbert of the Capital City. You didn't know?"
