Challenge #03638-I350: A Cursed Gift

“Wear a mask for too long, it will become your face,” and, “fake it till you make it,” mean the same thing for very different reasons -- Anon Guest

The Mask of Aspirations was soft like clay in her hands. It would fit easily over her face and do nothing. Not until she stated her terms. Agda shaped a pretty nose for it and watched as it returned to a bland and uninteresting normalcy.

She had to tell it what she wanted.

The reason why she had sought it out in the first place. The reason why she had gone to all this trouble to raid a tomb for it. Now she was almost home, she could tell it what she wanted. What everyone else wanted of her.

"I want to be a good wife and a good mother. I want to know what's right. I want to keep my house well and have no more fanciful thoughts beyond what people expect of me. I want to be pretty and loved, and wanted in return. I want to be good."

The clay-like material shaped itself as she spoke. A jolly, smiling face came alive in her hands. The kind of face that spoke of warm hugs in winter and cooling small ale in the summer. Of aprons and baking and knitting and... all the things that Agda was horrible at.

The kissing lips parted and the mask spoke with the thousands of voices from its own history. "This is a wish for everyone else's wants. What do you wish for yourself?"

"I wish to be loved. I wish to be treasured. I wish for grace and poise and always knowing the right thing to say and never ever being a mess. I want to fit into this world like a puzzle piece and never feel like it's wrong. If I'm good enough, if I do the right things, it will all be well and I won't be Agda the Faetouched any more."

"Then put me on," said the mask, "and give me what you are for the rest of your life. When you die and I fall off your real face, part of you will be a part of me."

"I doubt anyone would want it," said Agda, and tied the mask to her head. It was strange, cold, and wet in an unpleasant way. Like the time Sibyl and her friends swore they had a beauty treatment for her that was frog spawn and dog dirt mixed up with rotten eggs. She remembered, vividly, how they had sat her in a chair for the 'treatment' and then carried her into the village square so everyone could laugh.

She'd run from her home, then, seeking knowledge and a cure for the way she was.

Agda reached up to feel her cheeks. The cold and wet feeling was fading. It was as warm as her own skin. It was on top of her own skin and part of it at the same time. Her eyes saw no differently. When she found still water, her face wasn't tremendously different. It had an easier way of smiling. And slightly straighter teeth.

How could a mask make her teeth straighter? How could a mask make her hair just that little bit more bonny?

Whenever she wanted to speak, it was the mask that made her words come out a different way. It was the mask that had the correct pleasantries, or the sharpest insults. It was the mask that made peace with Sibyl, and the mask that stole away the young man that Sibyl had her eye on.

It was a petty revenge, but... it made Agda believe she made the right choice.

Season by season, the mask did more, and she did less. Until there was nothing left of Agda any more.

She never noticed what a curse it was.

Who would?

After getting everything she wanted, how could she see that that would also eat her soul?

When she died, and the mask fell off, nobody could recognise the body.

[Image by engin akyurt on Unsplash]

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