" The air is pure here, scented only with perfume as I gaze around me at my chamber. Seated at my mirror, I look almost as a courtesan might once have done. My hair is long and a deep, natural red. It’s a colour women once tried to replicate but never got quite right. It’s long and sleek, my eyes a pale blue, like the sky reflected off the water in the earliest hours of morning. The water is no longer that colour now – it’s as if night never lifted. The invaders have darkened the skies with clouds that shift and roil like a witch’s vile brew. I shift my thoughts away from it and it becomes a memory, easily forgotten for the moment as I watch myself in the mirror. "

― Cailee Francis , Sensuality in the Darkest of Times: A Short Story