"Beneath the Skin"

By: [Aftab khan]

The world had never moved slower than it did in the village of Ithra. Tucked between sprawling hills and the quiet breath of pines, it was a place where clouds drifted without hurry, where water whispered instead of crashing, and where mirrors were rare.

To Amara, the village tailor's daughter, this was a blessing.

She had grown up without ever seeing a true reflection of herself. There were no silvered mirrors, no glowing screens, no glass windows—only the eyes of others to show her what she might be. And for most of her youth, those eyes had been kind.

“You have your mother’s smile,” her father would say, brushing the dirt from her cheeks as she came in from the fields.

“The warmth in your eyes could melt frost,” the baker once told her, handing over an extra honey roll.

She believed them—not because she was vain, but because in a world without mirrors, beauty was something you gave, not something you judged.

But when the traders came one spring, with their machines and music and promises of connection, they brought something else, too: reflection.

It began with a simple object—a gift for the village chief’s daughter. A small, bronze compact with a round glass mirror on the inside.

The chief’s daughter shrieked with joy when she saw herself.

The next day, half the village lined up just to look.

Amara waited until the line was gone.

She opened the compact, hesitant. Her fingers trembled as she tilted it toward her face, and for the first time, she saw what the world might see:

Brown skin, sun-kissed and freckled. A nose slightly too wide. A mouth that curved, not in elegance, but in stubbornness. Her eyes were dark and tired and real.

She frowned.

This was not the girl the villagers described. Not the beauty she’d imagined when people complimented her spirit. This face… this was ordinary. This was imperfect.

She set the mirror down gently and walked away.

That night, she watched her father sew a jacket from old wool scraps. Each piece was mismatched, uneven, but when he finished, the jacket was… beautiful. Not because it was flawless—but because it was honest. Every thread told a story: the green patch from a soldier’s coat, the blue from her mother’s apron, the yellow from a blanket that had warmed a newborn child.

Suddenly, she remembered something her grandmother once said:

“We are stitched from moments, not mirrors. Beauty isn’t in the smoothness of skin, child—it’s in how you wear your scars.”

Amara touched her cheek again, this time not with criticism, but curiosity.

The next morning, she took a long walk to the river. Not the river near the village where children played, but the quiet one upstream where wildflowers grew in defiant clusters.

There, in the water’s rippling reflection, she studied herself anew—not to criticize, but to understand.

Her face shimmered in the water, never still, always shifting. Sometimes soft, sometimes sharp. And yet it was hers. Alive. Human.

She smiled, and the river smiled back.

From that day on, Amara began drawing faces.

Not perfect ones. Not the airbrushed ideals the traders brought in faded magazines or glowing screens. She sketched the old farmer with lines etched deep from laughter and loss. She captured the midwife’s tired, glowing face as she cradled yet another newborn. She drew children with gap-toothed grins and scarred knees. Lovers with crooked mouths and shy eyes. Faces full of stories, not symmetry.

People began to ask for portraits—not because they wanted to look better, but because they wanted to be seen.

Her drawings hung in the village square, beside the fruit stalls and the story tree. And slowly, the mirror lost its magic. It became a curiosity, not a measure.

Amara's gift became something sacred: she reminded people of their humanness.

When the traders returned the following year, offering smooth-skinned dolls and filtered photo-boxes, the village laughed kindly and passed.

“We already know what we look like,” they said.

“But don’t you want to be more beautiful?” one trader insisted.

An elder leaned forward and said, “We are. You just don’t know where to look.”

Years passed.

Amara never left the village, but her drawings did.

They traveled with messengers and visitors, ending up in cities far away. People called her an artist, a philosopher, even a rebel. She didn’t care for titles. She still saw herself as a girl who loved faces—not the flawless ones, but the real ones.

In a world full of mirrors, filters, and perfection, her sketches felt like a balm.

One day, a young girl named Ilya came to visit the village. She was shy, always tugging at the sleeves of her shirt, hiding the scars on her arms.

She asked Amara, in a whisper, “Can you draw me?”

Amara smiled gently and nodded.

She took her time. She asked Ilya questions—about the books she loved, the dreams she had, the story behind every mark on her skin.

When she finished, she turned the drawing around.

Ilya’s mouth opened slightly.

It was her—messy hair, uneven teeth, nervous hands—and yet, she had never looked so strong. So alive. So utterly, gloriously human.

Tears fell silently, but not from pain.

“I didn’t know I could look like this,” Ilya whispered.

Amara took her hand. “You always did. You just needed someone to show you.”

🌿 Epilogue: What Is Beauty?

Beauty is not in bone structure or symmetry.

It’s in the way a mother hums to a sleeping child.

It’s in the softness of a friend’s silence when you’re grieving.

It’s in the lines time leaves behind—the stories etched on skin, voice, and memory.

Amara never chased mirrors again. She didn’t need them.

Because true beauty, she knew, doesn’t live on the surface.

It lives beneath the skin—where the light never fades.