Poland set the emery board down, blew the fine dust off his fingers. He had to make sure he got this totally perfect. He was pretty comfortable with some barrettes here, a skirt there, but he didn't do makeup much. Or, like, ever, if he was honest. Which he was, whatever other, lamer countries said aside—both about the honesty and the makeup.
Anyway, they definitely didn't matter right now.
What mattered was making absolutely completely sure that his nails were the right shape. Last time he tried this, they were all jagged and gross, and he snagged on Liet's shirt in front of everybody. So he had to be really really really careful this time around.
Poland's been all about red and white for… for a while. A few lifetimes—it felt weird to describe a length of time that way, since none of their people did, since who among their people lived that long?—but that's what it was, a few lifetimes since Poland meant white eagle on red shield.
He spun the lid of the first bottle of polish open, holding the handle and slowly, carefully applying it to his nail. He had some remover already set aside, but he'd definitely like to avoid using that if he could, at all.
And yeah, he'd pretty much had his wings clipped since then. The flag always stood for Poland, but sometimes Poland didn't stand for anything Feliks identified with. He was always always his people, though.
So pretty much sometimes Poland, the country, wasn't its people. It, you know, kept changing around. Borders and ideologies and stuff like that. Feliks could be there and stand right in the heart of Warsaw and know that this was his land, this was him—and the crowds walking in the city streets were like the blood cells in his veins—and he could still feel totally out of place.
But the colors were his. He skipped a nail, painted fingers one-three-five on his left hand. Replaced the cap, spun open the other bottle, painted fingers two-four. Carefully. He had to respect his colors, they were one of the few things he kept constant, one of the few things he and all his people could identify with.
And, like, had identified with—for a few lifetimes.
There used to be different reds because not everybody could get the same kind of dye, way back when. Deeper reds meant you had more money. The shade of your flag could say something about you. But it never meant, never ever changed how Polish you were. Red was one of his colors. Red was one of their colors. Red was Poland.
He had to wait, now, let this hand dry. At least a little, otherwise he knew he'd smudge it up or something. He flapped his hand out and blew on the nails a little, until it seemed safe to start up the other hand.
He had to be even more deliberate with this one, because he totally wasn't as good with his left hand as his right. But it was still just as important that he didn't mess this up at all.
For a while, in the past, people tried to take his country and make it into something they thought it should be. For a while the flag stood for a country that didn't stand for the people. But that never changed that the people gathered under the flag. They could change what the flag represented but they could never change what the flag meant, could never ever change that the flag was for his people.
Once Feliks finished painting all the nails on both his hands, and had let them time to dry, he put on his uniform and headed outside for the day. He had a cute little calendar in the entryway, and he smiled as he passed it and saw today's date.
November 11.