Feel the world in a glint of an eye.
Lily grinned in a self-sufficient burst of pride at the words. She hadn't expected them, and they struck her deeply because of it. He had called her a beautiful girl, and maybe he didn't mean it, but he had said it, despite her obnoxiously red hair, and despite the fact that she hardly wore any make-up. He was a man of god, a man so pure that he was perfectly made with brilliantly brown eyes that saw everything in her, and he thought she was beautiful.
She wondered what about her made him say that, if it was the way she had brushed her hair that morning or that she wasn't wearing lipstick, so unlike the other girls at the church that Sunday morning? She thought about the way she had pulled him aside after the service and asked him if pleasure in pain was okay, since god caused pain as well. She wondered why he asked her what sort of pain such a beautiful girl could ever feel. Did he feel pain? He was a priest, of course, and she wasn't sure priests were human in the way everyone else was.
She wasn't, certainly. As a witch, as she had known she was since she was eleven years old, she wasn't the same as her family, or any of the Muggles she had met in her life. A priest would be like that too, she thought.
It hadn't been a good day; not before they had spoken. Her eyes felt too much a startling green, and her skirt, also green though somewhat paler, seemed to clash with the vibrancy she felt. She felt raw, ugly, rushed out of bed. She had drunk her tea much quicker than she should have, and she liked it even less for that. Her white heels hurt her toes, and her mother had forced her too take off the electric blue nail-polish she had been wearing, claiming it was too exuberant for the ecclesiastic Sunday norm of church.
All morning, she felt as if she was sinning against god. She wasn't sure why, and she didn't want to know, but as Father Alexander gave his sermon, she listened so intently, she felt as if he spoke to her alone. More than anything, she wanted to speak to him, for him to tell her what to do with her life, and she wanted to be sure that it was okay that she was a witch. He might tell her that it was an honor, that God had divinely chosen her as one, she thought, but she didn't have the courage to ask.
She asked about pain, instead, deciding that being a witch was the pain God had chosen her to feel. And he called her beautiful, even though she was sure he could see everything about her; the impurities, the magic, the breaks and fractures and passions. She had tilted her head in wonder, with eyes widened much bigger than they normally were.
She wanted to kiss him, and suck in all of his purity. She wanted him to call her beautiful again, and she wanted to smile at him this time, to not get so lost in his eyes.
She sat against the white stone church, back straight, legs bent, skirt falling all around her, pulling her hair back away from her face. If she could be anything but what she was, she wished she was pure like Father Alex. She wished she could convey all his godliness in speech until she wasn't alone, until she was different, until she had deep brown eyes that saw through the world until all of it was pure.
She closed her eyes, smiling a little. She liked who she was right here by the church, even if her eyes were too green and her hair too red and her nature too strange. Even if no one loved her but herself. A beautiful man, a priest God must love, saw good in her. Lily smiled and let her teeth sink into her lips.
"Lily, how many times have I told you not to put your jumpers in the dryer? Now your lavender one's ruined, and I don't think it can be fixed."
Lily scrunched her eyes a little, trying to push her mother's high voice a little further from her ear. She had been trying to remember the exact amount of mandrake root necessary in a potion to cure pus-exuding warts. Remembering that the pus from those warts was helpful, if saved, in other forms of healing made the potion tricky. If the potion was made correctly, the effects of the mandrake root counteracted the pus, and made a sort of orange precipitate in place of the warts, which could then be scraped off and stored. However, if the maker measured the mandrake root to the wrong degree, there was a spectrum of dangerous results that could last over a century. She wrote a number on her parchment, hoped it was the right amount, and then looked up at the wall opposite her chair.
"That's not mine. I'm fairly sure it's Petty's favorite, though. I'd suggest you break the news to her in a gentler way than you've told me. You know how touchy she can be." She spoke with her lips tightened, rather like her sister, Petunia, in that. She waved her fingers around in front of her face, distracting herself and her mother, her eyes made wide by some unseen force. She turned to face her mother. "I'd rather not be blamed for every little mistake in this house. I know I can't cook, or clean, or dress properly, but I don't have to know those things."
Mrs. Mary Evans looked at her daughter with equally widened green eyes, and her own tight-lipped smile slowly relaxed. Just when her daughter though she would scold her for her sass, she spoke again with softer, motherly accents. "I've missed you, darling."
Lily raised an eyebrow and smiled. "I've missed you too, mum. I'd stay here much longer if I could." She tried not to think of decadently brown eyes, ones she could see every Sunday if she just stayed home, ones that saw her as beautiful.
"I'll hold the days back, Lily."
Lily blinked and smiled, watching almost thoughtlessly as her mother turned back to unload a rainbow of laundry from the dryer, filling the room with the sent of freshness.
Lily brought the phone a little lower from her ear. "I don't know, Calli. It's a long drive, and mum hates cars." She listened to the voice on the other side of the line, shrugged, and then spoke. "It has been forever. But it's really still Christmas, isn't it? Mostly? My mum doesn't see me very often, and it's not even the New Year yet, so she probably wants to keep me for herself." The conversation paused on Lily's side. "No, of course I'm no mummy's girl. Have you ever known me that way." Lily listened to the quickness of the resounding 'yes.'"Well, I'm not one. Maybe I'll see you over Easter."
Lily placed the receiver back at it berth, and shifted her jaw. She couldn't even remember the last time she had seen Calli Dale. Perhaps it had been the summer before at somebody's (Lily couldn't remember whose) grandmother's luau which Calli's mother had driven sixty miles to, just so the two friends could see each other. Schools apart, miles apart, eons apart, it didn't really matter the distance; Lily already knew she and Calli had stopped being best friends the day Lily received her first Hogwarts letter.
It was far too difficult to bridge the gap between the Muggle and Magical worlds. She had seen people do it, like a boy in her year, Remus Lupin, but he always looked so worn. It seemed much too hard a job to do.
Lily walked back to her chair in the den and continued to scrawl neat letters forming words about mandrake root and pus-exuding warts.