One of the only things Petra can still remember about her mother is her hair. Long, vibrant and a beautiful golden colour.
The clearest memory Petra has of both her parents together was one of the few occasions when she'd been allowed to stay up past her bedtime. She remembered sitting propped up on her parent's bed, eyes heavy with sleep, watching her father run a brush through her mother's long auburn hair. She could still see her mother's smiling face reflected in the vanity mirror, and the look of adoration passing between her parents. Her father put down the brush and her mother's nimble fingers quickly braided the strands, tying them with an old pink ribbon.
Petra clearly remembers that just before sleep had claimed her, she'd wished to someday have someone who would love her as much as her father loved her mother. Someone to wipe away the tears, brush her hair and stroke her forehead until she fell asleep.
When she's older she realizes how inconvenient it must have been for her mother to have such long hair at work. Surely it must have gotten in the way of her 3DM Gear! But her mother had never complained. Petra's father had loved that hair, and her mother had kept it long and beautiful for him.
Petra's mother dies on duty when Petra is four years old. There's not much left of the body, but it's easily identifiable by the mess of hair, now dull and tangled, stained with blood and peeking out from under the white sheet.
Petra decides that she'll grow her hair out too, so one day it will be just as beautiful. She hopes that it will help her father to smile again.
Sometimes when he thought she wasn't looking, her father would look at her with a deep sadness in his eyes, and she knows it's because she has her mother's hair. As hard as it was for him to see his wife's ghost in her every day, Petra's father pats her on the head every night before sending her off to bed, and his hand lingers on the silky strands. Some days she looks in the mirror and almost sees her mother staring back at her.
Years later, Petra sits on her thin mattress in the training camp and brushes her hair one hundred strokes every night before she goes to sleep. She braids her hair- she'd had to teach herself, and had a hard time of it, but recently she'd improved at the advice of the other girls in her barracks- and secures the end with that same worn piece of ribbon.
It's one of the only things she has left of her mother.