Beauty

Taki was beautiful. 

She was beautiful on the outside, with black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin against the white snow. 

She was beautiful on the inside, with a warm heart beating steadily against the Arctic cold.

When she was born, her mother swaddled her in a blanket her grandmother sewed for her. 

The blanket was red, the color of the sky over Point Hope at dusk, just before the night sky blanketed the people in frozen darkness. 

Across the blanket, stitched with bright yellow thread, were the three Arctic whales - the narwhal, the beluga, and the bowhead.

There were two narwhal whales. The long tooth of one of the narwhal's, the one that extends out from the whale's upper lip, the one that makes the whale look like the unicorn of the sea, was broken. 

Taki's grandmother was an artist with needle and thread. 

She sewed the hurt and despair of the wounded whale into it's face so you could feel it's pain just by looking at it. 

In the face of the other whale she sewed compassion and hope as it placed it's own tooth into the hole of the broken tooth to assuage the pain of her friend.

Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown eyed girl, 2020