Hair and Power

 

Hair and Power

The room was cold, though the fire still burned in the grate. The walls were bare, save for a single, faded tapestry. The candle on the desk had burned low, the wax pooling onto the wooden surface, unnoticed. She sat by the window, comb in hand, her hair spilling over her shoulders in thick, dark strands, falling past her waist, past the wooden chair, nearly to the floor.

She combed it slowly. Methodically. One stroke, then another. The sound was soft, rhythmic, almost mechanical. There was something deliberate about the motion, something practiced. It was a ritual. It was control.

She had once been told to cut it. That long hair was impractical, wasteful. That it marked her as something archaic, something outdated. That it distracted. A luxury for a world that no longer had room for such things.

But she had not cut it.

She had watched as the others conformed, as they surrendered. The clean, sharp lines of approved hairstyles, the careful efficiency of regulation cuts. Good citizens do not waste. Good citizens did not let their hair grow wild, untamed. Good citizens did not brush it at night, watching the way it caught the candlelight, feeling the weight of it as it slid through their fingers.

But she did.

Because long hair was resistance.

It was a refusal, quiet but absolute. A denial of uniformity. A rejection of control.

She set the comb down, lifting the heavy length into her hands, twisting it, pulling it up, letting it fall again. She felt the weight of it, the slow, deliberate pull against her scalp. She ran her fingers through the strands one last time, breathing in the familiar scent of lavender soap, of something soft in a world that was growing harder by the day.

She met her own gaze in the reflection of the window. Beyond the glass, the city stretched in neat, symmetrical rows, gray and endless, uniform and controlled.

Tomorrow, she would tie her hair up. Tomorrow, she would tuck it beneath a hood, unseen, unnoticed. But tonight, in the dim light of a single dying candle, she let it flow, long and unbound.

Because some rebellions were quiet.

And some revolutions began with something as simple as refusing to cut your hair.