Chapter 6: A Haircut.
Elian had woken up earlier the next day, earlier than he usually did. Which meant that the sun was barely coming up on the horizon by the time he had washed himself and was sitting on his bed, quietly waiting for the arrangements he had asked Nessa to make yesterday.
The silence of the slumbering estate was an especially heavy burden on him on this morning, the anticipation, and the quiet excitement of having made such a decision mixing into a specific kind of emotion that he was having a hard time coping with.
A few moments passed into comfortable quiet before the knock on his door came.
"Elian?"
Elian straightened, then steeling himself opened his mouth.
"Come in."
The door opened with a faint creak, the older woman stepping in with a small case tucked under one arm—scissors, combs, the usual tools of her trade, though she’d clearly dressed for this the same way she dressed for anything she considered slightly more than routine.
Nessa took one look at him—hands folded too neatly in his lap, spine too straight, the particular stillness of someone bracing for something—and something in her expression softened before she’d even set the case down.
"You look like you’re waiting for a court sentence, not a haircut."
"Feels a bit like one," Elian admitted.
She hummed, unbothered, and pulled the room’s single chair around to face the window instead of the mirror—a small mercy he didn’t ask for and was grateful for anyway.
"Sit."
He sat. She worked the tie out of his hair without a word, combing it loose, and for a moment just stood there considering it in the pale early light, the way she might consider a length of cloth before the first cut.
"You’re sure about this," she said. Not really a question.
"No," Elian said honestly. "But I’m doing it anyway."
That got the ghost of a smile out of her. "Good enough answer as any."
She picked up the shears.
"Tell me again what you’re after. In your own words, don’t hold back."
He hesitated—old habit, the reflex to shrink the request down into something smaller and safer before it left his mouth. He made himself say it plainly instead.
"Short. Uneven, a little... messy, on purpose. Not neat."
A small pause.
"Not the kind of haircut Father would approve of at breakfast. I want it to look like those fairies from the book you used to read to me from"
"There he is," Nessa murmured, and started cutting before he could take it back.
He watched it happen in pieces out of the corner of his eye—dark lengths falling away into his lap, onto the floor, years of careful, deliberate growth undone in a handful of minutes. He’d expected to feel some grief over it. He didn’t. If anything, each fallen piece felt like weight coming off rather than loss.
Nessa worked quickly, sure-handed, occasionally tilting his chin this way or that with two fingers, muttering half to herself and half to the air about balance and line. She left it longer at the crown, tousled, uneven at the edges in a way that looked deliberate rather than careless—the kind of cut that took real skill to make look like it hadn’t taken any effort at all.
"Alright," she said finally, stepping back.
"Go on, then. Before you talk yourself out of looking."
Elian stood, and hesitantly stepped towards his mirror.
The mirror was the same cracked one from before, propped in the same spot on the windowsill. Elian stood in front of it and just looked for a moment, not saying anything.
It didn’t look like... anyone he’d let himself be before.
His hair was shorter, messier, the kind of cut he used to sketch out in his head and never actually ask for. His face looked different with it—softer, vibrant, not because his face had changed, just because there was nothing left covering it up.
"Well?" Nessa said, from behind him, arms crossed, watching his reflection instead of him directly.
"I don’t know what to say."
"You don’t have to say anything. Your face is doing plenty of talking on its own." She paused, considering something. "Though that could be a problem on its own."
He huffed something close to a laugh, still staring. He reached up and touched the shorter hair at the side, half expecting it to feel wrong somehow, some part of him braced for the regret to show up late.
It didn’t come.
"It’s not what Father pictures when he says presentable," he said.
"No," Nessa agreed. "It’s not."
"He’s going to have questions."
"Probably." She started gathering up her things, unbothered, like this was a fairly minor detail in the grand scheme of the morning.
"You planning on having answers for him, or are you just going to walk into breakfast and let him work it out on his own?"
Elian looked at himself a moment longer. For once, he didn’t feel like shrinking away from it.
"I think I’ll let him work this one out."
Nessa snorted lightly, shouldering her case.
"Brave kid."
She paused at the door, glancing back at him one more time, and her voice dropped some of its usual dry edge.
"For what it’s worth. Suits you. It really do."
She left before he could figure out how to respond to that.
Elian stood there a while longer, turning his head slightly one way and then the other, still not quite believing the face looking back at him was allowed to be his.
Then he heard the staff, propped against the bed where he’d left it, give the faintest hum—barely audible, more felt than heard, like something in it had noticed the change before he’d even be able to process it himself.