The white poppies outside the gate bloomed that spring. Their petals were the color of bone, of milk, of the inside of an empty jar.
Inside the Convent of the Bleeding Heart, the world was a palette of gray stone, brown wool, white wimples, and the deep violet of the Advent vestments. Red was forbidden. Red was the color of the Enemy—of passion, of blood spilled in anger, of the cardinal that had once perched on her windowsill as a novice, its breast like a wound. scarlet innocence movie
It was not a kind laugh. It was not a holy laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who had spent seventeen years lying to herself and had just realized the demon in front of her was a worse liar. The white poppies outside the gate bloomed that spring
The tears were hers. Every night for seventeen years, Agatha had wept into her pillow, mourning a world she had chosen to leave. And every night, Scarlet had gathered those tears in a jar that did not exist, in a room that did not exist, in a space between her heartbeat and her breath. Red was forbidden
"I saved that one for you."
Scarlet—the real Scarlet—grew up. She never spoke of the thing that had worn her face. She became a postulant, then a novice, then a nun. She chose the name Sister Mary of the Snow. She never went into the crypt. She never lit a candle with her left hand. And every night, before compline, she left a cup of milk and a crust of bread outside the convent gate.