From the neck up, I was regal: my face was adorned with cosmetics

From the neck up, I was regal: my face was adorned with cosmetics— rouge on my lips, a smearing of gold dust on my eyelids, kohl lining my eyes—and my hair was coiled around a small golden diadem it was embedded with lapis lazuli. But from the neck down, I was a heathen god’s plaything. They had continued the pattern of the tattoo on my arm, and once the blue-black paint had dried, they placed on me a gauzy white dress. If you could call it a dress. It was little more than two long shafts of gossaper, just wide enough to cover my breasts, pinned at each shoulder with gold brooches. The sections flowed down to a jeweled belt slung low across my hips, where they joined into a single piece of fabric that hung between my legs and to the floor. It barely covered me, and from the cold air on my skin, I knew that most of my backside was left exposed. My ref hair curled up to my shoulder and my blue eyes glimmered. In my palm there was black ink with the shape of an eye and my body had been painted with an art that connected with the eye on my palm