Marked From Birth
She was draped in heavy linens, her arms and shoulders encased in thick bandages soaked in a pungent mixture of aloe, coal-tar, and medicinal oils.
The pain was no longer a sharp scream; it had settled into a rhythmic, pulsing throb that felt as if her bones were trying to vibrate out of her skin. The "Light-Burns" were unlike any injury the doctors had ever seen. They didn't char the flesh; they crystallized it. Beneath the bandages, her skin bore patterns of translucent, violet-white scarring that looked like the delicate frost-feathers on a winter windowpane.