Two Shades of Sorrow Under the Same Moon

The sun pressed down like judgment.

It burned through the air, through the skin, through every breath that Nahlia tried to take without tasting dust. The cotton pricked her fingers raw, and her palms were blistered into maps of pain — lines crossing lines until even her calluses ached. The overseer’s whistle cracked through the field like thunder, and every sound after that — cicadas, wind, her own heartbeat — seemed to move in time with that sharp, cruel rhythm.

She looked up once, just once, toward the big white house on the hill. It gleamed like a lie — perfect, polished, sitting in the shade of oak trees. A woman’s figure glided past the window, wrapped in linen and light.

Nahlia paused to watch. Ailhan, the house girl.

Even from far away, she looked untouched. Her hair was smooth, her apron white. Sometimes Nahlia imagined that the air inside that house smelled like honey and soap instead of sweat and blood. Sometimes she let herself believe Ailhan never had to flinch when a man raised his hand or a whip cracked in the wind.

“Lucky,” she muttered under her breath. “Some folk just born lucky.”

Yet, inside that white house, the air was heavy too — just in a different way.

It carried the weight of perfume and powder, of candles burning down to their last inch. Ailhan stood near the parlor door, her hands trembling over a tray of tea. The mistress sat near the window, eyes sharp as glass, pretending to sew.

“Don’t dawdle, girl,” she hissed without looking up. “And keep your eyes down when Mr. Harlan passes by.”

Ailhan obeyed, as she always did.

The tray clattered softly when she set it down. The master’s shadow lingered at the edge of her vision — a look too long, a smile too soft, the kind that made her stomach knot.

She’d been in this house since she could remember. The mistress liked to remind her why — “Your skin’s light enough to match the drapes.”

Ailhan didn’t know whether that was favor or curse.

Sometimes, when she looked out the kitchen window and saw the field hands laughing over scraps of food, their voices lifting in songs that the house could not hold, she thought:

I’d give anything to laugh like that. To be one of them. To belong.

Nahlia dreamed of wearing one clean dress.

And, Ailhan dreamed of wearing none at all — just bare feet and freedom.

Nahlia thought of food served hot, words spoken soft, hands that didn’t bleed.

Ailhan thought of nights with no eyes watching, no mistress measuring her breath.

They pitied each other, each convinced the other’s chains were lighter.

One night, thunder tore the sky in half. The master’s voice echoed down the hall:

“Ailhan! Take supper to the shed before dawn!”

She obeyed, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders and stepping out into rain that felt alive with anger. When she pushed open the shed door, heads lifted from the shadows.

Nahlia was among them.

“Well look at that,” Nahlia said, half mocking. “Miss Ailhan herself, blessin’ us with a visit.”

Ailhan set down the basket and met her eyes. “You think I’m blessed?”

Nahlia shrugged. “Ain’t you? You sleep dry, eat good, wear white.”

Ailhan pulled her sleeve back. Purple bruises bloomed across her wrist.

“The mistress say I tempt her husband. The master say I should smile more. You call that blessed?”

The shed went silent except for the rain hitting the tin roof like the sound of truth.

Nahlia’s voice softened. “Didn’t know.”

Ailhan’s eyes glistened. “Nobody does. We just see what they want us to see.”

The two women sat together on a bale of hay.

Nahlia turned her back, showing scars that rippled like lightning down her skin.

Ailhan’s breath caught. She touched them — gently, reverently.

“Same blood,” she said.

“Same chains,” Nahlia whispered back.

They didn’t smile. They just understood. For the first time, the envy between them dissolved, leaving room for something truer — recognition.

The next day, the storm was gone, but the house was in chaos.

The mistress had found a handkerchief under the master’s bed — embroidered with the letter A.

“Whore!” she screamed, striking Ailhan with her belt until welts rose like fire.

“You think your pale skin makes you better? Makes you worth something?”

Ailhan bit her tongue till it bled.

Out in the fields, Nahlia heard the screaming. At that same moment, the overseer cracked his whip across a boy’s back — too young to bleed so much, too old to cry.

The plantation echoed with pain — one house, one field, one sound.

In the days that followed, something unspoken grew between them. When Ailhan brought linens to wash, she lingered near the edge of the fields. When Nahlia carried baskets to the porch, she stole quick glances toward the kitchen door.

Each began to gather what the other couldn’t.

Ailhan slipped bits of parchment, stolen ink, and dried bread into her apron.

Nahlia stashed rope, a flint, and news — which guards were drunk, which dogs were chained.

One night, in the dark behind the smokehouse, they met again.

Ailhan spread a small map she’d drawn with shaking hands. “The river runs east,” she said. “If we follow it by night, it’ll lead us north. There’s a trader in town who hides runaways — says he owes a debt to his own mother’s blood.”

Nahlia traced the line with her finger. “You can walk out the front gate,” she said. “They don’t chain you like they do us.”

Ailhan nodded. “And you can move where they don’t look.”

They looked at each other then, the divide between house and field gone like smoke.

Ailhan’s privilege was her access. Nahlia’s was her ability. Together, they could make both mean something.

The night came thick with mist. Ailhan slipped keys from the mistress’s ring and left the door unlatched. Nahlia waited near the barn, heart drumming in her throat.

When they met under the oak, neither spoke. They only ran. Bare feet over mud, breaths syncing in rhythm. The dogs barked once, far off, then fell silent. The river waited, black and wide.

They waded in, holding hands against the pull of the current. The moon followed them — pale and patient.

Behind them, the plantation slept, unaware that two of its own were rewriting the night.

Morning broke slow and golden.

They hid in the tall reeds, shivering but free.

Ailhan tore a strip from her dress to bind Nahlia’s bleeding foot.

Nahlia smiled weakly. “Ain’t no mistress here now.”

Ailhan looked up at the sky. “No field neither.”

For the first time, they laughed — softly, like the sound of prayer.

That night, as they crossed into new soil, the moon rose high and full. It lit both their faces the same — no lighter, no darker, no difference that mattered anymore.

They paused to rest, watching it shimmer across the river.

“Think they lookin’ for us?” Nahlia asked.

Ailhan nodded. “Let ’em look. We already gone.”

And when they walked on, step for step, breath for breath, the world seemed to quiet around them — as if even the wind knew two women had finally found their freedom together.

“They were never meant to envy each other,” the wind seemed to whisper.

“Only to escape — side by side.”