Bluebird in her heart
'I wish I was beautiful.' Lilia knew her nieces had found the contraband she kept in an old suitcase under her bed. Vogue. Marie Claire. Elle. Magazines — women, clothes, make-up. Desirable things, giddy things that were frowned upon now. Fashion wasn't something that was talked about anymore, not in the wake of environmental catastrophe.
Lilia knew she shouldn't have kept the magazines. The paper was so valuable now — she should've handed them in to the Paper Corp with a scoffing, dismissive gesture. 'Imagine anyone wasting their time looking at fashion, using precious paper so selfishly, so frivolously,' is what she should have said. 'No wonder the world got in such a mess.'
When the sea levels rose nearly 20 years ago and most of her house ended up underwater Lilia had found boxes of magazines in the attic. The only place that was dry. National Geographics, mostly. She'd given them to the Federal Archive for educational use; except for the fashion ones. She looked at them when the import of what had happened became too much. When she couldn't handle the new world order of frugality, selflessness and self-correction. When she caught sight of herself in spotted mirrors and realised fear wasn't beautiful.
'I wish I was beautiful too,' she whispered.
'For the greater good.' It blared from every billboard. It was on the side of buildings, on baseball caps, on T-shirts. People used it as a greeting instead of good morning. It was an initiative of the Social Welfare Org designed to make people feel better for everything they had to give up.
When Lilia thought of the days where she hadn't had to work for Soc Cap Net and surrender 75 per cent of her income; where she'd had her little house near the bay that led off Sydney Harbour; when she'd had a car and a dog and a cat it sometimes became too much for her. She grew anxious and teary and felt there was no point in going on. There was no fun anymore; just hard work and thinking of the consequences of one's actions all the time, day in and out.
The magazines helped her — the fresh, clean images of carefree days where money was